It’s important to set clear expectations when discussing productivity standards with your remote team. Some productivity standards will vary with the job; others may be standard across the company. I believe that creating psychological safety, especially for remote or hybrid teams, is critical. You can do so by creating a shared purpose, asking for team members’ perspectives, showing empathy, and creating opportunities for levity and team bonding.

• However, in the context of remote work, the workplace and the home are no longer easy to separate.
• This simple app shows you what time zone each of your team members is in.
• This might sound a bit intrusive, but with the quick setup of background images and blur settings, turning on a camera is simple and private.
• Whether manager of the entire company or of just one team or department, one of your primary duties is to delegate work and tasks.
• Team collaboration is important for a reason – it delivers results.

Everyone has different routines and environments that can promote productivity more in the early morning or late at night. To deal with this issue, encourage your remote workers to use their leaves and take some time off to spend with the family. Also, be flexible and plan work around their personal commitments, such as childcare. Slack brings all your work communication together in one place – it’s the closest thing to a virtual office.

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Start with this Trello template for organizing incoming requests from cross-functional teams. Yes, your company will probably spend less on physical office space, but those savings are likely to be spent elsewhere, depending on the remote work that needs to be done. These insights can be shared via PDFs, short videos or informal question-and-answer video calls. Obviously, email, instant messages and phone or Zoom video calls are essential for remote interaction. Your team needs to understand they have their own agency to balance their workloads with their personal life and hobbies.

If someone receives an email or Slack message at 8pm, they might feel compelled to check and answer it. For example, some team members may prefer to work early mornings while others prefer evenings. That’s fine and dandy, but you’ll need a bit of overlapping schedules to enable and encourage collaboration. You might ask your team members to all be online between 10am to 2pm PT on Tuesdays and Thursdays , but how they allocate the rest of their time is up to them. As the CEO or team leader, it’s your duty to keep employees motivated. Motivation looks different to everyone, so you’ll need to take a personalized approach rather than a batch-and-blast strategy.

If that isn’t possible, ask them to join groups of like-minded individuals within your organization. This will help them foster regular social connections in the workplace. Some of the remote team management strategies we have covered may already be familiar to you, while others will need you to go out of your comfort zone. The best way to start implementing work expectations when managing virtual teams is to have a kick-off meeting to introduce all the policies and procedures. Then keep reinforcing them in regular weekly and monthly meetings.

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This means that the need for excellent remote work software to manage remote workers is also increasing. Consider conducting video calls rather than just audio ones, as seeing colleagues builds camaraderie. What about online celebrations, such as a virtual birthday or work anniversary party? Plus, services such as Slack and Google Hangouts can help your employees keep in touch with each other individually and in smaller groups throughout the day. Team leads are responsible for showing newbies around, or in our case, virtually introducing them to their colleagues on messaging tool Slack.

Outside of work she’s either searching for London’s best new restaurant, trying to become a Yogi, or planning her next holiday. Needs and each team member can update you with their progress along the way. Have a clear https://globalcloudteam.com/ separation of work and “play.”We apply a people first approach—before we are Dialers, we are humans. Because everyone’s so different, having some set standards to zoom in on and measure productivity can be useful.

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It lets managers call out wins and recognise employees for a job well done. Moreover, it lets other co-workers get in on the action — they can cheer each other on with personal messages and comments. Employees receive points for achievements, which they can redeem for rewards like gift cards and experiences. Overall, Kazoo is a great tool to boost employee engagement and to boost workers’ morale. When managing remote teams, it’s important to set boundaries and expectations that your team members are supposed to work with. For example, random video meetings may get awkward for some employees if they weren’t expecting them.

Allowing people who are motivated to develop themselves will always benefit your business. For daily appreciation, we created Slack channel #kudos, where we give kudos to people that helped us or did a great job. By writing down our values and requiring everyone to agree to them when they are hired, we instantly have a baseline for managing distributed teams. Everyone knows how to act and more importantly, they understand why we do the things we do.

Managing a remote team requires a constant flow of communication. HR and team leaders face significant difficulty consistently developing two-way communication with distant personnel. Some remote employees suffer from loneliness, burnout, and even depression if there is no apparent difference between the workplace and the home. So when managing virtual teams, don’t let the physical distance come in the way of celebrating and rewarding accomplishments.

Create a culture of accountability and boost team motivation with MeisterTask. 10to8 is an appointment scheduling tool that is designed specifically to help businesses work remotely. Set up an online booking calendar and make virtual appointments with 10to8’s Zoom or Microsoft Teams integration. Manage internal staff meetings, client appointments, or even remote medical appointments—10to8 is GDPR and HIPAA compliant.

Challenges In Managing Remote Teams

Instilling a sense of independence in your team is a critical part of learning to remotely manage employees. Veteran telecommuters may not need as much support as those new to it. People may feel particularly disjointed or uneasy when they first start to work remotely if they haven’t really done so before — and those experienced with it might be able to help.

More so, it gives your team the satisfaction that their efforts get desired results. As a team manager, the mental health of your employees should be of utmost concern, especially since they will deliver better results when they have sound health and feel supported. You can hold virtual parties, online hangouts, joint brainstorming video conferencing, and welcome sessions to build positive interpersonal workplace relationships. Your check-ins don’t necessarily have to be daily — schedule check-ins based on what works best for your team, pending projects, and work hours. Some employees find it hard to create a work-life balance now that they work from home. For some, productivity has dropped simply because they can’t get motivated in the morning.

This keeps team members focused and purpose-driven to assist with productivity during meetings. Each of the tips above fall into the category of simple but not easy. And you’ll be more equipped with the battle gear necessary for navigating the murky waters of change. As much as remote work can be fraught with challenges, there are also relatively quick and inexpensive things that managers can do to ease the transition.

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Every person has their own preferences for how they absorb new information. If you can, take this into consideration when you’re doing training and development with your team. Try to reserve email and text-based comms for information that doesn’t have a non-verbal aspect.We keep email for the items we need to track and chats for quick decision making. It can be too easy to jump on Facebook to see what the latest gossip with Bob and Marcie is.

According to a recent poll, remote work has increased by 91% in the previous decade. When the pandemic limited us from seeing each other in real life, we started organizing so-called staycations. During these week-long events, there are Zoom-hosted presentations, workshops, games and welcome drinks — allowing us to continue to grow stronger as a team. We also have quarterly creative days, where people unplug, explore and share their findings with the team. Most people choose to visit a museum, which unintentionally turned our #creative_day channel into a virtual tour of art exhibitions worldwide.

That starts with investing in the right kit to serve your team long-term. We’ve pulled together some of the essential tools for managing remote teams—from enabling fluid collaboration and remote participation, to ensuring work stays visible. Continue reading to learn some tips and tactics for supervising remote employees. You’ll learn how to use project management software and other remote team management tools to improve work performance. Creativity and innovation can sometimes take a hit when team members are working alone from home all day. In such situations, managers need to think beyond just chat apps and enable a few face-to-face interactions.

Communication

If you are that person who says “I don’t use task management apps because getting into them takes too much time”, chances are, you simply haven’t found a platform that fits your team’s needs. The race for improving team collaboration has become a hip trend Remote Team in the business world. You can easily find a lot of strategies and how-tos describing ways to enhance employees’ performance and boost productivity. Celebrating your successes — both big and small — is a great way to encourage your remote workers.

From senior executives right down to the newest interns, a bigger chunk of the workforce is going to continue working remotely, who knows for how long! Having an updated remote team management strategy, thus, is essential. Managers are going to have to ensure that every team member works as efficiently and productively as possible. So let us look at some of the best productivity and management tools that can help your organisation succeed in a remote work environment. Regardless, if you’re serious enough to be reading this article, we’re confident that you can handle managing remote teams with flying colors. So start following these best practices today, and see the difference they make in your remote team’s performance.

An example of an area where you may want to involve employees is the method of communication they’d prefer, or to set core hours for working and collaborating. There’s no dispute that you have to establish procedures and expectations for your remote team members. It’s also important to create structure within meetings themselves, to keep them efficient and to the point. An example is the EPIC structure, which stands for energy, purpose, insights, and connection.

You can also mention co-workers in checklists, react to comments, and liven up your responses with emojis. Soldo makes it possible to control, track and report spending through its employee expenses app. Remote workers receive a prepaid company card and capture receipts, VAT, notes, categories, and more using the Soldo mobile app. Managers can get real-time insight into costs, including spend per employee, team, vendor, period, and more. Regular human interaction can be easy to take for granted until workers don’t have an office full of people to be around every day.