Managing a virtual workforce may be difficult. These are some of the greatest remote tThe best methods for overseeing distant teams
According to a 2021 poll, 56% of US organizations have been expanding the amount of remote labor.
However, as more and more employees work remotely, managers everywhere must navigate the unfamiliar world of leading remote teams. And as if leading a group of people wasn’t challenging enough in person.
In any case, the challenges associated with leading remote teams are negligible compared to the advantages they provide. Furthermore, your genuine leadership potential will be shaped by how you respond to this new reality of work.
Thus, think of this article as your go-to manual for leading remote employees. We’ll start with some typical problems that virtual managers encounter, then go on to our top tips for confidently leading your remote team.
The difficulties of leading distant teams
These days, it appears usual to work from home, but before the worldwide epidemic forced them to, many businesses had not given remote work any thought.
Let’s look at some of the main obstacles leaders and their teams encounter as they adjust to this new style of working before moving on to the remote management techniques.
Changing to a new organization
People are habitual creatures. We presumably have very constant daily work patterns, from the morning commute to the evening snack.
When you and your colleagues begin working from a distance, things may get quite confusing. You have to get acclimated to a new schedule and balance your personal and professional obligations outside of the factory, office, or other place where you used to work.
It also doesn’t help that you have a ton of new virtual tools, communication strategies, and rules to contend with while working remotely. It makes sense that leading distant teams seems daunting.
Using technology for communication
Having a problem or in need of a second opinion? Simply go to the team member who is closest to you and quickly resolve everything.
While this is feasible in an office setting, in today’s remote work world it could seem like a pipe dream!
As a matter of fact, 34% of workers are unsure about their capacity to interact digitally, and 45% of workers are concerned that working remotely would prevent them from meeting their teammates in person. It’s crucial to make sure your digital employees have a positive experience.
With the shift of communication towards digital platforms like email and instant messaging, managers and their team members are facing challenges in receiving timely replies.
balancing personal and work time
private time spent at home. Perform tasks on location. It’s been an easy guideline to abide by. Your personal and professional lives are clearly defined when you work from an office, or at least more so than when you work remotely.
The lines are blurry while working remotely. It’s simple for work to take over your family time or for personal obligations to divert you from your job. It is thus a challenge for managers and their staff to find a balance between the two.
establishing rapport and trust
You want to reassure your team members that you are accessible to lead and help them while overseeing remote teams. Ensure that you are aware of their requirements, worries, and recommendations.
However, it becomes more challenging to communicate effectively when everyone is having trouble doing so. Furthermore, you may not be able to accurately gauge their degree of participation, emotions, and emotional health if they are not displaying any obvious body language or non-verbal clues.
We don’t want to terrify you with a long list of difficulties associated with managing remote teams. Rather, to emphasize that you’ll have to put in a lot of effort to complete the task. You should be prepared to put in more effort than ever in order to manage and engage remote teams effectively, which leads us to the next point.
Best practices for managing remote teams
Are you prepared to discover the best practices for leading remote teams? This is how you get the most out of your remote workers.
1. Clearly define your expectations
Globally, 34% of remote workers claim that a strong feeling of community at work is sparked by leadership openness. And establishing clear guidelines and expectations for your team members is a major component of openness.
Establishing expectations and limits for your team members to operate within is crucial when leading remote teams. For instance, if some workers weren’t prepared for them, impromptu video meetings may become unpleasant.
As a result, you must clearly communicate to your team members how you intend to oversee them remotely. This involves expressing the following:
- Values and actions that influence the culture of the business
- Procedures for working remotely
- rules unique to their undertaking
- Guidelines for communication style
- Workload and availability expectations
When managing virtual teams, the ideal method to begin implementing work expectations is to have a kick-off meeting when all the rules and procedures are introduced. Then, in consistent weekly and monthly meetings, keep reiterating them.
2. Establish appropriate routes for communication
Email is useful in certain situations. However, there are several forms of communication, not all of them work well with emails. Among them are:
- status reports
- Resources that team members utilize often
- Timetable and deadlines for the project
- A troubleshooting guide for typical issues
Choosing appropriate channels of communication is thus essential to effectively manage distant teams.
For instance, you could sometimes wish to employ channels like cloud sharing, virtual meetings, or instant messaging, depending on the kind of communication. Additionally, you may designate online chat and email as your team’s primary means of contact if you’d want to reduce the frequency of sporadic video calls.
A team may get overwhelmed by having too many tools and channels, which might cause crucial communications to be lost. Using a single platform for communication or an employee engagement solution with many communication channels is preferable.
With the use of a smartphone app called Blink, for instance, team members may interact from one location using instant messaging, cloud-based document sharing, and a social media-style feed.
3. Decide on regular arrival times.
When your team works out of an office, it might be simple to stay in touch with each other and the group on a frequent basis. Don’t let it stop you from using remote teams, however.
In fact, until the team members have completely acclimated to the new routine, you may need to arrange additional check-ins if your team has just begun working remotely. Then reduce in accordance with what your team and the assigned task allow.
For instance, begin with a 15–20 minute meeting every day. Give each employee an opportunity to share their day goal, any concerns they may have, and any support they need from their teammates as you go around in a circle.
4. Make investments in wellbeing and mental health
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that depression and anxiety cause $1 trillion in lost productivity globally each year.
Not just that. on terms of employee productivity and well-being, there is a $4 return for every $1 invested on mental health.
You should place even more emphasis on your team members’ mental health while they are working remotely than you did when they were in the office. Because managing a remote team gives you less opportunity to learn about the emotional difficulties that your employees are facing.
For instance, some workers may find it simpler to adjust to working remotely and have good health than others. For those that don’t, you’ll have to determine their requirements and provide them with help. To that end, a few methods include:
- Providing mental health benefits to employees
- Promoting candid communication within the team
- designating a psychotherapist with whom the staff may communicate
- distributing instructions and self-care resources
- motivating employees to take regular breaks
5. Acknowledge victories large and small.
Your team becomes what it is when you accomplish goals as a unit. Therefore, while leading virtual teams, remember to recognize and honor achievements regardless of geographical distance.
Your remote workers will be inspired to keep up their best work when you recognize and celebrate their accomplishments. You may arrange for a present to be delivered to a team member’s door, arrange for virtual parties, or grant an extra day off.
Additionally, don’t wait to celebrate until you’ve accomplished something significant. Short-term achievements are important, particularly when leading distant teams. If not, it would be easy for your team members to get disheartened.
6. Keep all records.
Overseeing distant teams may quickly become quite complex. When transferring project operations from an offline to an online setting, there’s a chance that many important processes and tasks may be overlooked.
Therefore, just knowing the workflows, responsibilities, and procedures in your mind is insufficient for efficient remote team management. Documenting as much as you can and making the paperwork widely available to all remote workers is the greatest method to keep staff on board and improve team productivity.
Provide thorough documentation that provide step-by-step explanations of everything the team needs to accomplish, along with deadlines and accountability information for each task. As an illustration:
- Templates and checklists for regular chores
- Playbooks that go deeply into the rules and regulations of a project
- Flow charts illustrating the appropriate course of action under changing conditions
- Forms to document important data and guidelines for correctly filling them out
Place these documents on a platform for shared storage and provide team members access to them at any time to ensure that they are always available for reference by your team. By doing this, bottlenecks will be lessened and team members will be able to work more productively.
7. Offer chances for interacting
A Buffer poll indicates that 20% of remote workers have increased feelings of loneliness and that another 20% find it challenging to interact and connect.
Therefore, it’s critical to promote social contacts between distant workers. It is imperative that you proactively provide time and chances for staff members to interact and mingle with one another.
Virtual hangouts, group brainstorming sessions, online lunch and learns, morning coffee standups, and team-building activities are a few of the most effective methods to do that.
In conclusion, master remote team management
You can see that leading remote teams is not an easy task. It necessitates that you closely monitor not just the accomplishment of duties and project objectives but also the mental health and interpersonal dynamics of team members.
Without a doubt, you’ll have to take some significant leadership risks. You may already be acquainted with some of the remote team management techniques we’ve discussed, but others may require you to go outside of your comfort zone.
Nevertheless, we’re sure you can manage managing remote teams like a pro if you’re interested enough to read this post. Thus, put these best practices into practice right now and see how they improve the output of your remote staff.
In addition, as we previously said, take into account using an all-in-one communication tool that may facilitate teamwork and bridge the physical gap that results from remote work. Get a blink trial for free.
FAQs for Managing Remote Teams
How can a remote team be managed efficiently?
Make sure you have well defined procedures, record everything, and set clear objectives and goals. Make sure you have the appropriate means for communication, do frequent check-ins, and monitor the welfare of your remote workers. Make sure to recognize your staff members and, if you can, provide them chances to interact with the team.
How can one remotely oversee many teams?
The same holds true for managing many remote teams; effective communication and tool selection will become even more crucial. making certain that you prioritize recognition, communication, and structure.
What is a successful remote work strategy?
The three most important components of a successful remote work environment are acknowledgment, communication, and organization.
