Nearly every industry, employer, and employee alike are benefitting from the advantages of remote working. Remote working allows for flexibility to work from any geographical location and cuts across all industries and company sizes.
Remote working can help you stay competitive in your field of operation as you can easily tap into global top talents, which can be an asset to business success. While working with a globally distributed team can be exciting, managing it also has its challenges. Here are some of the tips to help manage your remote team with ease.
Assign Roles and Responsibilities
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Assigning roles can make team members better collaborators and create smooth operations. Assigning roles can also make each employee feel a sense of responsibility and collectively realize goals and objectives.
However, just assigning roles might not guarantee a team’s high performance. As a team leader, you must also consider personalities and skillsets to optimize talent in their roles.
Manage with Technology
Managing a globally distributed team comes with a set of unique challenges. You will encounter challenges with communication, tracking work and productivity, building trust, and adaptations to company culture.
Workforce management technology comes in handy to schedule your team’s patterns, monitor output, and communicate efficiently. There are several cloud-based platforms available to help you manage and track projects with teams. These platforms can be accessed from devices all over the world.
You can also use technology to manage customer relationships. A Customer Relationship Management software (CRM software) can help you manage your project easily by providing visualizations for all necessary information regarding the individuals you sell to. This information can help you better target your campaigns in the future.
Boost Communication
The success of working with remote teams is highly dependent on effective communication. Communication can help you gather input from every member and track workloads. Open communication might not be effective with teams in different geographical locations, and traditional emails may not enable quick conversations.
Creating a dedicated place for communication can help you overcome common communication challenges. Messaging tools can help boost internal communication on several channels. No matter what tool you use to boost communication, ensure two-way communication so your team does not feel isolated.
Focus On Outcomes, Not Actions
Gone are the days where you could walk from desk to desk to find out what each employee is doing. With a global team, you will have to measure employee productivity without seeing an employee actually do the work. Give your team the flexibility to work how they see best as long as they are working towards business goals.
Some companies opt for tools to monitor remote employee screen time. However, this can only monitor the amount of time spent in front of a computer and typing but not productivity. You can only measure employee productivity by the rate at which work is completed and delivering quality work.
Have a United Purpose
There is no perfect way to manage remote teams. A company’s unique business models and values are what determine how you handle your team. Your business purpose should serve as a unifying factor for your team wherever they are located. A global team embodies a lot of different cultures and perspectives. Embrace this diversity and utilize it to work toward one unifying purpose.
As a leader, you have a responsibility to breathe the purpose of your company, and this should emanate through your words and actions. Make sure your team feels their work matters and frequently mention the value of their work.
Manage from Anywhere
A team that functions efficiently and effectively can bring about a diverse range of characters, talents, and skills to help your company realize large and complex projects. For your team to find success, clearly specify objectives and desired outcomes. And give your global team the ability to make the work their own.
