Keys to Managing Your Remote Team

The trend toward remote work certainly did not begin with the advent of COVID-19, nor will it end with the pandemic. However, in the face of global lockdowns, businesses and employees alike have looked to the virtual office space to keep their companies open and their livelihoods intact.

And while the digital workplace has served to meet a crucial need in a period of global crisis, that does not mean that business leaders should be satisfied with the current status quo. Indeed, though lockdowns may be lifting in many parts of the world, if you want to ensure agility and flexibility in your business, including offering employees the option to continue working remotely, then there are certain keys to managing remote teams that you need to know about.

Choosing the Right Tools

In many ways, remote teams succeed or fail based on the strength of the tools you provide your workers. At the very least, your team will need apps, software, and technology that support secure communication and collaboration.

This should include, for example, an online instant messaging tool that allows real-time group and individual messaging on a private and secure platform. In addition, you’ll likely need scheduling and project tracking tools to ensure that team members are on the same page regarding task assignments and timelines.

Ideally, you will also equip your team with video conferencing technologies that allow you and your team to regularly engage with one another with project status updates, brainstorming sessions, or simple team-building events.

In addition to user-friendly and secure communication tools, you’ll also need technology to support efficient and productive collaboration. Your team needs to be able to create, edit, comment on, and securely share documents and other work product as close to real-time as possible.

Clarity, Support, and Flexibility

 Effectively managing a remote time requires you to call on an array of skills that, while important in the physical office space, are imperative in the virtual office.

For instance, clarity in expectations, processes, and requirements is especially vital to the success of distributed teams. This should include specific guidelines on things like scheduling and communication. Your workers need to understand, for example, whether you expect them to keep regular business hours or work on their own schedules.

Similarly, they need to understand what your communication expectations are: Do they need to be logged in to the company messaging software while working, or do they only need to check in with the team a few times a week?

Among the most important guidelines to establish, of course, are those relating to cybersecurity.

As great as the benefits of remote work may be, there are also significant security risks that need to be proactively managed.

You may choose to create a virtual private network (VPN) and require that all work be completed while using this dedicated and highly secure portal. Likewise, you may require your employees to password protect all work devices and to dedicate company-provided laptops, smartphones, or other tech to professional use only.

However, even as you strive to formulate clear standards and practices for your remote team’s work processes, you should also expect to be flexible when your employees need you to be. Working from home is not always easy and there may be times when unexpected disruptions occur, when employees may need to adjust their schedule at the last minute or attend a meeting by phone rather than video conference. 

Prioritizing Engagement

One of the greatest challenges that at-home workers face is the feeling of isolation and loneliness that often characterizes long-term remote work. After all, the physical office isn’t just a workplace, it’s a social community.

It’s where your workers build not only strong working relationships but also, often, personal friendships as well. And when your workers feel cut off from that sense of connection, belonging, and support, it’s easy for them to become demoralized, demotivated, and disengaged.

There are, however, many ways that you can regain that sense of community, even in the virtual workplace. As has been suggested, video conferencing is an ideal tool for project management and collaboration, but it can also be immensely powerful in helping your team reconnect.

For instance, you might hold weekly team meetings that aren’t just devoted to the work at hand but also to recognizing and rewarding the greatest accomplishments of the week. When the individuals and teams feel that their contributions are seen and valued by both the company and their colleagues, then they’re inevitably going to feel more engaged, even if they never step foot on the physical campus or see their coworkers face-to-face.

The Takeaway

The future of work may well be remote, but the success of virtual teams is not something that can be taken for granted. Rather, there are important steps that business leaders can take to more effectively manage remote teams. This includes ensuring that your at-home workers have the tools they need to be successful, prioritizing engagement at the individual and team levels, facilitating cybersecurity, and promoting clarity, flexibility, and support.