Modern workplaces are undergoing a shift thanks to remote working, and this has rendered the ability to manage remote teams a necessity for leaders in every sector today. While in physical office setups care, trust and work are designed in such a way that the team comes together as one regardless of the distance, in a remote working setup, such strategies cannot work, and hence new ways are formulated.
Before we start talking about managing, read our detailed blog “What is remote working” for a better understanding of remote working.
This blog focuses on the best ways to manage remote teams in practice, strategising on how to deal with communication inadequacies, how to create a culture in a remote work environment, challenges of managing a remote team, how to effectively manage remote teams, how to define and pursue optimal performance targets, and how to control operations in a widely spread remote team.
1. Understanding the unique challenges faced while managing a remote team
Leaders are not just faced with issues related to communication, work output, and employee welfare, but also face challenges peculiar to remote working teams. If these problems are not addressed, they will lead to misunderstandings that cause isolation, and poor collaboration among the working team.
Communication barriers
Colleagues in the office can argue and discuss when something is unclear, but we, the remote workers, mostly communicate formally using emails, messages, and video conferences. Managers need to deal with communication challenges in remote team management.
This can cause differences and even misunderstandings among the team members or lack of participation when the workers are in different time zones. Remote managers have to develop patterns of communication that enable timely, effective, and efficient information sharing without burdening the employees.
Building trust and accountability
I have always seen that it is always difficult to establish rapport with employees who are not physically present in the same workplace. There should be some level of supervision while at the same time freeing employees to understand they are responsible for a given work.
Accountability may be achieved through transparency, constant communication, or acknowledging the efforts made by the workers in the organisation.
Cross-time zone and multiple cultural issues
Co-ordinating a global team means working with teams that might be in other time zones, this makes synchronous communication a challenge. Moreover, I have seen cultural differences shape the ways people interact, perceive work, organise work, and set expectations.
This means that managers need to overcome issues related to the time zone by conducting meetings that are likely to be attended by most participants and making recordings of the sessions for others who cannot attend.
Promoting one's culture in a way can ensure that all individual differences within the working populace are dealt with properly, and tactfully.
Guaranteeing productivity and remote workforce motivation
One drawback of a completely decentralised team is a lack of direct supervision which is typical for most office jobs. The inability to interact physically with co-workers can cause desire of loneliness while flexibilities bring the boundary of work and home life into question.
Managers should work towards the best practices for managing the team through expectations, and flexible working schedules to increase the productivity of the team.
2. Communication strategies for remote teams
A major determinant of managing remote teams is communication. Maintaining clarity, organisation, and standards in communication processes is likely to yield massive overall team cohesiveness and minimise confusion. As a leader, you will face challenges of managing and leading multiple and remote teams.
Setting up formal and clear communication lines
Specify which media is suitable for the exchange of certain kinds of information. For instance, use instant messaging for fast questions, project management applications for updates, and use video or voice conferences for meetings.
BCC, Slack, Teams, Asana, and other collaborative facilities derived from it are equipped with powerful functions that enable real-time communication employing a range of media types of communication.
Set communication guidelines
Response time, communication hours or expected availability during responding have to be standardised to avoid such delays. For instance, coming up with a procedure that ensures that, for work-related emails, a reply should be provided in less than 24 hours and messages on Slack in less than an hour, with all these being restricted to working hours makes everyone more or less on the same page.
Daily check-ins and virtual meetings
One-on-one and team meetings ensure visibility by providing a platform on which to discuss issues and set goals, and conditions of working together. Daily check-ups help managers know how each employee is performing, and whether there are challenges, and give feedback immediately.
Besides, I also think virtual communication saves time and ensures all the team members are informed of what other related groups are doing.
Open feedback
The impact that an open feedback system has on the organisational culture is great and through this personnel trust and transparency are developed. Employees are free to express any problems they may have during their working in teams, and this ensures the managers address such problems in good time.
It is advisable to collect feedback anonymously by using Officevibe or creating a survey using SurveyMonkey allows the team members to be as real as possible regarding their opinions.
3. Building a remote work culture
To address work engagement and satisfaction, constructing cultural positivity and inclusiveness in a remote working context is imperative. Culture fortifies the employee and organisational goals of basically accepting the team members and having them feel part of a team that supports common objectives.
Foster team connection
Camaraderie takes time to build, and it is even more challenging when this involves people you have never met face to face. To address this problem, the manager can schedule virtual group activities, and casual conversations in group chat, and even come up with birthday celebrations, successful project completion, and momentous personal occasions.
Some used features like Donut for Slack that assign people you do not know for coffee meetings virtually; this will help you in building connection.
Transparency and inclusivity
People need to know what is going on in the organisation, especially in decentralised teams, and transparency helps to address this issue. Make information about the company, its goals, and accomplishment of ongoing projects public and involve all employees in decision-making.
Employee inclusion makes the employees feel part of specific groups in the organisation this is very important in group cohesion and team morale.
Uphold core values
Having a key set of values that can be followed both in dealing with the projects themselves and other people can offer some sense of direction. Maintaining such values ensures that employees who work away from the physical working environment have a sense of belonging to the organisation.
It is suggested to set a common goal where members of the team would find time to reflect on these values during meetings and reward desirable behaviours.
4. Setting remote team goals and expectations
I have observed that setting effective goals and expectations increase productivity and supervised efforts keep the team oriented towards the accomplishment of overall organisational goals.
Use objectives and key results framework
The essence of OKR, it makes it easier for organisations to connect subordinate goals to superior ones so that it is clear what is needed, and why. This is especially helpful in cases with remote teams because it gives them clear direction, but also freedom to navigate on how they can get there on their own.
Roles and responsibilities
Role definition is essential in avoiding duplication and ambiguity, perhaps more so in distributed working since requests for clarification may not be efficient to make. These employees and stakeholders should have a clear specification of their responsibilities and the relation of their activities to the objectives of each team.
Use KPIs for measuring the degree of success
Organisational Performance is quantitatively measured through Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in the hands of managers. It also helps the managers to give more objective assessments of the members of the team and make decisions that are usually based on facts. This information can also be used in identifying and rewarding excellent performers.
5. Tools and technology in remote team management
The right remote team collaboration tools allow people to work remotely while presenting high organisational perspectives and productivity without any hassle or chaos.
Communication tools
Platforms like Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom facilitate real-time communication and allow for quick exchange of ideas. Video calls also help replicate face-to-face interaction, strengthening team relationships.
Project management platforms
Tools like Asana, Trello and Monday.com, enables management to monitor progress, assign tasks and set deadlines. Coordinated access to the project management software helps to avoid confusion in relation to who’s in charge of which task and thus ensures accountability in the event of missed deadlines or duplication of work.
Time and productivity management tools
Software such as Toggle, RescueTime, and Hubstaff are ideal when it comes to tracking individuals and groups to figure out how the hours are spent. Such tools offer information that might be helpful to a manager or can reveal flaws and help a team member organise her or his time more efficiently.
6. Virtual team leadership strategies for managing productivity in remote teams
Remote working calls for flexibility as well as quantifiable performance in the management of the productivity of workers.
Choose flexible, but well-coordinated schedules
It is signed that the work schedule flexibility wherein team members themselves decide when and for how long they wish to work, except for a fixed daily ‘company hours’ may prove to be a good balance between teamwork and individualism. This approach still is sensitive to the end-users' choices while avoiding the breakdown in the collaboration.
Encourage regular breaks
Work burnout always forms part of the risks that workers experience as they do their work from remote areas. To work against this, make team members use the allowed breaks and take a break to take time off during work hours and use the available holiday time. This helps in maintaining productivity rates while at the same time avoiding work-related stress.
Focus on output, not hours
Implementing an output-oriented philosophy to performance means that time is not a main concern, and workers are obsessed with delivering quality work. The implementation of focus on deliverables in contrast to working hours appears rewarding and often increases productivity.
7. Motivate and engage your remote workers
People scattered over distance pose a big problem because learning and performance over the internet is a challenge that needs major attention and cure. Engagement on the other hand increases the amount of work done and increases the rates of retention.
Provide a training programme for its employees
Making an online course, certification, or workshop available to your team tells them you want them to develop this particular skill. Training makes the team motivated and at the same time enhances their knowledge and skills in terms of overall capacity. This helps them to develop professionally with new skills.
Reward and recognition of accomplishment
The idea of always appreciating one’s work goes a long way in increasing morale and hence increases loyalty. More notable practices can be used to celebrate successes including during meetings, through thank you emails, or virtual badges.
Encourage work-life balance
You should set more of a division between business and personal life in order to avoid such states as burnout. It helps them to establish their working schedules on chores everyone should perform, insisting they take breaks more frequently and not engage in work other than their normal shift. Caring for employee work-life balance means that you care not only for their productivity but also for their personal lives.
8. Managing remote and hybrid teams
The problem in managing a hybrid team is challenging because the cooperation between remote and office workers. Hybrid management therefore vertically involves designing for equity, as well as horizontally, involves designing for collaboration as two central pillars of management.
Comply with equity in all aspects of opportunities and recognition
All people in the remote team need to have equal access to the resources, tools, and acknowledgement concerning career advancement as in-office team. That can be done by monitoring and guaranteeing that ratings and opportunities for advancement are comparable and are at same scale.
Hybrid-friendly collaboration platforms
Invest in applications that support both the remote employees and those working within the company’s physical office so that some flexibility is achieved. Google Workspace and applications such as Zoom enable equal participation of all on-site and off-site members of the team.
Develop communications standard for all
Through all-hands meetings or even virtual updates, promote and state that remote employees and in-office employees hold same value and power in the organisation. It is essential that all members of hybrid teams should have a level of communication to create a sense of the wider group even though some of the members work remotely.
9. Performance management for remote workers
Remote performance can be described as the delegation of performance from an office environment and turning away from the micromanagement style of operation. The performance management process should be positive, concise, and conducive to reaching every employee to offer possible outcomes against the set standard.
Set clear performance metrics
It is thus important for goals to be set in the most precise aspect of an objective manner within the remote environment. Set measurable goals that are suitable for teams as well as players depending on their positions.
The requirements with these metrics should be specific, attainable, and preferably in terms of activity output instead of hours spent online. Ensure that everyone understands expectations by setting smart goals.
Constructive feedback
Reinforcement is crucial when working with a remote team – people need to know how they are doing to stay on track. The schedule of meetings can be done on a weekly or even bi-weekly basis to ensure that concerns are addressed, and successes celebrated.
This is a system that involves the provision of feedback from fellow employees, subordinates, and superiors as a way of enhancing a positive organisational culture.
Recognise and reward high-performance
Remote team members can sometimes feel invisible, so recognising achievements goes a long way in maintaining morale. Publicly acknowledge accomplishments during team meetings or in shared communication channels.
I feel that rewards don’t need to be grand—sometimes, a personal thank-you message or a small bonus can make a huge difference.
Confused about which team will perform better, here is a detailed comparison between remote and in- house teams- “Remote vs in-house teams”
10. Mental health and wellbeing in remote teams
Promoting mental health is important because it involves tasks, isolation and work-life conflicts that can negatively affect workers in work-from-home arrangements. As a result of increased focus on mental wellness, managers are in a position to make their employees productive and committed.
Help people come out of their mental illness
Promote an appropriate healthy and open culture by encouraging talk about mental health. Ensure that team members discuss issues to do with stress, workload, and diverse challenges. Set the pace to go against the taboo by being open we must first start with ourselves and share our own experiences and struggles.
Promote work-life balance
Boundary between working and living can be easily crossed when working remotely which results in burnout. Remind and give suggestions to the team members on how they can demarcate time and space between work and their own time.
As a manager, embrace their rights and let them sleep especially when you come across a message from them late at night unless it is an emergency. Working flexible time is preferred where possible so that, one can well fit their needs.
Additional services and products related to mental health
Offering an Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) can help a lot. If you can afford it then you should provide mental health days or allow any particular employee to go home and rest if they are feeling stressed out or anxious, provide mindfulness apps, or offer free meditation classes.
Such messages also let employees know that the company cares not only about their output but also their health.
11. Remote team building activities
Remote teams never get to have opportunities to interact with other people in the office, enjoying those special moments together. Organisations which employ group working must ensure that the group working is a united one, this makes the following to be important.
Engaging the team in team-building activities makes the team have good relationship hence enhancing the morale of the team even when the working is organised virtually. Here are some virtual team-building exercises:
Virtual icebreaker games
Begin conferences or set aside time for quick team-building exercises such as “Two Truths and a Lie,” Trivia, or online Pictionary. These are fun and enable employees to interact in a casual way and, therefore, build a good rapport with the rest of the team.
Monthly virtual social events
Organise monthly social events such as virtual happy hours, cooking classes, or online escape rooms. Rotate the responsibility of hosting among team members to give everyone a chance to plan an event that reflects their personality and interests. These events offer a break from work, allowing team members to connect on a more personal level.
Recognition rounds and peer appreciation
Consider implementing a regular “recognition round” during team meetings, where team members can give shoutouts to colleagues who’ve helped them. Peer recognition builds camaraderie and creates a supportive atmosphere.
Virtual kudos boards, where colleagues can leave positive notes for each other, can also add a fun, positive element to team interactions.
12. Continuous improvement in remote management
The field of remote work environments is still evolving and there always seem to be more techniques to learn about and try out in the remote workplace. It is therefore to the advantage of the team and the organisation if they continuously adopt a culture of improvement.
Create the necessary team reflection
A retrospective meeting lets the corresponding team come together to talk about what has been done right and what was done wrong. Use the “Start, Stop, continue” method: It could be about which new activities the team should begin doing, which activities the team should avoid doing and which beneficial activities should be sustained.
A retrospective helps to maintain the flexibility of the team’s work regarding the current requirements.
Keep up with new technicities and techniques
Technology for working remotely is ever around the corner and as a result, new tools are developed often to enhance the flow of communication and management of projects. It is important to learn about new approaches to managing remote workers as well as be ready to test new instruments that would contribute to the team.
Read about the benefits of working remotely and the challenges of working remotely.
Seek feedback on your performance from your team members
Promote member feedback regarding practises, processes, and tools used in the management processes. Anonymous surveys are a good practice for receiving the opinion of a team because they provide each team member the opportunity to be as frank as possible. This feedback should be used to correct and optimise where necessary.
13. Leadership skills building for virtual and blended work environments
New skills that are needed for effectively leading remote and hybrid teams include, fostered inclusion, new forms of resilience, and enhanced adaptability. Mastery of these abilities allows for enhancing the level of confidence, strengthening the bonds between team members and submitting high-performance results in line with the manager’s remote environment.
Choose servant leadership model
In the context of remote management selfish control is not effective; instead, the servant leadership approach is preferred. Servant leadership places the team’s interest first by providing resources/ help and/or advice while giving the freedom to perform tasks. It maintains professionalism necessary in remote issues and encourages the display of trust and respect.
Emotional intelligence
Another component one has to manage is emotional intelligence or EQ since the manager is deprived of face-to-face communication to simply tell that the subordinates are upset or frustrated. Such issues as dealing with contentious issues with subordinates, employee management and supervision and especially the relationship with the virtual staff are best managed through high EQ.
Conflict solving daily employment
Remote work creates a situation when misunderstandings that occur are difficult to solve without additional aggression. Because remote managers or workers are not physically present with the colleagues for whom they are managing, it is critical for them to know how to handle conflict peacefully. Express honest and friendly communication and remind of the correct and safe methods for coping with conflicts. If these conflicts are not dealt with early enough, bitterness creeps in, therefore, maintaining everyone’s morale is important.
14. Building an anti-fragile remote team framework
It appears that remote work is now part of the new normal and organisations must consider how they will continue building and adapting remote team strategies for the long term. Following long-term trends and ensuring repeatable practises that can be utilised no matter what and remain strong will enable any team to succeed.
Plan for scalability
When remote teams expand, organisational practises and technologies applicable to small-scale remote teams are no longer effective. Create solutions that are flexibly established, such as onboarding and training processes as well as communication structures that will need to grow alongside the team.
Think through how the current processes related to project management software, documentation, and communication will change with the growth of a remote employee population.
Create an organisational culture
Promote a culture of progressive development with the team members and make courses, workshops, and certifications available for them. Skills that might be valuable in the future should be nurtured, for example, software expertise, and remote work practises. A culture where learning is valued and continuously pursued at any time in a person’s career.
Utilising organisational learning to develop a resilient workforce
A good remote team would be one that can learn to cope with change and still be effective during failure and difficult circumstances. Positive organisational culture, adopting more flexibility of employees, and having the right mindset are part of organisational resilience. Thus, agility as a strategic management concept will help the managers equip the teams to address future changes in the industry.
In conclusion
It is evident that leading remote teams is a unique skill that combines both classical leadership skills as well as new approaches best suited for virtual environments. For instance, while building a strong remote culture, mitigating mental stress amongst team members, and performance and communication lead to the successful management of the remote projects.
In best practices of remote management, the primary focus is the nurturing of team members professionally, and personally. These practises will help you in how to effectively manage remote teams. This blog also provides tips for managing a remote team and help leaders managing remote team with best practices.
However, if managers are prepared for continuous improvement, implement appropriate resources, and accept ongoing challenges, they can build engaged, effective and adaptable remote teams. As we continue to redefine the work environment, it is clear that the future of work will consist of remote, in-office and hybrid arrangements and that teams in management under such flexibility will be an asset in the market.
