The Complete Guide to Managing Remote Teams in 2023

Check on their progress and encourage them to voice out any concerns they have. Take this time to show them that you also care about their holistic well-being. Ask them how they are coping with life without being intrusive. These personal interactions help motivate and inspire them. Ultimately, it empowers them to bring value to your organization.

Team members can also flip calls to mobile devices and keep conversations going while on the move. Keeping communications in-house on the company’s software boosts security. Derek Gallimore has been in business for 20 years, outsourcing for over eight years, and has been living in Manila since 2014. Derek is the founder and CEO of Outsource Accelerator, and is regarded as a leading expert on all things outsourcing. The Outsource Accelerator website has over 4,000 articles, 250+ podcast episodes, and a comprehensive directory with 2,300+ BPOs…

You also get video conferencing and integrations with other apps. Now, this isn’t always a bad thing — but for leading remote teams, micromanagement can be difficult and distressing for not only you, but your remote team as well. Finally, it is essential to provide ongoing support for remote teams. This includes not only providing feedback on their work but also offering resources they need to be successful. This could include training sessions on new technologies or tools, access to expert advice, or even just providing recognition for their accomplishments. If you’re considering hiring a dedicated remote development team, a few things should remain top of mind.

Information accessibility

The technology is faster to set up and fully available to remote and hybrid teams because its functionality lives in the cloud. A remote technical support team is one of the most ideal solutions a company can consider. The IT tech support team will be able to walk the employee through the process over the phone or access the computer remotely as they are within one IP address. Keep track of your team with communication tools that enable instant messaging, live chats, video calls, file sharing, and collaboration. You can use popular platforms such as Skype or Zoom or use a more streamlined channel like Slack or Microsoft Teams.

If employee engagement is important in an office-based setting, it becomes even more vital in a remote work setting where it is easy for team members to feel left out. It develops a good working relationship within the team and helps improve morale. It influences the behavior of team members towards each other and their work.

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Communicate company values, your mission, and your vision so that the team understands the purpose of their work. Align personal work goals to company goals, and make sure that they are actionable and attainable. Encourage behaviors that create a positive remote work environment.

It gives your remote team a single platform to access all resources and collaborate efficiently. It also allows you to oversee project management tasks better. One popular tool for remote team communication is Slack, a real-time chat application. Chats can be organized into customized channels for particular topics or projects.

How to Bond with a Remote Team?

As you’re not working in a shared workplace, it’s harder to gauge how employees are feeling. Virtual team building activities like Virtual Escape Room, Virtual Clue Murder Mystery,Virtual Happy Hour Trivia and Virtual Jeoparty Social are also fun. To tackle this problem, it’s important for remote managers to encourage social interaction between team members.

Instill the core values of your company to unify your remote team and keep them aligned with your team objectives. Encourage communication and feedback to promote openness and transparency. If this takes more attention than you have available – you have a lot of tasks while managing remote employees, after all – consider delegating this responsibility to someone else. Feeling that you’ve invested in them encourages them to go the extra mile in productivity. Getting to know individuals is harder in remote teams – so you’ll need to put in the extra effort. Make sure your team understands why these remote communication tips are essential.

• This decreases the overhead expenses related to compensation, benefits, and yearly upskilling of employees.
• The first person in the interview process would then be waiting two or three weeks before knowing if they got the job or not.
• You’re going to feel a bit vulnerable and exposed, so it works best if there’s already a sense of psychological safety amongst teammates.
• I genuinely believe this is the future of work, and I offer the above examples as evidence that when you put your people first, it doesn’t matter where their desk is.
• Just working toward it every day makes all the difference.
• As a manager, you should be careful not to assign too much work or to impose too tight deadlines.
• Your team will follow your examples, and hopefully, begin to do the same.

One of the best ways to help them out with this is to use technology, such as time tracking tools like TimeDoctor. Traditionally, most teams could only hire talent from within their cities or areas close by. Previously, we had candidates meet the team with a short lightning talk on a topic of their choice. Unfortunately, with our now-rapid hiring pace and such a large team, this weekly intro isn’t feasible. Before making an offer, we send out an anonymous survey for a reference check using SkillSurvey. That helps get honest feedback on candidates from their references.

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It’s an easy way for teammates to let each other know when they might need some extra support or patience, or when they’ve got good vibes to spare. It’s easy to get so caught up in executing on your work that you forget to expand your horizons, especially when working from home with no office banter happening around you. Plus, remote work can be isolating if you don’t make a point to connect with your teammates on a personal level.

This way, you can easily monitor everything without having to micromanage your employees. By dealing with these barriers, you can easily improve teamwork while also creating a healthier and supportive work environment. Alternatively, for a 24/7 outlet, create a watercooler channel or chatroom in your preferred messaging app. From debating sports to sharing the latest memes, such interactions strengthen team bonds and lift dull spirits. Establish these check-ins as ways for your employees to talk about any obstacles or concerns they are facing.

Have you ever had to wait all day after asking a team member for a single password? Let’s go over some of the most popular tools and software to help your team reach beast mode efficiency. Have periodic one-on-one meetings so that each team member has the chance to express their thoughts in confidence. Most people will agree that face-to-face communication is the smoothest.

Distributed Development Team

Keep the energy high and have big discussions around that would be difficult to do with employees working in different parts of the countries. One of the other greatest challenges in managing employees from various countries where people have a different attitude towards careers, and families differ in boundaries. Learning how to manage remote working for your team will require you to step up to the leadership plate in some big ways. Some of these ways will be familiar, but some will feel completely new.

Easier Maintenance

Mix up their day-to-day work by assigning 2 teammates to a single assignment. It might not get done as fast as usual, but it could provide the interaction your employees need to feel engaged. Many remote working teams come across a setback in communication when working on projects. It is always going to be difficult to connect with your teams in different areas without having good communication skills. As you start with the conversation, be quick and concise, so the teams do not get confused.

You’ll use Giphy.com or Google Images to find a .gif that fits with the theme for that round and attach that gif to a card. Once everyone has their .gifs in, you’ll vote on the round’s best submission. At the end, the person who wins the most rounds will be crowned the Ultimate .Gif Battle Champion of All Time™. Don’t be afraid to add a tiebreaker round if needed. During the game, you’ll take turns clicking on cards to reveal what the gift is.

One team I consulted with, for example, wrote down their core values and created a series of virtual backgrounds based on those words. Before meetings, people could reflect on the value that spoke most to them in the moment, like “be bold” or “innovate” and make it their background. It gave them a way to share their mindset with others. Now, when you start your meetings on time , you’re actually depriving your team members of this same opportunity. These handy remote team management tools go a long way in making sure that team members aren’t bottlenecked waiting for info that once required asking someone else. Working with remote teams can get real convoluted, real fast.

Encourage Collaboration

Along with timezones, be sensitive to cultural differences. For example, western culture tends to be more open and direct, while eastern cultures are often more formal and reserved how to hire a remote team in professional communication. Don’t be insensitive in your remote employee communications. If you have to use text, be careful with exclamation marks, emojis, and the word “no”.

This might be monthly gift cards, trophies, or even a day of paid time off. Consider implementing a cameras-on policy in meetings. 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. And it’s not asking too much—you’d just like to ensure everyone is engaged and present rather than making breakfast or watching soccer highlights.