Last updated: 22 September 2022
Once Michael Jordan had said that “Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships.”
It is absolutely true and is the prerequisite for every organization to get a clear view of their leading flag in the competitive market. However, management itself is a wider and tricky task. In it, the remote team management lies on the uppermost level of difficulties for the leader to accomplish due to the Big Rona situation.
Handling the huge number of employees sitting far away that come from different backgrounds, expertise, and working backgrounds is a challenging task.
A great manager is one who knows and uses all the hooks and crooks to keep his team effective, productive, and collaborative in every situation.
Surely it is not an uncomplicated task for any company to keep their team happy, satisfied, collaborative, and creative towards their roles in this pandemic. But with adequate planning and well implementation of the potent tactics will bring all the results that once you dreamed.
To handle the remote team well, the leader has to showcase all the qualities to develop a sense of trust, respect, and a communicative environment. Read on to find out the excellent tactics you can apply for managing your WFH team.
Tips for Effective Remote Team Management
Teamwork is indeed the right ladder for the company to achieve their goal and visions. Without having a powerful team, it is not at all possible to sustain in the market. What do you believe is the most crucial asset an organization has? It is their TEAM. 75% of the employers give a considerable weightage to this point.
Let us look into the top tips that make the organization’s workflow smoother and productive with perfect remote team management.
1. Clearly Present Your View
The stepping stone for effective remote team building is clarifying every aspect that places itself in teamwork. Starting from your goal, vision, mission, expectations from the members, every individual element speaks about your views that you want your team to understand thoroughly.
Merging all these will develop a sense of purpose for all the employees to give bright results successfully.
Many times what happens is the manager assumes that the team knows what they have to do, and the employees keep waiting to get a response from their managers. This confusing situation leaves behind a gap that becomes wider if proper actions are not taken on time.
To ensure such a situation does not prevail in your organization, you must clearly communicate with your remote team. Once you start practicing it, you will definitely get better results. It will open your eyes to the hidden areas that are teasing the employees to work effectively.
When you present the objective of the work and provide relevant guidance, the workers feel more connected with the work and the company even while sitting far away.
2. Trust Is A Long Runner
Lacking in this aspect significantly affects your collaborative working approaches.
The prominent reason for the occurrence of all these aspects is emotional attachment. Even in the business world, there is enough space for emotional aspects as humans surround it.
Think of a scenario where a group of employees is working in a department to accomplish a common goal without even knowing about the members with whom they are working. It is just like sailing in a boat without knowing who is the driver of the boat.
Such blindfolded distance working practice will affect the overall outcome that completely lacks the connectivity of the work.
Leaders must consider this point in their list of actions that affect group management. You can use various activities to build trust among the remote members. They are-
- Arrange occasional virtual get together
- Give them opportunities to share their views among the team
- Arrange virtual team activities so that they get a better chance to communicate with other members.
- Create small group tasks where all the employees collectively make efforts to bring the results.
Encourage and adequately collaborate with all the members so they develop a sense of transparency to work with all the possible efforts.
3. Consider Feedback And Recognition Equally Important
For every employee, these two elements play an important role in their workability. No doubt, getting the right paycheck without any errors is the topmost criterion that affects employees retention. And you are focusing on this aspect by using the best payroll software for them, but it is not the only aspect that affects them. As the concerns of today’s workers are not only limited to wages.
Paying attention to feedback and recognition aspects can entirely transform and increase the percentage of productivity in their work. Furthermore, feedback to be more precise honest feedback improves the clarity of process among the remote team and the managers.
Leaders must take time to arrange such feedback sessions to know what is in their employees’ minds. Moreover, it leads to the development of more transparent sessions where the workers can share their views hassle-free with you.
With the advancement in technologies, many tools are available like Microsoft teams, Skype, and Google Hangouts that help in precisely connecting with the remote workers.
By doing so, whenever they come across any issue, or they have any question in their mind, they can contact the manager, and within a limited span, the problem gets solved. Remaining accessible to them is one of the qualities a manager should have to make their team more efficient and collaborative.
Also, arranging performance review sessions on a specified time basis helps the employees to identify their lacking part better and on a timely basis; working on it can bring more acceptable results for the organization.
As you rightly point out their mistakes, similarly, you should lift your hand to appreciate them for their outstanding work. In a recent survey, Gallup asked the workers who play a memorable role in giving them recognition. They gave 28% share to the managers, which is highest from all the other respective authorities of the company.
Moreover, it works as a morale builder among the team that is highly required while working remotely. Also, it plays a significant role in reducing the causes of burnout. No doubt, as a manager, you are linked with hundreds of duties, but scheduling adequately and making effective use of the automated systems can solve and give a specified way for accomplishing all the tasks.
>>Related Article: How To Give Constructive Feedback At Work: A 5-Step Guide On Mastering The Tricky Art Of Feedback
4. Address Remote Working Model More Effectively
The remote working structure has become the new normal after the pandemic situation. Undoubtedly, every organization accepts this concept, yet the managers have to lift the heavy stone of ineffectiveness that comes in managing the team.
They have to find the best ways to handle the team sitting at different locations using their digital devices only. This has made the list of the aspects that affect the team working pattern more lengthy. The points that are added in it are-
- Proper and effective communication between the team
- Must look that the employees’ performance should not degrade
- Performing wellness activities
- Bring new ideas to keep the remote team engaged so that they do not go into the mode of loneliness.
- Giving opportunities for work-life balance to the workers
You may say that there are varieties of tools available in the market that can accurately help the workers in completing their tasks. But for building, continuing, and understanding the team relationship, the necessity of a good leader is indeed required.
Continuously keeping in touch with the employees is one of the potent ways a manager should bring in his work routine to know what is the current state of working among the whole team. Once a survey was conducted to know what are the aspects that affect the employees’ engagement while working remotely. The two most influential elements are communication and feedback.
Therefore, identifying and providing the right solution to the issues that come while using this model becomes the prime duty of a leader to keep his remote teams effective and productive.
5. Track Workers’ Daily Working Schedule
Without having precise data of what the employees are doing in their routine, how will approachable measures be able to develop? Time is the most crucial weapon that if you miss out on, the winning situation also gets out of your hand.
For keeping the team active and productive, it is indeed required to track their working routine. Giving more or lesser freedom to the employees is equally harmful to the organization. Therefore, managers have to rightly set a margin for it so that the workers perform their job by giving proper concentration and dedication to it.
Tracking employees’ schedules will wake up all the lazy workers who were sleeping until the date to enhance their productivity. While beginning their work and finding an eye that tracks their work shall function as a booster that automatically improves their attentiveness, performance, and quality of outcomes.
Time tracking tools provide a visual and more detailed outlook of the employees’ work. It will help to determine the sense of the overall teams’ velocity, efforts, and productiveness to complete the job.
In addition, it will help to determine all the loopholes that the workers are coming across. Knowing this well will help the manager to provide the right way for the remote team to remain result-oriented.
In the starting period, employees may dislike this approach. But in the long run, they will start feeling that the time tracker works like a strong magnet that limits the period that previously got wasted on unimportant tasks. This will enhance the whole team’s workability that becomes fruitful for the organization to have even in the covid situation.
Bottom Line
An organization can consider remote team management as the management of the whole company because if errors remain in it, it surely leaves an impact on the whole company.
Giving sufficient time, concentration, and dedication to this process will give away all the positive results required to create a productive and supportive environment for the WFH employees. Refer to the above practical tips that surely assist you in merging all the blocks ( remote team members here) in a single structure (potent team) for a better and bright tomorrow for the company.
