According to research, 92% of people expect to work from home at least one day per week, even after COVID-19 is over. 80% expected to work from home for as much as three days. And that means that today’s companies will have to fully embrace remote teams as an indispensable part of the workforce.
The good news is that remote teams offer more flexibility, allow to expand the search for top talent, and can be appealing to many in today’s workforce. However, it comes with some drawbacks as well.
Namely, managing remote teams and ensuring they are productive can be a challenge, especially for businesses that aren’t fully familiarized with the particularities of managing people who aren’t in the office.
To help you better understand how to get the most out of remote teams, let’s explore some of the key aspects of remote team leadership you should take into account below.
Implement a Leadership Training Program
All good practices start at the top. And when it comes to remote team leadership, you will also need to implement an effective process for ensuring that everyone on your team knows how to communicate with, motivate, and engage remote employees who may face completely different challenges than someone working in the office.
To help leaders within your company master the best leadership practices of today, it makes sense to invest in leadership training courses that will help develop new ideas and approaches that people in leading roles can try out.
Over time, leadership training can have a transformative effect, changing your company culture and allowing you to fully embrace the unique benefits of having a remote workforce. Instead of struggling to keep them motivated, you and others in leading roles within your company will learn to recognize the unique challenges faced by remote teams and understand how to put them in a position to succeed consistently.
Prioritize Employee Productivity
One of the biggest challenges with managing remote workers is ensuring that they are in a position to use their time as productively as possible. Since they are not in the office, keeping track of how they’re spending their time is not as straightforward, and even hardworking employees can end up prioritizing parts of their job that aren’t as essential to the company’s success.
To combat that, it’s a good idea to use monitoring software for employees that can help you better understand how your remote teams operate and what might be possible to improve upon. Some might have a negative outlook about time tracking software because of privacy concerns, but these types of solutions are much more about helping employees succeed than micromanaging how they spend their time.
When you discover patterns in the way your employees allocate their time, you can offer them guidance on how to better recognize the opportunities for getting the most done each day. And as you start seeing the bigger picture of your remote team’s time management, you may end up noticing what tools they might need to do tasks faster and become more efficient.
Communicate Goals
A key part of success when working with remote teams is helping them understand what they are working towards. As discussed in the previous section, prioritizing the right tasks is a crucial part of being productive, but it can only happen if your remote team knows what they need to accomplish in the first place.
So, you should create a process for regularly checking in with your remote teams and reiterating or updating the goals that they are working towards. At the same time, you can review the progress they’ve made, talk about ways to overcome obstacles, and provide feedback on issues that need to be addressed.
If you want to keep your remote workers motivated, you could even consider implementing an incentive program that rewards milestones and achievements. That way, you can be sure that each member of your remote team will make reaching the goals you set out at the top of their priority list.
Be Ready to Help
You need to be available for your remote employees just as much as you are for in-office ones. Even though staying in contact with people working from home or even another country has its complications, that’s the only way to ensure that they remain just as valuable to your company as people you can go talk to in person.
Remote workers face many challenges they might not be sure how to overcome. As a leader, it’s your job to be a guiding presence that can provide assistance and share experiences about the best approach in a particular situation.
Otherwise, you will find your remote teams feeling isolated, which can make them more hesitant when facing problems and potentially even result in costly mistakes that can damage the company’s reputation or bottom line. So, make sure you emphasize that you are available to talk or answer questions.
Bottom Line
Managing a team of remote workers comes with many challenges. But it also offers unique opportunities which make hiring remote employees a reality all businesses will have to get used to.
With the leadership strategies discussed above, you will have a much easier time staying in touch with your remote teams and putting each person in a position to succeed.
HR Future Staff Writer
