Raising up a remote team is not a big deal but managing a remote team smoothly with defined outputs is pretty much. If you are running a remote team, then you already know the importance of communication between you and your teammates. You need to find out the ways for easy communication with your team as you are not in direct confrontation.
There is no defined confinement among your remote resources. Instead, your resources can be from any corner of the world in any location. It may happen that most of the teammates may not meet with each other in person during the project lifetime. With high performing internet connectivity and secure remote access, within your company’s network, your employees can work from anywhere in the world.
Here are the top tips for Managers on how to smoothly run your remote team that delivers high productivity.
Communicate Fruitfully
The foremost thing in any virtual team is “Communication”. A communication to a team is like oxygen to life. You need to bring your employees under one roof, not physically but virtually and intellectually. This cluster will let you optimize the inputs and outputs of each resource and keep your employees in regulation.
Provide detailed guidelines and work schedules to your employees and meeting timings. Make use of tools like Skype, Google+ for web conferencing and Hangouts for chat conversations. There are many other tools available in the market to make your communication easy with your employees.
For wider option, you can create a campus-like chat room with all the employees in it so that your employees can get the look and feel of connected to each other, as the virtual team members do not meet in person. Communication is an essential key to a team and the greatest gap in the world is the gap between knowing and doing, so avoid communication gap with your remote team.
Use Effective Tools
There are many tools available in the market to manage your remote team. Some are paid and few are free. Since communication is the key to success, especially in virtual teams, so you should not hesitate in purchasing tools that can be effective to gain success. This cost is really worth the investment.
Other than this you can make use of free tools like Skype, Google+ etc as a way for communication which will not cost you but have fewer features than what the paid versions offers you to manage the team. Make use of web conferences which provides you the ability to see each other. This ensures more employee engagement, connection, and collaboration in meetings. Keep in mind the time zones to connect with your employees.
Set Targets and Keep Up to Date
To get away from the fact that what’s going on in your team, you can simply set the goals for each employee at the beginning of the week/month and after that, you can get the detailed report of what your employees doing and how you can manage that.
In fact, you should create metrics for all the team members with high visibility so that even the employers can track their performance and know what progress are they gaining. Following this step, you’ll have the crystal clear performance of each employee and no one can question each other’s productivity among the teammates as the results would be in front of everyone. This also builds up an enthusiasm to complete their task on time otherwise poor performance can affect their persona within the team.
Punctuality and Time Management
You may get annoyed with the different time zones that you have to deal with in a remote team. But make sure you don’t make it worse by not being on time for the meeting. Since this is done remotely, so you along with your team members must value punctuality.
Sometimes decisions are made in the office by the local team, but you forget to update the new information to your remote team due to which they don’t have access to this information. Make sure you inform your remote team for every new information that is related to their work. This ensures that they do not invest time in any unnecessary work and use their time efficiently. Not informing them also makes them feel alienated from the office which somehow affects productivity and their job.
Track Productivity Goals
Are you able to fetch your goals? If you are unable to meet your defined goals that mean you need some changes in your strategy.
You must create a checklist of your goals and assess the list by verifying with your employees. This will make you realize where you need to make changes in your strategy or else reset your strategy. The checklist may include a list of tasks and projects that you have to complete within a specified time period or it can be related to cost allocation etc. Always prefer to make your goals clear with your team. Keep them informed about the current condition of the company and the defined goals.
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