Leadership Guide to Healthy Remote Team Management
Is your remote team happy and productive? If you do not have a definite answer, then you are probably not engaged with your remote team the way you should be.
In the last decade or so, remote work has seen a jump in demand. You might have a full-time remote staff or some freelancers who work independently through contracts. They may work from different time zones or counties as well. Whatever is the scenario, your remote team management can be successful if you keep the workers happy and make sure they are producing high-quality work.
Remote team management can be a challenging task, but keeping them happy is the best part of this job. Here is how you can do it.
Pay Attention to A Friendly Onboarding
In a typical office, you have the chance to spend some time with new workers on their first day. Providing crucial items to the new employee (like paperwork, key card, and car park pass) is an expected step. You would also introduce them to colleagues, inform them regarding office policies, and let them know how to get to you for any kind of help.
Remote team management does include these steps. You want to make sure they are settled and confident at jobs as quickly as possible, and that they have everything within the reach in order to get the job done.
Provide Clear Expectations
Giving face-to-face instruction allows you to provide important indicators, like body language and tone of voice, in addition to your words.
Saying “I need this quickly” may sound to them like “I need this as soon as possible” when they see your grim expression and the anxiety in the voice.
The same line will sound different to each person if you contact them through email. Some may take it as “Sometime within a few days” or even “Within this week”.
When you are involved in remote team management, you may find many people who do not cooperate willingly as they would in a face-to-face scenario. Besides, you will lack the indicators like facial expression and tone of voice, which will make it hard for you to understand if they got your message correctly.
Influence Employees to Get Reward Through Achievements
Whether you have an in-office or remote team, you should have some sort of employee recognition program to reward employees for reaching certain milestones.
You may not be able to gather your team together and present the “Best achiever of the month” award, but there are many alternate ways to give recognition to your hard-working employees.
Working from home for long hours without going out can cause physical and mental distress to your employees. Unfortunately, employees with poor health conditions turn into a liability for the company, rather than an asset.
Reduce and eliminate serious and avoidable health problems of your employees with employee wellness solutions. Such solutions offer well-balanced and healthy diet maintenance plans, tracking consistent exercise and other physical activities, and reward for winning physical exercise events and challenges. These actions are helpful to eliminate hospital visits, emergency room visits, and reduce pharmaceutical costs.
Keep Track of Remote Team Performance
One worry that all virtual team leaders have in common is whether their team will be productive or goof off when they work alone from home.
How would you know if someone gives bare minimum effort to work and spend the rest of the day watching Netflix? What if they get busy in non-productive work and surf through sites that have no relation to the actual task?
Most remote employees feel like they are doing more work at home, so it is unlikely that you will know when productivity goes down.
To solve this issue, use employee monitoring software. The cloud-based platform will track employee attendance, total work hours, and give you an analysis of their productivity levels. It also helps to keep remote employees engaged by sending periodic pop-ups and takes random screenshots.
You are able to promote a flexible work style with this tool as it lets employees pause the time clock when needed to attend to personal issues. For successful remote team monitoring, use all the features of employee productivity monitoring software and establish a happy, highly-productive team.
Keeping your remote team happy means, you have more motivated, more satisfied employees. So invest a little bit extra time in these strategies to set up good processes that will pay off in the future.
Translation for a Company Survival Tactic
In addition, if we are talking about software development, then certified agile leadership shows great positive results and is critical in optimising the way the company operates to become more efficient. This is primarily related to agile leadership culture being pushed top-down, removing all the bureaucratic and organisational blockers to maximise success. If you are in a product niche, physical or online, then agile leadership is a feasible way to stay afloat over those turbulent times.
Author Bio
Shaon Shahnewaz is a digital marketer, tech enthusiast & blogger who enjoys reading & spending time with his kid. He lives in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and can be reached anytime via his social media pages.
