Without any doubt, there is no denying the fact that remote or hybrid working is the future of the corporate sector. The covid-19 pandemic introduced the world and IT industry to remote working. 

But along with this, the struggle of the employees and organizations in handling everything has also doubled up. Some are facing difficulties in managing work and life both whereas others are complaining about the falling productivity of the employees. 

Consequently, we have come up with this post dedicated to the organizations and employees who are struggling to manage remote teams. Using the remote management tools is the best way forward. Go through the post to learn more about the ways of building and managing remote teams. 

Challenges of Remote Working

Before building and managing the remote teams, it is crucial to figure out the challenges which the remote workers are going through to understand their situation well. Let’s have an insight into some of the challenges of remote teams: 

 

  • Lack of communication
  • No work-life balance 
  • Declining productivity
  • No get-togethers 
  • Lack of coordination 
  • Inability to track progress 

All these challenges if not dealt with at the right time can make the organizations and employees suffer badly. 

Ways to Manage the Remote Teams 

Post knowing the challenges of the remote teams, it will be easy for you to manage the remote teams. Consequently, let’s go through some of the effective ways to manage remote work together. 

Have Realistic Expectations 

Be it personal or professional life, setting unrealistic or too high expectations from someone might hurt you badly. The same is the case with remote workers and IT organizations also. If you want to promote remote work, then setting realistic expectations from the beginning is the key. 

While setting your expectations from the employees, take care of their working hours. Due to the diverse time zones and differences in working hours, the team updates might vary. Consequently, base your expectations based on all this. 

Providing Desired Resources

Working remotely is not that easy and gets even more difficult when the employees are not provided with desired resources for carrying out the tasks. If you want to handle the tasks more efficiently and get the maximum out of them, then you have to provide the remote workers with the resources. 

Usually, remote employees are mostly in need of blog posts, articles, ebooks, courses, templates, webinars, and the like. Consequently, provide them with these and witness an amazing growth in their productivity. 

Develop Interaction 

The biggest drawback of remote work is the lack of communication be it with employees or the managers. But do you know what? You can easily handle this by building the communication channels to bind your team together and also keep the communication active. 

Building a communication will alert your remote workers regarding crucial things such as changes, new resources, deadlines, challenges, and principles. But before that, choose the communication tool wisely as this can make or mar your remote teams. 

Daily Check-ins 

The most difficult thing with remote teams is monitoring their performance and attendance. Fortunately, not anymore as with daily check-ins, it will become pretty easy for you to monitor the performance of the remote teams. 

Doing so also eliminates you from overseeing every small thing and improving the time management of the organization. While scheduling the check-ins, do bear in mind what works the best for your team, their work hours, and pending work. This will assist you in scheduling the check-ins better. 

Depict Flexibility 

Working remotely means having different work environments such as some will having spouses, some children, and some all alone. Some employees might have the proper setup of the working whereas others might not have. 

Consequently, you need to be flexible while dealing with remote teams. Working remotely does not mean being devoid of all the stress, distractions, and other things. So, be flexible in terms of tasks and other things to make things run smoothly. 

Recognize Mental Health 

Being so occupied in daily lives, people hardly prioritize their mental health and fail to realize the harm they are doing. Do you know what accounts for the poor mental health of most people? It is none other than poor productivity and work-related matters. 

Consequently, it becomes the responsibility of the companies to ensure that their remote employees are mentally fit. It is the better mental health of the employees only that brings about the desired results to the companies. 

Prioritize Tasks 

Another crucial point to managing remote teams is by keeping things organized. Organizing the tasks of your remote employees will increase productivity and task management will also get better. 

While assigning the tasks to them, you can label the tasks as the top priority and the usual ones based on urgency and importance. It is these labels only that act as necessary guidelines for the remote employees and manage the remote teams well. 

In addition to this, the varied labels also ensure that the tasks are completed within their deadlines and are accurate. 

Minimize Bossy Attitude 

Being the leader of your remote employees will be more effective than showcasing a bossy attitude. Make your attitude such that your team members are not afraid to approach you for any assistance or work-related issues. 

Being the leader, your main emphasis should be on asking the team about their opinions, being flexible, holding discussions, showing respect, and requesting the feedback of employees to adjust accordingly. 

Short Breaks in Between 

Working remotely does not mean that the person is mentally sound and does not require any break from the work. The long working hours tire the remote employees also which means that they also require breaks at regular intervals. 

Due to the long working hours, it is normal for employees to ask for short breaks in between. Otherwise, the stress might adversely affect their work performance. Doing this will also maintain the mental health of your employees and promote successful performance from your remote employees. 

Track Progress Regularly 

The majority of organizations and companies believe that working remotely tends to affect performance and productivity greatly which in turn asks the organizations to track their progress at regular intervals. 

For effectively tracking the performance of the employees and the company, you need to bear in mind your goals and objectives, key performance indicators, search engine rankings, identifying strengths, and also improvising the strategies. 

Tracking the progress is also significant as the performance of the remote employees affects the overall business growth. But while doing so, try not to be too harsh if you identify certain issues in business and need corrections. 

Final Thoughts 

Initially, it might seem a daunting task to manage a remote team but in reality, it is not as it seems. By bearing in mind the above-mentioned tips, you can easily manage your remote employees and ensure their maximum productivity. You can also take the help of the tools in overseeing the remote teams.