5 Tips for Managing Remote Staff Successfully
October 27th, 2021 by Roger Wentowski
Due to the pandemic, many organizations have restructured how they work to adapt to the new norm and keep their business afloat. One of the changes includes a remote or hybrid working model
As companies adjust to remote staffing, managing them successfully can be a challenge if it is not done correctly. If you're at the managerial level and want to make sure that your staff continues to achieve new productivity levels, this post is a good read for you. In today's post, we'll share with you the five best tips for managing remote staff successfully. Take a look:
-
Be Clear About What is Expected from Them
Remote working comes with its own set of benefits and challenges. Although workers may be able to save a lot of time on commuting, they may end up wasting the same amount of time or even more in other household activities. This can impact their productivity, performance, and overall profits. Therefore, it is crucial to make sure remote workers know your expectations.
To ensure this, you must prepare employees for remote workforce culture and communicate expectations from the start. Furthermore, this will provide the clarity of their targets and what the company expects from them so that they can strategize accordingly to deliver as expected.
Expectations should be clear and comprehensive to avoid misunderstanding and miscommunication. Make sure to provide clarity on:
- Milestones
- Priorities
- Performance goals
- Targets
- Hours of availability
Once all your team members are clear about what is expected from them, it will help them stay focused, avoid potential misunderstandings, and meet their targets successfully.
-
Effective and Responsive Communication
Another tip for managing your remote staff successfully is to communicate effectively and responsively. Hence, you must first sit down to create a clear communication strategy with your remote working staff and tools you'll use to interact and stay connected during work hours so that everyone is readily available when needed most.
When managing remote staff, make sure to:
- Communicate priorities. This will ensure team members know what to focus on first so that deadlines are successfully met.
- Discuss the go-to apps and communication tools for reporting and staying connected with the team such as VoIP solutions.
- Determine how many times in a week or month you with catch up over video conference and have Zoom meetings.
- State the best time your remote staff can reach you, the manager, during workdays and who they should call if you're on leave or unavailable for any reason.
- Clarify the tasks you want your team to complete by the end of the month.
Though communication tools like e-mail, phone calls, texts, video chats, and an intranet channel are great, it is important to find the delicate balance between constantly pinging workers as too much oversight can show signs of mistrust.
-
Get Organized By Using Project Management Tools
There are numerous project management tools you can find online. They are excellent for keeping on top of all the tasks and staying abreast with priority work in a streamlined manner. Moreover, as you keep things organized, it will automatically give your remote team structure while ensuring everyone understands the project statuses and are clear about the deadlines.
-
Track Progress but Skillfully
Just because you can't see your workers in their cubicles doesn't mean they aren't performing as they should. However, it is important to track their progress to some extent as some employees can slack down or feel more relaxed, which can lead to delays and missing deadlines. Track metrics that matter to your organization and check in with employees once a week or month.
Resist the urge of micromanaging. To successfully manage them, give remote workers space to take ownership and control of the assigned tasks so they can deliver as expected without feeling pressured.
-
Collaborate and Celebrate Team Success
As people work from a remote location, they can often feel left out or isolated. This can further impact their mental health and lower productivity in the long run. Hence, another great way to manage remote staff is to collaborate and celebrate team success.
This will bring more uniformity, and remote staff will feel connected as one unit. So, celebrate work milestones and top performances to ensure positive reinforcement and motivate them to deliver their best every time.
To learn more tips for managing remote staff successfully, contact us. We can provide you with the best guidelines and tools like VoIP solutions to keep teams connected and boost their productivity even when they are miles away.
Posted in: Hybrid / Remote Workforce
