How managers can manage their team working from home

The beginning of the New Financial Year coupled with the Coronavirus pandemic is nothing less than the beginning of new world order for the corporate out there. A lot of them have taken to adapt to the work from the home arrangement and have taken help of technology to solve this new challenge before them. While, work from home might be an exciting proposition for some who can work at peace from their homes, but for the managers, it becomes a ten times tougher task to manage their teams. Managing a remote team is not at all an easy task, and improper management can severely hamper productivity. So here are some inputs on managing teams remotely.

In the current scenario, most of your employees will be working from home. There may be a lot of distance between you and your team. A professional relationship requires fine dedication and tuning between the manager and employees. Work from home can be alluring for your employees but it requires you to maintain control over them. Well, don’t be confused, it doesn’t involve any rocket science, and can be achieved very easily if you follow some of these pointers:

1)     Ensuring Regular Communication: It is the most important aspect when it comes to managing your team remotely. It is very important to manage good lines of communication with your team. One-on-One interactions in the morning to discuss the agendas for the day and then follow-ups for monitoring the process can actually help you.

You can try to keep it informal so that it does not look like an interference. Repeatedly calling your teammates should be avoided, as there are chances that they may get irritated with it.

2)     Being Empathetic: Remote team management is all about collaboration. It involves working side by side. Your work goals depend on the work by your other teammates and therefore it is mandatory to work in collaboration with each other.

Empathy is not easy to nurture, but the benefits you will achieve after being empathetic are far more beneficial.

3)     Being organized and disciplined: As a team manager, it is very important to keep things organized, you need to allow flexible working hours sometimes, yet you need to maintain consistency when it comes to working.

You should always be metric-driven because numbers can give you a much better idea about the progress of your team.

4)     Expressing Appreciation: Work from home can be exciting for employees with families, but it can be lonely for others. The importance of positive reinforcement is often underscored.

It is very important for your employees to feel valued. As per research, employees who feel valued were likely to show higher levels of energy and are more involved and dedicated to their work.

5)     Giving time to adjust: Your employees may find it difficult to adjust to working from home. It can lead to delays in the submission and reporting of the allotted work. It is very important for you to be patient and provide them with a suitable time to adjust their working as per the new habitat.

Living at home and working from home are very different after all. Aren’t they?

These proven points and strategies can help you to take command of the team remotely without hampering productivity and efficiency much. Considering the current situations, it cannot be predicted that till when are your teammates going to work from home, but these strategies will ensure, that your work and goals don’t get affected.

Working from home has various pros and cons, it is up to you how you drive your team to achieve the goals. A good manager can extract the best out of the team under any situation.