Remote Tools for the Crisis that will Power Your Rental Team After It

Many people take a narrow view of what remote work means, but if you think about it, most of us experience remote work on some level quite often. Maybe you don’t regularly work from home or a beach in Bali, but I’ll bet you’ve occasionally worked from home with a sick family member (or yourself) or worked while on vacation or traveling. Besides, if you have any remote team members or more than one office or branch, you and your team are already doing remote work. The benefits of remote work are enormous. Half of the US is suddenly working from home, and a recent study by Harris Poll found:

·      65% feel their productivity has increased now that they work from home

·      29% say non-essential meetings have been pared down to emails (can I hear an AMEN)

·      80% say they can better manage interruptions from coworkers

The tools, tips, and tactics below will help with communication and effectiveness during the crisis, and once you have the right things in place, you can continue to reap the benefits of some remote work.

Communication and Collaboration

The first and most important tool in the arsenal of remote teams is video conferencing. Whenever possible, you should use video conferencing instead of a phone call. When communicating with others, body language accounts for 74% of the message you get across. Plus, when you can see people, you build better relationships, and strong teams require strong relationships. 

One important rule of video conferencing is that if one person is remote, everyone should act remote. Often, only the remote worker(s) will be conferenced in while everyone else will sit in a room together. If you have ever been the lone remote attendee, you know how difficult this is and how separated you feel. It can be hard to hear people, you miss side conversations, you have to interrupt because they can’t see you trying to talk, and often you can’t see everyone else’s body language. Each individual should join the meeting from their individual computer or device. 

Recommended Tools: Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, GoToMeeting

Once you’ve mastered the art of video conferencing, it’s time to move past email and onto more productive communication platforms that allow a messaging experience that lies somewhere between water cooler conversations and text messages too long for emails. Messaging apps provide a ton of versatility that can make communication and collaboration much more manageable. You can create virtual rooms and groups for specific types of conversation and offer an excellent place for fun water cooler style side conversations as well. Don’t miss out on those light-hearted fun conversations. They help people stay connected. Many teams create a room or groups just for this, and some teams even end up with multiple groups for more specific topics like “sports talk” or “funny memes about Tiger King.” Okay, maybe that last one is just me…

Recommended Tools: Slack, WhatsApp, Microsoft Teams, Hangouts Chat

The final collaboration tools to master are file-sharing and document-editing tools. Companies are most familiar with these tools. The dominant players in this arena, Microsoft 365 and Google Apps are very inexpensive and easy to use. Additionally, they tie in well with most communication tools.

Leading Remotely

Leading remote teams is very similar to leading teams in person but requires you to be a bit more intentional. The Harris Poll also showed 42% of people newly working from home miss socializing with coworkers and bosses, and that was only in the first 30 days. Because your remote teams aren’t in the office with you every day, you will have less time for sidebar conversations and relationship-building chit-chat. It can create a distance and make a normally strong leader come across as cold and calculating. The only interaction your team gets from you should not just be about projects, deadlines, and delegation. The best way to combat this is to make sure you have regular check-ins with your team. Your check-ins should be weekly and by video conference. The purpose of these check-ins is to find out what your team’s priorities are and how you can help. The meeting is about them, not about you. Your goal in these conversations is to help them achieve their goals and support them as a leader, not check up on them. In addition, this allows you to take some extra time to appreciate your team members and get specific on how their contributions are helping the team.

The way we work when we are remote can also change. It takes a combination of flexibility (especially during a crisis) and scheduling. Encourage your team to set a schedule but be flexible in what that schedule looks like. They don’t need a traditional schedule of 9–5. They may not even be able to accomplish that if they are also homeschooling their kids, but they will function more effectively if they have blocks of scheduled time to work and blocks of scheduled time they can disconnect. 

In addition to scheduling their work, it is also more effective to change their focus from task orientation to goals and deliverables. Not only does research show that empowered employees are more productive, it is also much easier to follow up on clearly set goals than focusing on individual steps. You can and still should follow up on progress and support them on the path to achieving the goals, but the focus should be on the result, not necessarily the path.

Not all jobs in a rental store can be remote… yet, but many can. The most common positions to place remote workers are in the more “corporate” functions like marketing and finance, but even jobs like sales can be tailored to fit. With your new-found comfortability using remote work technologies, tools, and practice leading teams remotely, your business will be positioned to take advantage of a new digital world where the talent available in your town doesn’t limit you. 

If you are ready to find your first remote team member, check out this article - Finding Your First Remote Team Member

Follow along for more tips and ideas for running an effective rental business in the sharing economy.

*reprint from article written for the May 2020 Rental Management Magazine