Remote Working: 5 Tips on Managing a Remote Team

Pre-Covid less than 5% of employees worked remotely but by 2020 this boomed to nearly half of all employees. Surprisingly this also offered not only increased productivity in nearly half of all applications but the ability to diversify hiring talent pools and reach previously unreachable talent with less sickness days, cool right!?

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Sounds too good to be true right, so what’s the catch?

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Well, until recently no one had done it en mass before so we’re still finding our feet on how to manage and motivate remote workers which can be difficult to do at the best of times.

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I’ve worked with, hired into and help shape remote working strategies and equally worked with business who choose not to so I’ve put together my 5 tips on managing a remote team to arm you with the right strategies to avoid common pitfalls

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1)???? Establish Clear Communication Channels

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If you can’t communicate effectively you are pretty much dead in the water and while we’ve previously discussed some of this in our WFH: 5 Essential Tips for Remote Working, if you are managing a remote team this responsibility really falls to you to set the standard.

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You’ll need to ensure slack/teams or whatever you choose to use are set up, organised and functional and that it is facilitating constructive communication. You’ll be missing out on all the “watercooler” conversation, so you’ll have to formalise and digitise much of your ad hoc communication to create opportunities for effective two way communication, daily stand ups, 121s or check ins.

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It’s down to you to set expectation for response times and availability, but by fostering open and transparent communication you can avoid misunderstandings and encourage collaboration in real time.

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2)???? Core hours

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If your team are international, you operate flexible working or have a work from anywhere policy, you are going to run into problems with time zones but core hours is your secret weapon here. By setting a select few hours where everyone “should” be available. Something like Timezone Wizard might help with this. This will encourage a smaller time window to take meetings (which stops them being hours longer than they should be) but will also stop the early risers trying to book meetings first thing at 9:00am on a Monday, while our American counterparts will be fast asleep.

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3)???? Maintain Momentum and Create buy in

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Software and tech can be so abstract these days it can be really difficult to see the impact your work is having. ?Requests coming thick and fast and often with tech getting overlooked in the wider business, remote working can foster a very isolationist internal view with some workers disconnecting or quiet quitting.

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You’ll need to make sure there are lots of opportunities to understand what the context is for what you are building, celebrate the little wins and provide a consistent stream of feedback for your teams efforts. There are loads of ways to do this and with the variety of software communication tools, lots of public and private ways to share praise.

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This is all about making sure people have a reason to do what they do.

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4)???? Goal Setting

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Appropriate goal setting is key in the remote world. What goals you set will really be specific to you and your team with OKRs or KPIs being an obvious choice. Whatever it is, make sure it is clear what your teams and team members are working towards, what they are working on and why, helping to remove any blockers to ensure they are making progress, that the goals set are measurable, are referred to regularly and team progress is communicated frequently. This will ensure everyone is singing from the same hymn sheet.

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5)???? Team Building

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Finally, creating a remote working culture that doesn’t feel hollow. There are tools like DeskMy or Kumo that can create virtual working environments and “rooms” for people to work together in, Donut for MS teams which will randomly encourage colleagues to connect for not work related communications over a coffee or a doughnut and social slack channels or other more social apps for after work or comms, participation in which isn’t mandatory but will help to foster a sense of culture across your digital comms channels.

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But but but, aren’t all those big companies issuing return to work orders? How good can remote working be if they don’t do it?

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While there are some high-profile businesses issuing return to work calls, remote and hybrid work is clearly here to stay in various forms, but as with everything, also comes with its own drawbacks. It makes it harder to collaborate, there can be more distractions, it’s harder to tell when someone is having a tough time of it and its certainly can be harder to train employees.

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So here are a few things to watch out for:

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Measuring team performance

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As mentioned above, clear goal setting is important to galvanise the team and the individual against their daily duties but having a keen eye on team performance will help you maintain your sanity or prove to the higher ups that things are actually going well. We’re not talking video monitoring staff without authorisation or micromanaging here but effective implementation of OKR’s or Objectives and Key Results are a good start, however you prefer to manage and whatever your key performance indicators are make sure you use them consistently.

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Dealing with underperformance

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After identifying what good looks like, we can now identify any weak links and work on addressing this proactively. Again, this will come down to consistency of communication. We’ve all heard of situations of weak leaders who surprise staff with their underperformance, which isn’t fun for anyone. Remote working won’t change whether you have underperformers or how you manage them but it may make it difficult to create opportunities to broach the subject or key into body language. Work together to create an action plan, or regularly provide feedback against the team performance and avoid comparing staff members.

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Handling Security

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A small reminder that digitising some of your processes and sharing documents over the internet may also need some coaching around cyber essential and warnings against remotely connecting via some shady coffee shop WiFi.

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Training staff

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Time and time again I’m told by clients they can’t train juniors remotely but as with everything we’ve discussed above, if it’s a process it can be digitised. We have many tools for screen sharing and video sharing that even the most “On The Job” training can now be done remotely, with lots of anecdotal comments that more information is absorbed with screen sharing as it requires the learner to actively focus on what is happening rather than relying on simply asking later when they do it!

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So what have we learned here?

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Staff are easier to hire, more productive and are sick less (and by some margin) with a remote working strategy, so tell me again why you don’t see the value in it?

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All people have the same basic needs some of which include things like friendship, engagement, respect, a sense of belonging and trust. Remote working may have a variety of fantastic benefits but it’s really important to understand a business or “an organisation” is just a collection of people. Managing your teams remotely is the same as managing your teams in house but may require a bit of thought in how to digitise some of your processes so they can be accessed (and are secure) from anywhere. With these strategies above you can effectively manage remote workers, lead or manage your own team and, with a bit of trust, enjoy a bit more work life balance too!

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For more tips or advice on how to navigate your challenges in tech recruitment reach out to me directly or give me a call on 01527 407140 or you can find out a bit more about us here: https://www.sourceco.co.uk/it-recruitment/

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About the author:

Sam is a technical recruiter and head of the IT division at SourceCo Recruitment with extensive experience in managing end to end recruitment solutions for contract and permanent positions, who can help you get tech roles or find tech staff.

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