Ultimate Guide To Improving Collaboration With Remote Teams In 2022

A mentor program is especially helpful for new employees who haven’t yet fostered close working relationships among the team. A mentor can serve as a valuable resource for employees to turn to with any questions or concerns. It is important to keep in mind that a mentor is different from a manager. It allows users to easily store and share information like documents, spreadsheets, and presentations.

• These don’t have to be about work – these opportunities for fun as well – like random virtual coffee matchups, work from home pet competitions, virtual happy hours or game nights.
• In fact, they say that if a candidate doesn’t get back to the company within 24 hours of outreach, they won’t be getting the job.
• But this capability wouldn’t be possible without the widespread broadband internet adoption of the past 10 to 15 years.
• Having routine check-ins with your team will help you stay aligned, but it is also important to schedule time for less formal time.
• Rather than a hostile and competitive company culture, you’ve collaborated on creating a healthy and dynamic environment for innovative thinking.

Choose tools that allow for strong administrative controls so that employees have access only to what they need, and consider the use of applications to monitor data transfers and usage. One of the big issues that companies face as they move to remote work is how to manage changes in compensation. There may be shifts to compensation, but they should be based on factors such as the quality of work, accuracy, and overall contribution to the company. When a business allows for telecommuting and remote work, it expands its talent pool and reduces geographic barriers to recruiting and hiring the best workers.

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We have recently talked about growing a remote team in our webinar with Aaron Metzger, founder of the marketing agency Genius. Create a dedicated channel for every project—like #acme-virtual-event-2020—and move all status updates, meeting notes, discussions, files and feedback into that channel. Information is centralized and readily accessible, no longer scattered across multiple email threads. Because it’s a channel-based messaging platform, all your work—conversations, files, even third-party applications such as Zoom and Google Drive—is organized in one place and accessible from anywhere.

The primary benefit of remote teams is the opportunity for truly flexible work. Team members who work from home (or other non-office locations) ditch commuting and, often, rigid schedules altogether. Remote-first companies set up systems and processes from scratch to cater entirely to a solid work-from-home experience.

Final Thoughts:14 Tips For Successfully Managing Remote Teams

While high clarifiers ask the right questions, they may not have answers. With solid leadership training, one can be sure that the issues which arise from managing a remote or hybrid team are not coming from the top, down. It seemed like he was aloof to their concerns and continued to use the same tactics that had landed him the management position so many years ago. Without the challenge of new leadership training, Kyong continued on his path, confused as to why his team members seemed to perpetually fall short of his expectations. Nothing is more frustrating than watching an otherwise productive, valuable member of your team struggle to meet your expectations, and for no apparent reason. In cases such as these, oftentimes the culprit is hard to pin-point — a vague lack of inspiration.

It’s a smart idea to create a data security policy regarding how company devices are used. A typical data security policy dictates that company devices must be password protected and secured while working in shared spaces. It also dictates that company devices should never be used with public Wi-Fi, but rather connected via a secure hotspot or ethernet router. Mobile workspaces can be set up anywhere, but they should still be safe and promote healthy working habits. By having a makeshift, non-regulated setup, your team may experience ergonomic issues that affect their health and productivity over time. Teams accustomed to sitting, working, and communicating in shared physical spaces will find the abrupt change in daily work challenging or isolating.

Remote technology is important because it empowers connection, collaboration, and productivity between teams located across different cities and time zones. Meanwhile, providing your team with workspace equipment gives you control over the quality and safety of their setup. Even with set morning routines, kicking the day off with specific expectations paints a clearer picture of the day ahead.

Partially Remote Teams

Face-to-face interactions from managers to employees in an office space might involve daily check-ups and constant exchanges between one another. Whether you are new to remote work or quite familiar with the concept, knowing how to manage remote teams should be one of your main priorities. First, you need to include guidelines in your remote work policies as to how employees are expected to maintain security. Be as clear and definitive as possible, so there’s no room for confusion. Many employees don’t necessarily understand the scope of cybersecurity risks, particularly when they’re working outside the office. As cyberattacks and breaches continue to weigh on businesses around the world, the risks can be even more significant for companies with remote teams.

Consult with your organization’s IT department to ensure there is an appropriate level of data security before using any of these tools. You don’t necessarily need to make everyone meet in person, but you do need to make sure they connect on some level. For instance, you may want to find ways for people to collaborate together on projects – even when it isn’t entirely necessary. This will help them feel a sense of commitment to each other, which will help reinforce that they’re part of a larger organization. If possible, conduct interviews in person, as this will give you a better opportunity to study the candidate’s body language.

The increase in engagement indicated employees’ deep need to feel connected and find answers to their questions. At the end of the day though, your remote employees are similar to their office-based colleagues in that they want to be respected and have resources to be productive and successful. Build a culture that gives all that to every employee, even if they’re miles or oceans apart. Like most employees, remote workers seek to grow professionally so include them when designing career paths or training programs. You could buy them tickets to conferences, enroll them to online courses and discuss how they can evolve within your company, taking up more challenging projects. Sometimes, when a remote team seems to be struggling with communication and collaboration, the problem isn’t with the remote team but with the leader.

It may eventually lead to problems with communication, absenteeism, and motivation – 14% say they experience problems with motivation working at home. Before the pandemic, more than half of employees aged between 22 and 65 (62% in total) reported telecommuting some of the time already. If you can have physical workshops, use them to troubleshoot issues with your model. If not, use something like Dialpad’s video conferencing feature to hold a virtual workshop. Bigger tasks can especially benefit from this as it not only makes things easier but can also help you collect data for future planning.

According to Groove, so much of a remote team’s success boils down to identifying whether or not someone would be a good fit during the hiring process. On the contrary, a remote team’s ability to be effective comes down to a combination of planning, leadership, and the right tools. The thing is, a productive remote team doesn’t just happen by accident. You can’t send your employees all home with a laptop and monitor and hope for the best. If your company doesn’t have technology tools already in place, there are inexpensive ways to obtain simple versions of these tools for your team, as a short-term fix.

There are a variety of excellent project management solutions on the market for this purpose, including Podio, BaseCamp and Asana. You can use these tools to track tasks and easily communicate to your staff if changes need to be made on any projects. You can also incorporate Tickspot, Time Doctor or other productivity analytics tools into them, allowing you to monitor employee productivity at a glance.

Bolster Online Communication Skills

For team members who are hours ahead, are they required to work in their time zone or yours? Remember, regularly working from home isn’t easy for some, and setting clear expectations and routines helps your employees better adjust. If employees need flexibility, make sure they make accommodations in advance. When employees aren’t sharing a workspace together, it takes extra effort to ensure teams feel connected and build a strong culture of trust. Professional development is a key driver of employee engagement—whether they’re in the office or remote. Professional development helps employees feel a greater sense of purpose and direction, increased motivation and sets employees up for successful long-term careers with your company.

But you have to have some focus on cybersecurity, so that they can both access and communicate information securely. In a physical environment, relationships are more easily established and maintained, but some managers struggle to achieve this when staff are working from home. If you micromanage, these are issues you may not overcome without changing your own management style. You need to know how to maintain employee engagement—no matter where they’re located.

The sudden shift to remote work for millions of people means additional pressure for teams to stay aligned, feel connected and get work done. If you want to recruit candidates in a specific city or country, it might be a good idea to advertise your open roles on local job boards. Every company wants to hire and work with people who share the same values. Be open about what you’re looking for in coworkers and what kind of qualities are most important to your team.

Well, to celebrate birthdays, you can post “happy birthday” messages on Slack. This way, other employees can chime in with their own birthday messages and GIFs. Maybe you could even deliver a pizza to your remote employee’s location.

It includes features like calendar management, discussion boards, and a newsfeed—making it easy for employees to stay connected on the go. Team leads are responsible for showing newbies around, or in our case, virtually introducing them to their colleagues on messaging tool Slack. If anything is unclear, they can hop over to our #new_hires channel where seasoned members are supporting remote workers that just started working full-time at The Remote Company. We document all company-related information on Notion, so people can learn about our company. New employees receive this link in their welcome email during the onboarding process.

Empower Your Team With The Right Tools For Productive And Secure Remote Work

Still, some operational challenges arise for businesses looking to make a switch from physical to virtual offices. Set expectations with your employees in regards to how their remote work works. Define the accepted annual remote work flexibility allocated to traditionally in-office workers. You can use monday.com workdocs to create such documentation within the same platform your employees uses to manage their work everyday. Understanding this, companies can build more inclusive and equitable remote work policies that attract and retain top talent from anywhere in the world. In the office or at home, employee recognition remains a key driver of employee engagement and performance.

Remote workers depend on various online collaboration tools and the internet to be able to do their job, and the truth is that they’re always at risk of being cyber-attacked. That’s why it is so important for remote team managers to provide training on cyber-security and to make sure that the remote employees have the necessary software such as VPN to protect their laptop. Collaboration tools are crucial for managing remote teams as they help your workers communicate, manage tasks, and share project files. Scheduling daily check-ins may seem like overkill, but it is vital to ensure workforce performance. In addition, it improves time management while managing remote teams.

How Were Building A Remote Work Culture Where Everyone Thrives

You will not get the chance to see your colleagues in the office every day and therefore will miss out on the opportunities to ask or answer questions. One of Buffer’s competitors, HubSpot, operates with a team of over300 full-time remote How to Hire a Remote Team employees and offers the option for partial remote work to those in its offices. However, more and more companies will make the shift to operating 100% (or nearly 100%) remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic—and certainly after.

Other employees use their newfound flexibility to get their most important work done during their most creative hours, whether that be in the morning or the evening. Others still seek out inspiring environments from which to work, so that they https://globalcloudteam.com/ can give their full attention to their job in their ideal workspace. Having a remote employee, or an entirely remote team, is actually the first step in embracing the future of work, while positively impacting the future of your business.

Our Best Insights On Keeping Your Team Tight

These stats are marginally better than the previous year, in which 78% of companies didn’t cover internet costs and 76% didn’t pay for coworking spaces. While the desire and expectation of working remotely increase significantly every year among the workforce, companies are only slowly adopting remote-friendly policies. These requirements are no less true for remote teams than for brick-and-mortar employees, but implementing them with workers who aren’t in the office requires substantial strategic planning. To begin on the path towards seamlessly managing teams of remote employees, you’ll need to start with some logistics.

As the manager of a remote team, one of the many pivotal roles you have is to find a way in which an effective means of communication can be facilitated virtually. With that in mind, you can use these tips to your advantage and learn the best tools and practices for enhancing communication with remote teams. That said, there are basic guidelines for managing any remote team. Performance Feedback New Create a culture of feedback and continuous improvement. Social Questions Build team trust and rapport for remote + growing teams. Icebreakers Onboard new hires with non-cheesy, insightful questions.

Most companies give employees the ability to craft their schedules, so they can feel comfortable and can live their separate personal and professional lives to the fullest. Since remote employees tend to have a harder time disconnecting from their computers, companies make it a priority to ensure that these employees prioritize a healthy work-life balance. Remote employees are mostly free to determine a schedule that works for them as long as they get their work done efficiently and correctly. Remote work allows professionals to work outside of the regular office environment. Instead of commuting to an office each day, remote workers can complete their work at home, at a coworking space, coffee shop or anywhere that allows them to maximize their efforts. Remote work is becoming popular, especially in the tech industry, because of its cost-effectiveness, flexibility and inherent ability to tap into different talent pools from all over the world.