The Challenges of Building a Remote Team

Remote working can create issues for businesses wanting to build their team culture. It's important to realize that having a remote team is no longer an exception. The days where you have to sprawl your team across time zones to save on real estate have ended.

While many companies have their remote teams, it is not uncommon to find companies that don't. However, this shouldn't be the case because remote team building is not rocket science. Research, in fact, shows that productivity and overall employee happiness can be achieved by spending a little money and effort on building a remote team.

One of the biggest challenges that you will face in building a remote team is motivating your employees. Apart from providing a great place to work, remote working generally lacks the personal touch that office workers are accustomed to.

While motivating your employees can be a challenge for any company, it shouldn't be as much of a challenge for remote teams.

Not being able to meet more often, talk more face-to-face or even arrange watering holes outside of office hours can be enough of a challenge for someone used to office life.

To ensure that your team doesn't feel isolated, it is critical to give them a sense of belonging. To do this, you could set up motivational meetings and make sure that the meetings include all the members of the team.

One of the most popular methods of motivating remote workers is to highlight their achievements. This immediately shows team members how they are valued and appreciated by the organization. It is also important that you reward achievements and not simply 'could have done better' meetings.

Building a Family Feeling

When people are part of an organization or a group, no matter how big or small, they develop a sense of association.

One of the reasons why people are motivated to be part of a group is that they feel that they are in the good books of other group members.

Some employers even take the term 'being in the good books of your boss' to another level. Creating benefits programs such as paid holidays and fresh fruits and other incentives to motivate employees can go a long way in building a family-like team. It is a fact that employees are motivated more by intrinsic factors than extrinsic factors.

To ensure that your remote workers feel like a part of the team, you have to emphasize the fact that they are 'one of us'. Plan regular meetings and group video chats to make sure that the team feels that they are in the good books of the organization.

It is also very important to incentivize team members during these meetings and video chats. A game, have some fun encourage engagement and create the opportunity for everyone to have a voice.

As a team leader take the time to ask your remote team members what would they like or what could make their job better for them? Often team members will only require minor changes or a slightly different approach to make what is a huge difference to them.

Remembering how we treat all team members both in house and remote staff will be reflective of how they treat the organisation and be reflected in their loyalty.

Please let me know what you feel about working at the office, remotely or in a blended environment.