How to Handle Remote Team for Better Productivity
Sunil Khatri
Making Tech easy for Non-Tech founders by coaching & guidance🎯 | Helping founders build SaaS Solutions from ideas 🚀| Founder @ Desuvit AS | Co-founder CTO @ Betty24 GmBH
Remote working has not been an entirely new concept, but with the coronavirus pandemic, suddenly employees across the world of different industries and sectors were asked to work from home in the last couple of years.
The day-to-day routine of old tried and tested office routines of brainstorming sessions, reporting, tracking, in-person interactions, and HR meet & greet sessions took a backseat. There’s no doubt that this physical office setup has worked for us for a long time, and it will continue to stay, but remote work has been increasing.
I believe that we are already here: the remote work culture is not subsiding. The only thing that we can do is adjust and make some changes in how we manage remote teams. Due to the ongoing health conditions and high need for a work-life balance, remote work will stay for long, and we need to find the best possible way to manage it.
What is a Remote Team?
The definition of a remote team can vary depending on whom you talk to, or in which part of the world you talk. It is important to understand what I mean by the remote team here in this article.
For some, it can be a freelancer you have hired from Upwork, or Fiverr and they do not work in the same office as you. Or it is an agency/company you have hired for outsourcing, which can be in the same location, but a different office. For others, it is a team with a hybrid work model, some members working from the same physical office and some from home.
If we collate these definitions, then what I refer to as a remote team in this article, is a set of people working together from a different office or location.
Challenges of Such a Team
While the concept of a remote team is fascinating, there are a series of challenges faced by companies when streamlining activities:
Working Effectively With a Remote Team
With the right remote team management skills & techniques, it is possible to mitigate many of these challenges.
1. Collaboration
Collaboration and communication are essential pillars of any business. For most people that work on a project, collaboration is the most important mechanism that helps them carry on work. It is very unlikely that people work in isolation, and for long. You need to take work from someone, clarify the doubts, collaborate with others, so to finish off with your task. If there is a team, then with proper collaboration it is almost impossible to produce good meaningful results.
So how does one mitigate collaboration challenges?
The first basic essential for collaboration are: well a common place where you can collaborate with others. Emails? well, it does not work. So you need a common platform/tool that can be used by everyone whom you want to collaborate with.
If your company doesn’t use any collaboration tool, I strongly recommend using tools like Azure DevOps, JIRA, Trello, Monday, etc. The first thing is to start investing in a tool.
I find these tools simple to use and flexible enough to customize according to your work processes. Tracking all your work using one collaboration tool will ensure transparency for the company (and managers).
Following stand-ups from the agile methodology, talking to the team for 15 minutes every day will help you quickly understand them, their issues, and possible solutions.
2. Communication
Communication is challenging in general and becomes even more so with a remote team. Take for example a simple sentence "John saw the man on the mountain with a telescope". So how do you interpret it? Who has the telescope? John, the man on the mountain, or the mountain?
Language is a tricky thing, and people interpret things differently. The only way to clarify doubts is by asking questions. And to be able to ask questions, one of the first things that you should sort out is the availability of the right tools and technology. The right tools are needed for any team to work efficiently and productively. These tools can help you streamline communication, organize work, and track tasks—for instance, Slack for Business. While Slack is just a collaboration tool, you can utilize task management tools, communication tools, etc.
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Other communication tools such as Microsoft Teams, Skype, or Zoom can also be used for effective communication. Although there are many choices available, choose one and stick with it. When you have multiple communication channels, it only creates confusion and ultimately defies the purpose.
3. Clear Guidelines and Setting expectation
Setting up expectations and clear guidelines with the team is quite essential that everyone is on the right track and everyone understands what is expected from them. When everyone is in the office, usually because of the environment the physical office provides, understanding expectations flows into the communication. But with remote teams, this becomes a challenge.
In remote work, you need to have clear guidelines about the work environment. Do you expect an employee to stay late in the office because of project criticality? Then set the expectation up front and not assume it will be automatically taken care of. Similarly, you can’t expect all-time availability from your remote team unless it is decided explicitly in the starting.
So, set expectations and guidelines for:
It takes time to begin trusting the remote team entirely. This is especially true if your team is new. However, you can resolve this lack of control and visibility with accountability and transparency.
Also, understand that remote working can be hard - do not expect that all will be well. Listen and encourage the team to speak about the challenges so they can be addressed timely. Have a solution mindset so a favorable environment can be given to the remote team, but resulting in better productivity.
2. Regular Interaction, especially Face to Face (F2F)
As one regularly interacts with the in-office team, interaction with a remote team is important to create a team feeling. When people sit alone and work isolated, they might feel disconnected and lose the feeling that they belong to a team.
Regular interaction, especially Face to Face (F2F) will build trust, create a team feeling, and boost morale. Face-to-face interaction is not always possible with remote work. You can’t get on a video conference as and when you see fit.
At least once a week, get on a call with your team. Utilize face-to-face communication to boost a team feeling. Don’t fret if there’s a time difference between you and your remote team. Once you start doing this, your team will also begin adjusting to these valuable F2F sessions, and eventually, they will quickly find time to connect and talk.
Conducting a virtual coffee break every Friday for half an hour can also be an excellent way to connect personally with the team. This will be similar to the office chit-chat at coffee machines. It can bring closeness to the team. These off-work interactions also help to understand the team better.
In Summary
Here is a quick infographic to recap.
When working with a team in the office, it is easier to understand issues. We interact with people, understand their strengths, understand their likes and dislikes, interests, etc. In a remote team, this interaction is not entirely lost but an extra effort has to be put in to make it work. If correctly managed, you can mitigate communication and performance glitches.
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Got questions or need help in developing a Digital SaaS Solutions, mobile app, web app, or IT Solution? I will be happy to take up a call to help you!
Until next time,
Sunil Khatri
Senior Software Engineer at Indra
2yBasically adapt to #scrum 🙂 with of course the tools you mention in each section. Nicely put together Sunil .