Top Seven Tips: How Employers Can Successfully Manage Remote Team?

No matter COVID-19 pandemic turned the world upside down and transformed the traditional ways of working into untested and unidentified realms which prima facie includes flexible/ remote/ work from home settings, many employers are still frustrated with the idea of remote working.

Wonder why do they keep pushing back the idea of remote working?

Well, most employers dislike the remote work idea fearing lack of control and trust on their employees.

"To start building your remote culture, establish and share some basic rules. The first and most important rule is mutual trust between the company and its workers. The rules after that? As few as possible." - Larry English

It goes without saying many businesses have successfully evolved from the modern ways of working, there are many that are hesitant to adapt to change.

In this newsletter, we would share TOP 7 TIPS for the employers who are exploring the remote work idea but are indecisive.

1.       Fostering Effective Communication:

The absence of physical interaction mostly creates unnecessary communication barriers. To overcome that, the employer shall put an extra effort to communicate with remote team. Making full use of Instant Messaging, Slack, MS Teams, etc. to stay in touch with your team throughout the day, may help bridge the gap.

2.       Be Responsible for the required Time and Learning Resources:

For remote employees, the idea is that employer should think and go an extra mile. Own your remote team in a similar fashion as one would do in an ordinary office setup. Be mindful of their areas of work and make yourself available to provide them the necessary support and learning resources enabling them to do their job.

3.       Make expectations clear in advance and collaborate to achieve them:

Act as a team. Every task should undergo three phases; Planning, Execution and Conclusion.

• Planning: Setup a meeting, plan the task and communicate the deadline to deliver, in advance;
• Execution: Ongoing check-ins, following up on the status, monitoring, supervision and on the job training may work in the execution phase.
• Conclusion: Keeping a track of task and its effective execution would help meet the deadline and conclude the said task successfully.     

4.     Creating a culture of ‘Incentives’ and ‘Reward’:

Employers shall encourage a culture where even little achievements shall be recognized, celebrated and rewarded. Reward and incentive may take any form. Be it certificate of appreciation or a virtual award, a paid day-off or a shopping coupon/ voucher; a reward will make a big difference in terms of fostering motivation and enhancing sense of belongingness with the Company/Employer.

5.      Put Trust in your Team:

Trust is what makes any relationship stronger. So like any relation, employer-employee relationship would not prosper without trust. If you have hired a team for a certain job, you need to have some patience in letting them get their job done.

"To Successfully work with other people , you have to trust each other. A big part of this is trusting people to get their work done wherever they are, without supervision." - Richard Branson

Don’t spy on them. Secret spying and eavesdropping on employees tells them that you don’t trust them and would give rise to negative vibes all along. A casual conversation sometime, a task tracking as a part of routine weekly plan should be sufficient rather than micromanaging and monitoring each and every step of your remote team.  

6.       Encourage Team Building Activities:

Social interactions and team building activities play a huge role, even in case of remote teams. Such social activities serve as a time-off and help you bond with your entire team.

Try considering the following as a part of monthly or quarterly team building activities:

• Create an interesting group or channel on Teams, Slack or other such platform gathering people with common interests;
• Conduct webinars on useful topics and inviting remote team members to participate and contribute in such webinars;
• Plan Quizzes and Competitions using various online platforms; and
• Make a Game for your remote team, in addition to quizzes and competitions.

7.       Be mindful of Attaining & Improvising Healthy Work-Life Balance:

Last but not the least, please be aware and support a better work-life balance for your employees.

Remember “People Organization” we discussed in one of our earlier newsletter? In our earlier Newsletter, we have been emphasizing on work-life balance from both employer or employees’ perspective, it goes without saying that it is hard to achieve by your remote team without empathy on your part, you “the employer”.

Few helpful tips employers shall consider doing, include the following:

• Create a working atmosphere where employees may take regular breaks;
• Instill focus on productivity rather than hours;
• Prioritize quality over quantity; and
• Review workload of remote team at frequent intervals and Manage to improvise work-life balance.

We agree that managing remote work for employers may be challenging but

MUST Company , we stick to above TOP 7 TIPS and this has made a huge difference.

We believe in Inclusion.

 We trust that Employers & Employees together can make this modern working arena plausible and successful.   

 #RemoteWorkSuccess #FlexibleWork #WorkFromHome #RemoteWork #EmbracingChange #AdaptingToChange

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