Most companies are opting for a hybrid work model that enables employees to switch between remote work and in-office.If businesses do not respond to instant shifts in the workforce landscape, they risk missing out on an experienced and diverse talent base. Searches for work from home have gone up 3 times since 2020, which demonstrates why businesses will need tips to welcome the new remote work model!
Remote work may date back to the first industrial revolution, but the circumstances for its current rise are vastly different. Just when we thought we could rest easy came another wave and the announcement of a new, deadlier mutation in the coronavirus.
Sanitization and self-care measures are the norm, relegating frontline workers in white collar jobs to their home base until further notice. The stampede brought on the rise in remote global talent is another way of saying many of us will continue to work away from dedicated offices. And managers should get used to the idea of leading a remote team, some of whom they’re unlikely to meet in person anytime soon.
Instead of feeling like you’re losing control and track of what is happening workwise, it's time to shape up your soft skills. Here are tips to welcome this stampede, and to ensure that you have everything you need to ensure deadlines and deliverables are met;
A manager’s presence matters just as much as their team’s visibility. The more accessible you remain to members, the more aware you are of what is happening across different time zones. Flipping the other side of the coin, you also get updates on work progress from members, which include work completed, pending decisions you need to review and bottlenecks faced.
And communication is the way to go about it. The first step to onboarding and managing a remote team, is to standardize communication and divide them across the work hours designated. Use a world clock and timezone calendar to figure out the overlap hours for a global team, and arrange for the standard check ins to happen during these hours. It will help to send out a mail to participants after initiating remote work arrangements as to the frequency and expectation of availability for such meetings, so that they can be programmed into individual calendars.
Who says teams can’t work hard and play hard when online?
With onlineteam building puzzles, the rapport between co workers strengthens. Remote managers involving themselves in such team building activities will develop a better understanding of the dynamics within. More importantly, such managers would also know how individuals apply soft skills such as problem solving, creative thinking and strategizing in a non-work related context.
Facilitating such exercises to break up the monotony of work is one thing, but being a participant yourself is another. And the merits to it include recharging your team’s energy levels, bringing out the competitive and collaborative spirit and above all, showing that you have a fun side too. Your team is more likely to be themselves in a game or sport, letting you see who they are outside of work. The reason virtual team building is important is that it replicates social interactions enjoyed in-person. And it needn’t even cost you anything. A simple interactive quiz on social media suffices to get things started, and from there you can invite suggestions for the next activity your team would like you and them to try out!
The best way to make sure that the right priorities are in sight and on track, is to create a realistic schedule. Put simply, the priority should be meaningful. It should be communicated in advance, with deadlines drawn up after taking into consideration the availability of members. Productivity apps can help you schedule status update meetings by the urgency, without disrupting existing schedules. A realistic schedule plugged in with anti-distraction applications such askrisp.ai or freedom, helps teams stay self-disciplined. It blocks websites and popups, mutes background noises and ensures that coworkers can go back to their workload.
Given that the team you’re leading is now remote, tracking effort hours matter all the more. This is because it dictates invoicing,billing and expenses incurred for work, and therefore has to be audited. According to the American society for employers, time theft costs employers in the United States $11 billion a year. To prevent company hours from being misused in the form of extra overtime or proxy check ins, invest in remote employee monitoring and time tracking.
Such tools make use of facial recognition to verify that the person who logged in at a workstation or device is authorized to do so at that hour. It keeps people accountable and helps you save payroll costs by up to 22% annually.
Timesheet reports not only help you understand how time-intensive your projects are but also keeps remote employees visible and present. It can even help you estimate future time and expenses more accurately, based on present data. You can accordingly delegate work and assign priorities based on the information you have on the time it'll take for the worker competent to complete it.
