A guide to manage your remote staff
It can affect the team-building culture as well.
Today, employees prefer to work outside traditional office settings, and companies want to outsource the best talent pool from around the world. The remote staff has provided big corporations and small businesses with many edges. It has increased the productivity—of employees—while giving them the flexibility to work and improving the work-life balance for all. The work-from-home staff has been a win-win for both the employee and the employer. Remote staff hiring is a growing trend as the pandemic hit has accelerated the transition to outsourcing staff and the WFH staff era.
For years, corporations and managers feared working from home. They assumed WFH staff would decline the productivity of the company as they would spend the most time doing their household chores. As per Global Workplace Analytics, issues with management distrust are in line with remote working. They uncovered that 75% of managers did not rely on their employees, but a third said they’d like to be able to see them, just to be sure.
But this is changing with the shift in working life. Many companies in the US alone have incorporated remote staff as they provide better outputs.
However, with this transformation comes extra commitments for the managers. One challenge they face with remote staff is effectively and successfully working through the changes WFH staff brings. It is easy to interact with people face-to-face when you work in a physical setting. But as remote staff hiring increases, managers find it demanding to handle the work from home staff.
What are the challenges that executives usually face when working with remote staff? Let’s talk about them a little before we dive into the ways to manage your remote staff.
Absence of in-person interaction: Remote staff may feel that the managers are not in touch with them and their needs. It can affect the team-building culture as well.
Lack of a cohesive team: WFH staff can get the impression that the on-site employees receive much more benefits than them. It can cause an absence of linkage between the remote staff and other team members.
Absence of role clarity: Miscommunication can lead to a lack of role clarity among the remote staff. Getting the strategy wrong can ultimately affect the results. Sometimes the remote staff may not prioritise the task as required.
Lack of clarity in expectations: Managers want their employees to know in advance what they expect of them. It is easy while working in an office, but when working remotely, more guidance and clarity are needed to achieve an objective.
Social isolation: Remote staff can feel a lack of relationship with work colleagues. Lonely and isolated employees can come under stress, which can affect the productivity of your remote staff.
Tracking team progress: It is easy for managers to take a quick round of the office. But when you manage a remote staff, catching them headway on a task is complex. It may even feel like you are managing nothing.
Missing company culture: Company values and beliefs can stay behind with a team of remote staff who are not present there to join for team-building activities.
Working across time zones: Even with minimal time zone differences, it can be hard for the managers to keep up with all the members of the remote staff team. It will demand extra effort from the manager’s end.
Some companies are opting for 100 per cent remote staff hiring today. It clearly shows that the challenges that managers face are manageable with some convenient ideas. Of course, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to management, but there are some traditional tips executives can use to manage their remote staff. Let’s take a look at some of them.
● Structured Schedule
For managers, keeping every remote staff focused on their task is a task in itself. Forming a well-planned schedule from the very beginning will help you manage the remote staff without any last-minute rush to meet the deadlines. Many tools can help you set timelines to prioritise duties, schedule one-on-one calls on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis, and more.
● Extensive Communication
When you have a team of remote staff working, emails alone cannot keep them all on the same page. With technology getting richer and richer, you have access to software that allows video conferencing with your entire team at once. No matter where your remote worker lives, you can call your social and professional meetings or idea-sharing meetings whenever you want. Keeping in touch with your remote employees will help you get to know them and establish trust.
● Setting Expectations
Managing a team with remote staff can be different from managing a team in real-time. It is easier to convey your expectations clearly when talking in person. But keeping things under control with your remote staff is not as hard as you may think. You can easily make the job painless by conveying your expectations in advance about work hours, meetings, projects, deadlines, etc. It will help you avoid any obstacles that may arise in the future because of it. Your staff will be able to adapt to your management style.
● Regular Follow-Ups
Managers are not perfect people. Sometimes they may also get things out of control. And when there is a remote staff to work with sitting in a distant part of the world with a completely different time zone, they can have struggles too. One of them is to keep up with every remote staff member. We advise regular follow-ups by managers. They can be about checking on whether your WFH staff is being productive. You can also keep up to know if they are doing well overall, discuss plans for project development, answer their questions, and much more. These regular follow-ups highly impact the performance of the remote staff.
● Providing Right Tools
Technology has a major role when you are working with remote staff. Making digital communication tools accessible to every member is crucial to your business management role. Apart from a computer, internet, and a headset, every team member on your work from home staff should have all the communication tools handy. Managing the remote staff with digital conferencing tools and the right project management software that allows co-working space makes your job easy. You can go through our blog on essential tools for remote working to shape an efficacious team.
● Occasional Physical Meetings
A remote staff does not mean they never get to see you or their co-workers in person. Physical interactions once in a while will bring your remote staff closer and make a more inclusive team. Any of your WFH staff facing social isolation can feel lighter through such meetups. You can organise summits or trips for all your remote staff. It will build a community of remote workers who learn and have fun together.
● Continuous Feedback
Remote staff cannot land in your office anytime and have that formal or informal talk. Therefore, giving feedback to them becomes significant. It will keep them in the right direction. Feedback will help solve any blockages or shortcomings they are facing. Giving feedback will also keep them in the loop, and they may understand better where they stand compared to the other team members.
● Cultural Sensitivity
When you work with a team of remote staff, people from diverse countries and even continents will end up working with you. They will be entirely distinct. Consequently, a broad understanding of their culture becomes a new managerial skill. As a manager, you may have to educate and sensitise the entire team of remote staff to be respectful and empathetic towards their fellow workers. Admiring the culture of your remote employee becomes substantial for work ethics. You may also need to learn a different communication style from them.
Managing your staff from a distant location can require a tough mind. Working with a remote team has many advantages, despite some of its downsides. The pointers above will help you keep an open mind to the challenges, and overcoming them will ultimately lead to better collaboration with your remote staff.
As a team of professionals, we have helped companies in outsourcing staff to India. We make their management effortless by assisting them in hiring, training, maintaining, replacing remote staff, and much more. We are also one of the best places to hire virtual assistants for your bookkeeping, accounting, and tax filing services. If you’re looking for any of this, Contact Us Today!
