In many ways, managing remote employees is just like on-site management. Your job is to nurture, guide, and support your employees – and if you do your job right, both the organization and the people on your team will grow. However, while you don’t need to reinvent the wheel, there are a couple of key techniques that are specific to remote management. Check out our six top tips on how to manage remote employees.
1. Be strategic when using different communication methods
Since it’s so easy to miscommunicate when you’re not physically in the room with someone, make sure every interaction you have with your reports is delivered in the right way using the right channel.
Here are some ideas of how to use different mediums for different purposes:
2. Promote team bonding and develop strong team dynamics
Most people who work in an office environment enjoy occasional lunches or drinks with their team. And then there’s the tradition of having cake for people’s birthdays. These are all great team-bonding activities. Unfortunately, they obviously won’t work with geographically dispersed remote teams. A key piece when it comes to how to manage remote employees is to bring your team together. As a manager, be creative about ways to achieve team bonding if workers are physically separated. Ensure you bring your team together at least once a month for a fun team bonding activity, whether it’s a virtual team happy hour or entertaining trivia session.
How to manage remote employees can be challenging when workers are dispersed across the world. With remote workers, you don’t have the advantage of watching body language for signs of trouble between team members. The same is true for managing the morale of individuals. How can you tell if remote workers are unhappy if you can’t see them? Watch closely for warning signs such as these:
3. Set clear expectations
Remote work, by definition, is far less structured than on-site work. And while that has huge bonuses, it also means that you’re going to need to provide more structured expectations.
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Ideally, the first in-depth discussion about what you’re looking for would take place during onboarding. But these discussions should continue anywhere from once a month to once a week.
Each team member should have no doubts about:
If you don’t feel confident that your employees know all of this information, either consider scheduling more frequent check-ins or identify the information gap. For example, are you being transparent enough? Are your expectations still unclear?
4. Communicate the “why”
When it comes to how to manage remote employees, it’s critical to always communicate the “why” behind your asks and make sure your team understands how their work contributes to the bigger picture. In a remote environment, it can be easy to feel isolated. As a manager, you’re very aware of how each person’s work is building towards a long-term goal, but your employees don’t have the benefit of this bird’s-eye view.
The fix is simple. Tell them how their individual tasks and projects map to the organization’s objectives.
5. Be transparent
To improve the speed and quality of decision-making, you should strive to be as transparent as possible with your team members. The more they know, the easier it will be for them to act autonomously while working remotely. Below are a few tips to build transparency:
How to manage remote employees just got a little bit easier
How to manage remote employees might not be an easy task, but with our top tips it just got a little bit easier. Take our five tips with you and successfully manage your team from anywhere. If you’re looking for more remote working tips, check out our blog post covering, “12 Tips for Working From Home.” It houses great tips on how to stay productive while working from home and is a great read to share with your team.
To learn more about how to connect with your remote workforce, check out our webinar recording, “Engaging and Recognizing Employees During the COVID-19 Pandemic and Beyond.”
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