Whether you are a first-time remote manager or you have been leading a remote team for a while, you can always use additional information on remote management that can help you lead your team to success.
To help you master remote team management, we’ve put together everything you need to know about this type of leadership — from challenges you might face to tips and tools for successful remote management.
What is remote management?
Remote management refers to the strategies, practices, and tools managers use to ensure their remote team’s workflow runs smoothly.
5 challenges of managing a remote team
From trying to facilitate your team’s progress to not being able to reach them when an urgent task comes out of the blue — remote management comes with a fair share of challenges.
Challenge #1: The lack of supervision
As soon as their team starts working from home, managers encounter difficulties tracking their team’s progress, which can lead them to doubt their team members’ efficiency.
Challenge #2: Delays in response time in communication
This issue could lead to remote managers’ mistrust and frustration if they don’t manage to find a workaround for communication gaps and maintain a healthy workflow.
Challenge #3: The lack of face-to-face daily meetings
Although quick video calls could be a workable solution for the lack of face-to-face communication, leading a geographically dispersed team poses another challenge when picking a time slot for a call.
Challenge #4: Difficulties with structuring work
As soon as they switch to a different work setting, your team members might struggle to ward off their urge to procrastinate and deal with different home distractions that wreak havoc on their work structure.
Challenge #5: Isolation affecting mental health
The isolation and lack of social connection that may come with a remote work setting can quickly lead to a decrease in productivity and an even higher turnover rate.
19 tips for successful remote management
Despite the number of remote management challenges lurking around every corner, there are ways to retain your remote team’s productivity levels.
Tip #1: Forget micromanagement
Although you might be tempted to oversee every task your team’s working on, if you want to avoid their quiet quitting, focus on strategies for building workplace trust.
Invest some time in improving your delegation skills and setting clear expectations instead of micromanaging.
Tip #2: Focus on establishing accountability
In times when we cannot get in touch with our teams face-to-face, establishing accountability could help in building trust.
Try to develop a system of accountability where your team members commit to achieving a certain goal. Since making a commitment increases the chances of keeping a promise, establishing accountability by committing to finishing a task is key to improving work performance.
Tip #3: Use Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to track goals
If you’d like to avoid ending up with finished projects that are not up to your expectations, think about establishing a clear system for evaluating your team’s progress toward your goals.
Tracking your team’s KPIs could help promote team accountability and increase their motivation levels.
Tip #4: Use apps to track your team’s progress
There are plenty of tools out there that can help you keep track of your team’s workflow despite the geographical distance.
Some of them include a time tracking app that lets you analyze your team’s productivity or a project management tool that helps you remain up-to-date with your team’s progress,
Tip #5: Be understanding and patient
Since high-trust organizations are much more successful at implementing their strategies than their low-trust counterparts, do your best to remain patient even when your team members are not responding to your DMs within seconds.
Employees who feel you trust them will likely aim to justify that trust and try to respond as soon as possible.
Tip #6: Be easy to reach
If you make an effort to allocate a portion of your time to your team, you’ll significantly improve their morale and ensure employee retention.
Start by dedicating one day per month to casual one-on-one meetings and work your way up from there.
Tip #7: Train your managers in remote communication
To help your team feel more ready to adapt to the new working conditions, as soon as you switch to a remote setting, try encouraging managers to keep in contact with their team.
As soon as you incorporate virtual communication tools, train and motivate managers to incorporate the tools into their daily team communication.
Tip #8: When in rush, go for a video meeting
Instead of wasting time while waiting for a textual reply, go for a quick call whenever you need to speed things up.
However, bear in mind that overusing this option might negatively impact your team’s productivity and energy levels.
Tip #9: Make the most of your online conferencing tools
Instead of contributing to your remote team’s cognitive overload by constantly insisting on quick video calls, try utilizing different features that most remote work tools come with, such as:
- Voice calls, or
- Quick one-on-one conversations in a team chat app.
Tip #10: Define clear rules for online meetings
Without clear online meeting etiquette, some team members might feel free to break in at any point during the online conversation.
To avoid this from happening, start by establishing clear virtual meeting guidelines.
This way, you’ll lay the foundation for a healthy remote work environment.
Tip #11: Adjust your workflows to working online
Creating a streamlined online system to help your team collaborate remotely can help them retain their efficiency and adjust to a remote working environment much quicker.
You can begin by introducing collaboration tools specifically designed for remote teams that let you:
- Receive real-time notifications,
- Chat with your team, and
- Assign tasks.
Tip #12: Implement a daily check-in system
When you implement a system that enables you to communicate with your team members daily, you give your team a chance to voice any potential issues as soon as they arise.
Having a check-in system up and running also helps in receiving employee feedback and restructuring their workflow accordingly.
Tip #13: Streamline remote work upfront
Streamlining your team’s remote workflow can help you set clearly outlined plans and procedures, which can simplify your onboarding process.
When you have a clearly defined remote workflow, not only do you speed up the onboarding process, but you also bring the new hires up to speed much faster.
Tip #14: Stick to your office schedule
After switching to a remote setting, employees might have difficulties structuring their workflow properly.
To help them avoid this issue and retain their productivity levels, try providing your team with the working conditions as similar as possible to the ones they got used to back at the office.
Tip #15: Help your team avoid home distractions
To help your team structure their work properly and ward off distractions despite their changed working conditions, make sure to advise them to:
- Set up a dedicated workspace,
- Try to eliminate background noise, and
- Block distracting websites
Tip #16: Socialize online as a team
Since maintaining the team connection in a remote setting requires detailed planning, think about developing team rituals to nurture work relationships.
You can start by introducing virtual team-bonding games or get together every once in a while for a chat.
Tip #17: Encourage 1-on-1 socialization
Instead of waiting for your team to get in touch with each other spontaneously, now that they’re working remotely, try developing a work buddy system that could help your team feel more connected.
Tip #18: Show your team that you care
Although establishing a remote workflow comes first when switching to a remote environment, showing an interest in how your team members are doing is key to establishing a healthy work-from-home setting and reducing your team’s social isolation.
Tip #19: Automate operations
Streamlining your team’s work-from-home workflow is essential if you want to keep your usual systems up and running despite the change in the work environment.
Here are some of the best apps you can start using today to manage and automate every aspect of your remote company:
- Great apps for automating marketing operations — HubSpot’s Marketing Software, Buffer, Cobiro, Marketo, Mailchimp, Zalster
- Great apps for automating sales processes — HubSpot Sales, Salesforce, Pipedrive, Reply.io, Outreach
- Great apps for automating IT processes — Selenium, Docker, Ansible, RunDeck, Resolve.io
- Great apps for automating HR processes — Bamboo HR, Gusto, Zenefits, Documate
- Great apps for automating customer support — HelpDesk, TeamSupport, Freshdesk, HubSpot Service Hub
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Further reading
This is just a summary of an article previously published on the Clockify blog.
To learn more about remote management, we recommend reading the full article: