How to Manage Employees Remotely?

Everyone wants flexible hours, right? In fact, the modern world is indicating an upcoming trend called flexibility. This is the reason why the majority of the companies are pushing themselves towards the remote employment. When it comes to the challenges of managing a remote workforce, some of the common issues are-

● Miscommunication among the teams

● Feeling of isolation

● Lack of trust

● Crisis due to the lack of productivity

The world is crowded with talented and highly skilled people. It has become a norm for the companies to hire people from different nationalities and cultures. Even though managing a team remotely is no easy, it yet has its own perks if managed effectively. An effective management of a remote team buys you a lot of time and saves tons of money. Below are mentioned key points that will give you a keen insight on how to manage your work-team remotely.

Effective communication:

Communication is the foremost aspect of any team management. Communicate effectively and clearly with your remote work-team. If possible, do not hesitate to use video conferencing for that matter. This is one of the best ways of managing remote employees. Share your desktop screen with your team and explain what you expect from them. You can also take help of the screenshots and flow-charts and email them directly.

Spread the news of the collaboration:

Encourage a document managing system for sharing important files. Tools such as; Google Drive and Dropbox can be of good use for this matter. Do not rely solely on emails for the purpose of sharing documents and files. Chances are, they might get lost and people usually have a hard time keeping an eye on the latest version. Tell them to make good use of these tools to makes sure data is secured online. Make sure everyone’s working efficiently and the entire team is on board with these tools. Google Drive and Dropbox are not the only document managing tools, there are various others that you can find online.

Make your expectations clear:

Arrange a meeting (online) every week with your employee to know the status of your project. Walk thoroughly through the task allocated to a team-mate. Do the goal setting with them by aligning a task to accomplish for the coming weeks/months. Do not forget to give a feedback for the work and be generous with appreciation if they accomplish the task without any error. It is important for you to know that if your employer doesn’t know how he/she is performing, they cannot motivate themselves.

Tracking record:

This is one of the crucial key points for managing remote workers. It can be done with implementing tracking systems. Micromanaging is the killer aspect you certainly want to stay away from. Now, that doesn’t mean you do not have to grant them any flexibility. The matter of fact, you do not want to leave them entirely on their own. Be clear if you have hired them for hourly basis or contractual basis. Track their work progress and the amount of task they are accomplishing with the best of their ability.

At the end of the day, it is all about productivity and effective team management. Things go wrong sometimes, but learning from the failures is the best thing. There are countless other situations that you may face, during managing a remote team. And there are numerous other ways to handle those challenges. Make it absolutely clear what is it that you expect from the project. On top of that, make a near perfect strategy to manage your remote team. Hope, the article helps you in clearing some doubts.