We have daily team video calls to discuss our work life and to chat about our personal lives a bit, as well as different topic Slack channels where everyone can post a message. Having open lines of communication is the key to improving team collaboration. In the digital industry, everyone is always on the go and it can often be harder to get hold of people or get a complete answer to your questions.
Remote teams, however, need the initial push to come from the organizational structure in the form of spaces for these types of after-hour chats. Adopt a centralized communication tool available to all employees to access at any time and from anywhere. When an organization improves team collaboration while maintaining a value-based culture, the employees’ stress levels and toxic health conditions drop significantly. This happens when employees feel a greater level of trust between them and the upper management. The established trust and lowered stress empower remote employees to stay focused and committed to their tasks.
For one, you can assign work buddies to new employees and encourage informal weekly chats. This initiative creates a more relaxed environment for new people to get first-hand insight into all company practices, culture, and general atmosphere. Understandably, it will be a challenging task to try to synchronize diverse teams’ work schedules, however, you can at least try to have them match for at least a few hours or a few days a week. Every bit of synchronization counts when it comes to keeping your remote teams connected. Insist on frequent, clear, and open feedback between team members, managers, and cross-functional teams. Build a healthy virtual culture where every member feels their work matters and they are included in the conversation. Use feedback as a way to constructively enhance progress, and as a part of the learning process.
Team members who need more time to adjust to the remote environment might deal with mental health concerns if they continue to work under pressure. While it’s essential to set down rules and uphold discipline, your team members should find you approachable too.
To ensure efficiency, companies need to invest in collaboration tools, security software, and training platforms tailored for remote activities. In a remote work environment, measuring performance can be different from traditional settings. Without the physical presence of members, managers need clear metrics to gauge productivity and efficiency. In a remote setting, it’s easy to focus on visible activity, like online status or hours logged.
I don’t know about you, but I’m at my most clear-headed and efficient when I’m in an environment where I can share that focus with like-minded people. That’s a huge perk of being in an office… but now it has vanished. But now, managers across the world are faced with the new territory of doing it all online. Although we’ve tackled a lot of the hardest challenges of working as a remote team, and reaped many big rewards from it, I’d hesitate to call us a remote success story… yet. Now, we don’t just look for good startup employees, but we look for good startup employees with experience working remotely.
How to manage a remote team: a 2023 guide to best practices
To successfully manage a remote team from afar requires a different skill set and approach compared to traditional in-office management. It is also a haven for working parents who, according to Chief Creative Officer Andrew Berkowitz, are valued and highly productive members of their remote team. Both groups prize the autonomy, flexibility and work/life balance that is considered a hallmark of the TeamSnap culture.
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How to Manage a Remote Team: Your Guide to Virtual Leadership
You can use tools like performance reviews, customer surveys, or SWOT analysis to identify and implement areas for improvement. For remote teams, these events may look a little different, still, it’s worth exploring as it’s paramount to bringing people closer together. After all, teams that laugh together, stay together, and collaborate better. Make room for parties, game nights, team-building contests, and different themed activities such as book clubs or happy hours, and let your distributed teams loosen up after a long week. When looking for tools that would resonate best with your workforce, consider either opting for several options, or the one that supports plenty of diverse functionalities. Look for team chat and collaboration apps that support unlimited chat history, seamless search, and file sharing to streamline all communication and allow user-friendly collaboration.