The world received a crash course in remote working this past year and a bit, but the smartest businesses are set to continue offering the ability to work remotely. The benefits are massive once you can get your remote management style nailed down. You can hire the best talent from across the country without requiring people to uproot their lives. You can offer more benefits. You can give your employees a better work/life balance. You can reduce costs by downsizing your office.
There are benefits for you and there are benefits for your employees, but before you can offer remote working as an ongoing option, you need to follow this guide to best manage your team remotely.
Get the Right Software
The best way to manage a remote team is with working productivity software like CoAmplifiByCuraesoft. Software like this allows you to coach your team in real-time, and it also allows you to oversee what everyone is doing as they are doing it. This makes it easy to make course corrections or amendments as they are working, without interrupting that workflow to send back and forth emails.
This software also allows you to better track hours for overtime management and is naturally a great way to measure your resource productivity index (RPI).The right management software is a must when you are not in the same room as your employees and is essential for large and remote businesses alike.
Be Open to Suggestions
You are not infallible. There will be ideas and complaints with your remote management style that you will not even consider. That is why you should always be open to suggestions and even complaints about your remote working style. Make it so that your team can make these suggestions/complaints anonymously, which will encourage them to tell you honestly what they think.
Schedule Daily Check-Ins
There should be daily check-ins (ideally by video call) where you have a more vocal, informal way of understanding what your team is doing, what problems they have, and what suggestions that they have. This should be daily, and ideally at the start or at the end of your day so that you can keep track of what is going on in your employees’ heads and so that you know what they need to complete their work.
Establish Rules of Engagement
Rules of Engagement are a military concept that works well with remote working. Essentially it just sets out standards of communication between yourself and your team. Everyday have a video call daily check-in but have a different messaging system for urgent requests or questions.
Focus on Objectives
It can be very hard to accurately understand the activity levels of your employees, even with the help of a management tool. That is why you should focus less on consistent work and instead on setting daily, weekly, and project objectives. If these can be completed on time to a great conclusion, then you are ready to go. Just readjust your idea of productivity from actively working to getting projects done on time.