Over the last many
years the number of businesses is seen to be opening up in terms of having
remote members in their team. The trend is increasing and many companies are
coming forward in creating and offering flexible workplace options. In the
coming times, number of companies will go-ahead to adopt flexible workplace
structures for the business benefits as technology has ensured to nullify the
distance by bringing up all kinds of tools for collaboration and communication.
In case you are
thinking about coming up with a flexible workplace structure for some or all of
your employees, then there are a few things which you should take care for
sure. There are a few dos and don’ts which you should be following and the same
has been explained here:
Dos for managing your remote team members
Take your time to hire
When it comes to
hiring a remote candidate, every company wants to do the best in the hiring
process. Since the candidate will be part of your remote team, you need to be
sure that he or she is capable to justify the role on their own. You can have
the interview process carried out multiple times and even involve other team
members to know you are making the right hiring decision.
Go for a candidate with experience
When you are looking
for a candidate to work remotely for you, the experience definitely counts even
though it does not come with any guarantees. Now you don’t even have that kind
of guarantee about the kind of work carried out by your in-house team! They
will still know to do their job well and hiring such a developer can be good
for you. Such a developer must have worked remotely before and so they will
know about all the challenges and benefits that come with such a working model.
This means if anytime you will get an application from someone who claims to
have experience of working with the team remotely, you should definitely look
into it.
Hire self-starters
Now, this does not
need much of an explanation. When you are checking the abilities of remote team
members it has to be known without saying that they need to have
self-discipline, initiative, and independence. Working remotely is not possible
for everyone to follow and this can only be achieved by people with the right mind-set.
Once people have started working for companies remotely, they seldom give up
the opportunity.
Should empower your employees
It is your
responsibility to managethe remote team and you need to do so to keep
everything under control but, you need to make sure that the remote team is
capable to handle things on their own. The first step towards empowering them
and making them capable to handle things is by providing them with excellent
communication and collaboration tools that can be used at the remote location.
If such tools come with programs to help that remote team, they will succeed
using it for sure.
Offering tools is
just one side. Another best way to manage your remote team is to let the team
members be equipped with decision making. Here each and every individual should
be made to feel that they are capable to make their own decisions and they will
not have to run anymore to other managers or senior persons for everything.
Such empowerment will offer remote members with the ability to build a strong
team that is capable to handle all the issues that come up on a day-to-day
basis.
Do your work as a manager
It is important you
train your team to work independently, but that does not mean that you should
leave them that way. Overindulgence from your side is not good for the team
similarly, being absent everywhere and for everything is not recommended too.
Your remote workforce
needs to know that you will be available to them whenever they need you. You
should let your team have access to your calendar so that they can know when
you will be available at the office. Planning regular check-ins are recommended.
Above all, you need to build a healthy work culture by showing employees a
proper work-life balance. This will encourage them to follow the same in their
lives.
Make use of sharing and communication software
Today it has become
easy for the people working remotely to collaborate with their teams
efficiently by the use of tools like Google Docs, Slack and Asana. So despite
of being away from each other geographically, such tools make communication
seamless. With time new tools are emerging in the market and this will make the
future of remote workforce all the more better and efficient.
Let the team members
meet in the real world
Building up a strong team
working remotely is definitely a good thing but to make the team stronger it is
important to have face-to-face communication. You can come up with a company
summit or an industry conference once or more number of times in a year and
create situations where the team will come together, meet each other and spend
some quality time.
Don’ts for managing your remote team members
Don’t be in a hurry to hire someone
When you are planning
to get the project done, you definitely want to have someone who is best suited
for the position. Now when you are trying to get the work done remotely, you
will need to make sure the candidate you chose for the role is truly capable
enough to work in such an environment. So you need to spend some more time and
effort on the recruitment and interview process. The interview process should
include a session where the selected candidates should talk and interact with
other employed team members. This will let you know whether those candidates
can easily fit in your company culture and go well with the team.
Don’t go for hand-holder
It has to be
understood that everyone is not capable to carry on with remote work. The last
of your worries should be to have a remotecandidate hired who needs a lot of hand-holding to
get work done. The remote member should be capable enough to start work on his
or her own and should be able to take initiatives to resolve issues that occur
during communication.
While conducting
interviews, you can come up with different scenarios when you can judge the
candidate based on how he or she reacts to it. This can be some situations like
where the voice of the member is not heard in a remote environment or some
issues with the fellow colleague. Based on their reaction and the way they
potentially handle situations, will let you know whether they can work
independently or not and can succeed in what they do.
Don’t come up with extra meetings
Many a time the team
manager is habituated to schedule more number of team meetings than necessary
just for the fact that the teams don’t meet up daily face-to-face. Scheduling
unnecessary meetings every now and then will greatly affect the quality time of
the team. This will affect the productivity of the team. So whenever you plan a
meeting you need to be sure that you are using the valuable time of everyone on
the team. So only schedule a meeting when felt necessary.
Don’t be time focused
There are some jobs
where the remote team members need to work on a fixed schedule. However, this
is not the case always. Some of the job roles of the remote team members are
project-focused and so there is no meaning in keeping them strict about the
working hours. Again, there is no meaning in keeping hooked to the computer for
extra hours. One of the best things about remote team members is that they have
the ease to follow the flexible working hours. They can either work early in
the morning or work late in the evening. However, remote members have been seen
to be having a hard time disconnecting from the work unlike the employees at
the workplaces where people stop working after their working hours get
finished. So it is important for you to ensure that your remote team members
get disconnected from the work after their required working hours are completed
and do not get burned out by working more.
Wrapping
it up
With more focus applied to hiring remote developers, it is very important to manage
them properly. This can only be made possible by following some set rules which
include some dos and don’ts. When you follow them you can be sure about having
remote team members managed properly.
Comments
Post a Comment