5 Techniques To Drastically Up Efficiency With Remote Teams

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International statistics are strongly backing the trend in favour of remote working. Most managers will invariably have to to alter their working styles to adjust to changing work environments.

-A Flex Jobs study showed that 82% of employees stated that they would be more loyal to a company if they worked from home.

-In yet another study – Out of the personnel who chose to work remotely, almost 80% experienced a healthier work-life balance and 25% reduced stress levels.

A robust 68% of job searchers have stated that an option to work from home would greatly escalate their interest in working for a company, which increases their interest in specific employers.

In order to help you navigate through the initial stages, here are some of the crucial strategies that managers need to integrate into their management styles to successfully work with remote assets.

Work needs to be time bound: Remote workers like the independence of the space they work in and their ability manage their own timetables. Hence, it is crucial to give specific deadlines for finishing an assigned job. While you should respect their space, you want to get your work delivered in a timely manner. There are plenty online project management tools can be very useful to manage work, especially while working with multiple remote talents at the same time. Assess the pros and cons of each and pick the one that best works for your organization and team.

Establish milestones for assigned tasks: It is very important to check your work at each stage, especially in the early days of working with your remote team member. This will help you know if the employee has a sound and detailed understanding of the work. This happens to be extremely useful in avoiding duplication of efforts. Even a small piece of missing information can ruin hours of work and bring down productivity. It will also help you find the missing pieces of information you need to provide to other remote workers in future.

Select the optimal mode of communication: For short and neutral updates always use email. For long and detailed conversations use Skype or phone. For informal conversations and general shorter discussions, use chat.

Communicate in detail & frequently: Clearly detail the task at hand. Follow up with an email briefing the steps to complete the assigned work. There are many parts that go on within a project and the employee on the other end is not completely aware of all of the nuances. You may have missed out on some information, which seems small to the project, but may be crucial to the task at hand. Keep your talent involved in every aspect of the project. Always encourage a one-on-one interaction, engage in project discussions outside the scope of work and build a strong working relationship, just as with your on-site members. 

Trust your team: Many a times, traditional managers have a tough time understanding the amount of time their resources spend on getting a job done, or the number of productive hours they put into a day. Learn to trust your employees as long they deliver well on tasks and in timely manner.