Learning how to manage a remote team starts with setting boundaries and work rules your employees should adhere to as they work from home. 

Let your team know what you expect from them. These expectations can be in the form of:

• Company culture

• Working procedures

• Project guidelines

• Style guides

• Communication rules

• Relationship building

Just as in a traditional office workspace, managers are expected to keep workers up-to-date on staffing changes and policies. Although it’s essential to see how well team members meet expectations, don’t oversee their actions too closely, as that can breed distrust.

 

When your entire team is working remotely, keeping up with them via effective communication is one of the biggest challenges that you’ll face. Since this aspect heavily influences the success of your remote team, it’s absolutely important to get it right.  Effective communication is also crucial to keep your remote team members motivated. Zoom and slack are two industry-leading tools that can help you manage effective communication.

 

Scheduling daily check-ins may seem like overkill, but it is vital to ensure workforce performance. In addition, it improves time management while managing remote teams.

When you schedule check-ins, you give yourself a break from constant overseeing, allow your team to be more accountable, and reduce unattended projects. You can use scheduling software to simplify this task.

Your check-ins don’t necessarily have to be daily schedule check-ins based on what works best for your team, pending projects, and work hours. 

Automate notifications to be sent through emails or instant messaging apps like Skype to each member on the specific days they’re expected to check-in.

 

Collaboration tools are crucial for managing remote teams as they help your workers communicate, manage tasks, and share project files.

Provide your remote workers access to these team collaboration tools and shared company documents. Some tools include:

• Chanty

• Teamwork

• Microsoft Teams

• Google Drive (especially helpful for tracking notes and agendas)

To manage a remote team successfully, have your employees use the same tools. Don’t equip one team member with something different if they perform similar tasks to another employee.

 

As a business owner or manager looking to learn how to manage a remote team, ensure you provide resources to help your team grow and handle tasks more efficiently. 

Some of the essential resources for managing remote teams include:

• Books and e-books

• Blog posts and articles

• Courses

• Templates

• Webinars

• Tools and software

With several businesses online, equipping your employees with these resources will set them up for success and increase productivity. 

 

 

Since remote work lacks personal supervision, you might see a dearth of accountability. To avoid this issue, you need to make people accountable for the tasks they do. Besides, offer them the autonomy they need to complete a project.

This action will have a positive effect on the team members and make them sincerely perform their work.