Identifying how to manage a remote team or teams perfectly is a crucial aspect in the year 2024. Remote work has been here for a long time, and it’s not going anywhere soon. So, that leaves you with the only option to find and adapt to the best practices for managing your remote teams for the most productivity.
When it comes to remote team management, you will face many challenges that you need to overcome. In today’s post, we will cover everything related to managing remote employees. Here, you will find useful insights such as best work-from-home management practices, top remote work monitoring software for 2024, and more.
By the end of this blog on how to manage a remote team in 2024, you will have all you need to know to increase remote work productivity. With that being said, we have a lot to discuss. So, let’s dive right in.
Remote Team Management: Challenges in 2024
Organizations face many challenges when managing remote employees. So, as a remote team manager, you need to take all of these into account when identifying the best work-from-home management practices for your business.
1. Lack of Communication
The first challenge and reason to learn how to manage a remote team is the lack of communication. This is the biggest reason for low productivity, which occurs mainly due to poor communication channels.
2. Difficulties Implementing Company Culture
Let us be straightforward with you. As a remote team manager, it can be complex to establish a strong company culture. It’s because of your employees spanning the globe. However, they still work in your organization. So establishing this is a must.
3. Difficulty Maintaining Productivity
Another crucial reason to learn how to manage a remote team is to increase productivity. As a manager, it becomes your job to ensure that your employees use their work-time effectively. However, this can be difficult without an office infrastructure environment.
4. Complexity in Accessing Resources
To excel in managing a remote team you are also required to ensure that your employees can easily access all the resources they need. However, this can also be complex. Especially, if they still store their work offline.
5. Lack of Collaboration
Similar to the lack of communication, your remote teams may also lack proper collaboration and teamwork, which can reduce efficiency. So, it’s again your priority job to ensure providing the proper tools to your employees for increasing the same. Overall, it makes it more crucial to learn how to manage a remote team in 2024.
How to Manage a Remote Team in 2024: Trends to Watch
As a remote team manager, you need to watch out for the latest trends in work-from-home management. However, you also have other essential tasks to attend to. So, to help you out, we listed the top 10 remote employee management trends for you to adopt.
1. Hybrid Work Models
Hybrid work models combine in-office and remote work. In short, the best of both worlds as per employee preferences, making it a flexible working model. Recently, this model has taken over many organizations and is thus a crucial part of how to manage a remote team.
2. Employee Well-Being
Today, we are living in an employee-centric work world and environment, where emphasis on employee well-being and mental health improvement is key. Properly managing this through remote work management software and strategies will give you the best output in terms of employee satisfaction.
3. Enhanced Cybersecurity
Another how to manage a remote team trend is enhanced cybersecurity. This one is self-explanatory as we are living in a data-driven world; there is more and more emphasis on data security. Plus, when working remotely it becomes even more important.
4. Advanced Collaboration
As we mentioned above, one of the remote team management challenges you will face is the lack of collaboration and teamwork. Here, your job is to implement advanced collaboration tools for more productivity.
5. Inclusivity and Diversity
Another trend to watch out for is inclusivity and diversity. Nowadays, there is a diverse workforce in every business. So, the best how to manage a remote team practice here is to implement an all-inclusive approach.
6. Outcome-Based Management
These days, the focus is on better output. So, as a remote team manager, you must focus on improving that. Although you will of course guide your remote employees, it’s still important to let them find a workflow approach that best suits their working style.
7. Employee Development
Nowadays, nothing is constant. Every old aspect, technology, and even workflow trend keeps getting replaced now and then. Thus, in your how to manage a remote team manual, we are also including continuous employee development and training to keep up with the ever-changing market.
8. Employee Engagement
It’s a universal fact that the more engaged your teams are, the better the work and more productivity. One of the ways to increase the engagement of your work-from-home employees is to use good remote team management software.
9. Remote Onboarding
Nowadays, not only there is a preference for working remotely, but also virtually onboarding and training employees. There are many benefits to it including saved expenses as you don’t need to be present at the applicant’s location for hiring. Thus, we are including this one as well in your how to manage a remote team trend.
10. Leadership Evolution
Learning how to manage remote teams effectively also requires you to learn as many new skills and enhance your qualities for better output. For this to work, you need to continuously update yourself like you would your employees.
Best Practices for Managing Remote Teams in 2024
That did it for how to manage a remote team trends section. Moving on, let’s discuss the best practices for effectively managing remote employees for the best output and maximum productivity.
1. Set Expectations
As a remote team manager, you need to set clear expectations for your employees. It’s similar to reaching the destination faster because you have fixed a route. We recommend being transparent with your teams to gain their trust, which will lead to better work performance.
2. Conduct Check-Ins
A part of your how to manage a remote team manual includes conducting regular check-ins. Individual face-to-face connections with your work-from-home employees ensure that they can get support, whenever needed.
3. Weekly Team Meetings
We also recommend conducting weekly team meetings to bring your global teams together regularly. It is also a crucial part of managing remote teams like any other aspect we have discussed so far.
4. Optimize Communication Channels
We have emphasized a lot on improving team communication throughout this post because it is important for better outputs. Thus, you need to include this in your how to manage a remote team manual as well. An essential tip here is to focus on optimizing your communication channels.
5. Manage Distractions
When it comes to optimizing remote team management, it’s also crucial to reduce if not eliminate distractions. Due to your employees being spread across various locations and time zones, many distractions can occur that you may not be aware of. A recommendation here is to set up a distraction-free environment for your teams or teach them how to do it.
6. Allow Independence
Unlike your in-office teams, your remote or in-office teams need some freedom and flexibility to deliver the best work performance. In other words, we need a flexible schedule, minimal monitoring, patience, and empathy. Thus, we included this in your how to manage a remote team guide.
7. Have Patience
As we mentioned before, as a remote team manager, you need to have patience and empathy. Your teams need some preparation time to adjust and coordinate before the start of the day. Plus, there can be many more employee issues, which need to be addressed.
Top 5 Remote Team Management Software for 2024
One of the proper how to manage a remote team ways is to use work-from-home software solutions along with the strategies and best practices. Thus, to help you pick the best-fit solution for your organization, we listed the top 5 options.
- DeskTrack
- Slack
- Jira
- Google Workspace
- Miro
1. DeskTrack
DeskTrack is the best remote work management software you will ever find in the industry. More than simple software for managing your global teams, it’s the most intuitive and customizable employee monitoring, productivity-tracking, time-tracking, and project management integration for your on-site, remote, and in-office employees.
| Best For | Initial Pricing | Rating |
| Best overall | $5.99/user/month | 5/5 |
2. Slack
When it comes to identifying how to manage a remote team in 2024, you can’t ignore Slack. It’s primarily a communication channel software with features including instant messaging, video calls, and file sharing.
| Best For | Initial Pricing | Rating |
| Improving team communication | $8.57/month | 4.7/5 |
3. Jira
What we like about Jira is the seamless integrations it provides with other employee monitoring software and tools. It is one of the best for project management with features including deadline management, task distribution, and progress-tracking.
| Best For | Initial Pricing | Rating |
| Project management | $7.16/user/month | 4.4/5 |
4. Google Workspace
We couldn’t help but include Google Workspace in our how to manage a remote team guide for 2024. More than an online application, it’s the office suite from the popular search engine, which includes spreadsheets, word documents, and presentations. Plus, you can also enhance collaboration with real-time document sharing and editing.
| Best For | Initial Pricing | Rating |
| Real-time document sharing and collaboration | Free | 4.7/5 |
5. Miro
Miro is one of the best remote work management software for optimizing brainstorming and related sessions. It’s a virtual whiteboard, which is also a great choice for planning and reviewing work in collaboration.
| Best For | Initial Pricing | Rating |
| Brainstorming and related sessions | $10/month | 4.7/5 |
Why is DeskTrack the Best Remote Team Management Software?
At the end of our how to manage a remote team guide, let’s leave you with the best software for managing global teams. We recommend DeskTrack for 2024 and beyond. Don’t believe us? The numbers including usage in 100+ nations speak for themselves.
To summarize, this time-tracking, employee monitoring, productivity monitoring, and project management integration provides you with the best features for managing international employees, including:
- The best communication and collaboration tools.
- Synchronized reporting.
- Call logging, app-usage monitoring, and location tracking from a single mobile app.
- Real-time, employee activity monitoring, time-tracking, analysis, and reporting.
- Seamless integrations with the other well-known work-from-home, AI, payroll, and project management tools you use.
- Online and offline activity-tracking, screenshot monitoring, best security measures to prevent insider threats, data leaks, and much more.
Conclusion
We hope that you wrapped your heads around how to manage a remote team in 2024. With these useful insights, the idea was to help you achieve maximum remote work productivity through optimized management for which you require overcoming many challenges. Plus, it is also essential to use the best practices and achieve maximum productivity. Furthermore, it’s also essential to watch out for and adapt to the global workforce trends and keep yourself updated with the ever-changing patterns. Plus, implementing the best software to further enhance and assist with remote work management is crucial. However, you have many more essential tasks to do than go around looking for the best software for managing work-from-home employees. Thus, we recommend following expert shortlists like this one. Still, you may need more than just an international employee management tool. For fulfilling all your employee monitoring needs, DeskTrack is the best software solution.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Q. How to Manage Remote Team Projects?
Ans. Managing remote work projects can be a challenge for any organization. However, with our expert tips, it becomes simple.
- Use collaboration tools.
- Hold regular check-ins and reviews.
- Provide essential tools.
- Implement open communication.
- Ensure transparent documentation.
Q. How to Manage Remote Team Performance Evaluations?
Ans. Managing remote team performance evaluations is quite similar to managing in-office team projects.
- Use transparent KPIs and productivity metrics.
- Gather bird’s eye feedback from each team member.
- Use software with features for increasing employee accountability.
Q. How to Effectively Onboard Remote Employees?
Ans. Onboarding remote employees can be simplified if you follow a proper process.
- Make a structured onboarding process.
- Include:
- Virtual introductions.
- Detailed training sessions.
- Provide easy access to:
- Essential resources.
- Documentation.
Q. How to Ensure Security and Privacy for Remote Teams?
Ans. Security and privacy are the biggest concerns for remote teams. Ensuring this is one of the keys to more success.
- Implement powerful cybersecurity measures including:
- VPNs.
- Encrypted communication tools.
- Provide:
- Regular security training for all team members.
Q. How to Maintain Transparency Within Remote Teams?
Ans. Maintaining 100% transparency and clarity within the teams is also one of the essential considerations for success. With that being said, here are some tips for maintaining clarity within remote teams.
- Each team member must understand how their work contributes to the goals of your organization.
- Clarity fosters accountability plus:
- Trust and strong bonds between your employees.
- Use remote team management software, which can be updated with your business policies, making it easy to share with all your employees.
- Establishing transparency is also a great way to reduce stress.
