Management of remote teams has become a crucial aspect of modern business as more and more companies shift to remote work. Despite its benefits, does have many challenges of remote team management, ranging from communication and collaboration to accountability and trust.
We will address the top challenges faced top challenges of managing remote teams and offer practical solutions for overcoming them in this blog post. We will provide actionable steps for managers to ensure their remote teams are productive, engaged, and successful, from using the right tools to fostering a sense of community. This post will provide you with major challenges and solutions for virtual team management that you need to lead your team to success in a remote work environment, whether you’re a seasoned remote manager or just starting.
What are Remote Teams?
Remote teams comprise employees who work from home or locations other than an office. People working remotely don’t attend offices physically and communicate through hybrid modes.
As the Airtasker.Blog has stated that people working remotely are more productive and constructive and wish to have a more effective work-life balance. Therefore, there are a lot of benefits remote teams have and that have been researched by a lot of platforms.
What is Remote Team Management?
Remote team management means handling a team of people who are working from different locations and without any physical guidance. There are challenges of managing a remote team, because the people working virtually feel a part of something and that they are working for a common purpose.
However, with the right approach and remote work monitoring software, organizations can easily manage remote teams. There are many challenges in managing a virtual team one faces while handling such teams. Sometimes, there is a problem with the internet, net curfews, low productivity, lack of supervision, etc.
The Key Challenges with Solutions of Managing a Remote Team:
People have to understand the problem before they can try to solve it. Being remote team managers, people face challenges managing virtual teams like network issues, lower productivity, etc. Let us look at such virtual team challenges & solutions in detail.
1. Lack of Supervision
Managers feel that employees who work from the office are more productive than those who work from remote areas. Though the statistics show otherwise, sometimes it can be a possibility. In such cases, managers should check if the employees are getting proper managerial help or not. Sometimes because the manager is in the office, it could be hard to contact them. It is the biggest challenge in managing a remote team.
Solution: Supervisors should schedule regular online meetings and should set realistic work deadlines. They should check in between projects etc.
2. Productive Company Culture
Company culture may affect remote workers too. It would be wrong to assume that someone who doesn’t visit offices regularly would be out of office politics. Sometimes, due to miscommunication arises between fellow workers. It is the duty of the supervisor or team leader to make sure that such things don’t affect the work.
Solution: People need to make sure to hire quality people at work. offices should have chill spaces and parties, where colleagues can bond. However, such things should be restricted in work areas. People should behave properly and professionally.
3. Lack of Communications
People get so busy in offices, especially managers and supervisors. It is easy to forget about setting up meetings with remote employees. Sometimes due to internet issues, meetings are not held. Sometimes people don’t check their emails regularly. It may sound more of a lack of personal issue but it is not.
Solution: As managers, you should attempt to communicate with your workers regularly. To enhance work productivity, managers can discuss projects through PowerPoint presentations. They can also schedule weekly or daily calls of just 5-15 minutes. It would help to keep the employees in check. It would also help people build trust.
4. In-person Get-togethers
People may be working regularly from remote areas, but in-person meetings are necessary. Managers or team leaders should make sure it is scheduled properly. You can plan monthly or even yearly meetings or conferences.
Solution: It could also be a yearly trip where all the teams could come together. These trips would help to get the remote team together. You can also make it a rule that people who are working remotely have to visit the office at specific times a month or year. This also builds a promising bond between the team and managers.
5. Productivity Check of Employees
Managers and Supervisors should have a steady record of employee performance with them. They should know how much time they are taking to complete a project. If they are consistent with their work or not.
Solution: Supervisors can also set up a daily 15-minute check-up meeting to understand the work dynamic of the whole team. They should focus on adequate communication between remote employees. It would help them keep in check. Moreover, managers can also set strict deadlines for certain projects and could also put people of the same locality in a team. So that they can easily meet up and complete projects timely, also you can use the best productivity monitoring software to improve employee productivity.
6. Hiring Quality Employees
Everyone hires people after considering their CV and their confidence. However, while selecting your remote team, one has to be extra cautious. You should hire people who can self-manage them when necessary. As a manager, you might get busy in your home office, or the team can’t just contact you due to the internet curfew.
Solution: In such situations, you need someone who can take charge and extra responsibility and won’t let these situations affect the work. Hire attendants who have experience in remote work, have good communication skills, and show a high level of commitment quality. “Since the list of potential candidates that would fit your company can be very long when hiring remote candidates, try to check for the best professional PEO companies around the world to help you with the staffing process to find an employee that best fits to your company. “
DeskTrack is the Best Remote Employee Monitoring Software
DeskTrack can be the best option for your organization to keep track of your remote employees’ work and performance. It is not easy to track the working hours and presence of remote employees at their work by being away from them.
Therefore, DeskTrack helps with automated time logs from the start of the work up to the end. It is the best time tracking software to let you know the exact working hours with the ideal time and away time from the system.
Managers can easily track employee work progress and performance with real-time insights and screenshots. Some of the main features that can benefit every type of industry to improve their productivity and employee efficiency in multiple aspects:
- Automatic attendance and login/logout time
- Creates transparency among the workforce
- Work time utilization
- Boost employee engagement
- Remove distractions
- Track projects and tasks
With these features, a company can effortlessly track and monitor their remote employees and get the data of actual work done throughout the day.
The Final Words
Now if you have understood the challenges of managing a team remotely with the remote team management tips and solutions, it can help your business bring immense advantages. But solving the hindrances on the way to that achievement demands patience, time, and loads of practice.
The main point is to make your employees and team productive and healthy towards their work whether they are working from the office or home.
Therefore, good communication is the most effective way to manage your team, whether it’s in the office or remote team. The only difference is hybrid teams shifted to online communication channels.
Also, being a manager, it is very important to keep track of your team and their daily work patterns and performance to make them feel engaged and trustable towards you and the organization.
