How to Effectively Manage a Team in a Remote Environment
“Work” is not necessarily a “Place!” This was one of the most important takeaways of 2020 and what COVID-19 has introduced to businesses embodied in an unprecedented situation where social distancing and lockdown were enforced by governments almost all over the globe.
Work is no longer a place! Work moved along the process with people to their homes. And despite remote working from homes is not a new thing, it came as new to most people who knew work as their desk and their office at their building.
While this transition could be challenging for some employees who did not experience working remotely before this time that we are all experiencing, it is definitely much harder on managers who are required to normalize the situation and ease it on their team members. However, there is always a way to get through tough times.
The following are some points that managers can contemplate to ensure a maximized employee engagement in a remote working situation:
- Stay Connected: The shift that happened suddenly from a 9 to 5 shift to working remotely from home is not an easy shift. Employees can feel somewhat lost and they can go demotivated. What makes it even harder on people is the part where no one knows how long this setup should be going on. Such change from working at the office to working remotely comes with massive challenges when it comes to internal communication.
One good way to keep employees engaged and keep work flowing is to stay connected; you can invest in collaboration tools and video conferencing applications that help facilitate communication. Specify a virtual channel where employees can gather and share personal and professional updates. This way the team stays connected and they are encouraged to update each other and work together.You can take virtual coffee breaks with your team members in a video call and socialize to stay connected and stay away from being isolated.
- Strong Communication: In unprecedented times like the ones brought by the pandemic, it is essential for organizations to establish strong managerial communication on regular basis, either on a daily, weekly, fortnightly or depending on the updates available. By creating an information log that keeps employees updated with everything that has to do with the pandemic. This information log/HUB should include the instructions and regulations by the World Health Organization, FAQs. As well, it should entail the organization’s current policies and protocols that have to do with the pandemic and the steps it takes to limit the outbreak of the virus. It is also helpful to add links to official local entities that employees could turn to in case of emergency. It is also important to communicate transparently and assure employees to stay in touch over this hub and refrain from spreading rumors.
- Setting Clear Goals: setting clear goals, KPIs, and deliverables are key to measure results and track outcomes when working remotely. No matter how teammates are working apart, they are all working toward specific goals, with specific measures. And with the ease of virtual connection, it is easy to use one of the collaboration or instant messaging tools to stay connected and in the loop. While it is always important to schedule regular meetings for the team members to share their updates, it is also important to specify some time to share some non-work-related discussions.
- Inspire Learning and Personal Growth: one of the most decisive factors that employees take a job based on or even stay in an organization based upon is how keen the organization is on their employees’ personal growth and development. In special times like this brought by the repeated lockdowns, the employees find themselves with an abundance of time that they are getting due to not having to go through to commute to and from the offices. With the individual need for everyone to further develop and learn more, an organization can ensure their employees’ engagement by introducing a wide variety of training programs based on every individual’s needs. With the current situation, many companies have found it beneficial to invest in e-learning platforms so their employees could upskill and develop remotely.To help release the stress of staying at home, you can promote non-work-related courses, such as learning how to play an instrument, or how to paint, or anything that can positively help the release.
- Redefine Accountability: one of the most important and most effective ways to manage a team remotely and to rather keep them engaged is to reinforce positive accountability. And accountability here means: “expecting people to act responsibly for making things right,” rather than “pinning blame on people when things go wrong.” Such stance and perspective when adopted by managers and with robust communication, employees, in the remote setting, are willing to perform at their best and go beyond expectations. Because in such unprecedented times, they feel that they are all working together to see what is wrong and work on fixing it, rather than carrying the burden of taking the blame of who did what.
While the whole world is still dealing with an unprecedented and yet unknown situation, staying home seems to be the solution and it seems to stay for a while. And for businesses to keep going, they need to keep their number one asset, their people.
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