Working With Remote teams: The Essentials Guide.

Oh, 2020! This year has demanded so many things from us. Many of us have rediscovered our resiliency and ability to adjust to new situations and push through the many challenges we had no idea we would be facing.

This is, also, without a doubt a challenging time for businesses – especially small- and medium-sized businesses – so I’m touching on a subject that is new for many founders and business owners: how to work with remote teams, and keep them happy, productive, and engaged.

I have been working remotely for almost three years now, and yes, I’m part of the group of people that loves to work at home. Of course, to say that working from home presents no challenges and that managing a virtual team is easy would be a blatant lie.

Whether your company has decided to become a 100% remote business or allow your employees to work from home for a set amount of time each week, as a leader, you need to make sure everyone still feels part of the team. You need to ensure that they still have a place to collaborate with others and that they feel that they’re still working together towards a common goal.

But all of this sounds like more work. Is it really?

It’s not more work per se, but a necessary step every company must take towards improving communications. For a while now, companies have been investing more time and resources to implement better communication initiatives and team-building activities for their employees. Virtual team or not, ensuring that your employees are happy, motivated, and engaged, is not only the right thing to do for your work culture, but it’s also good business.

Just take a look at these facts:

• Companies with high employee engagement are 21% more profitable

• 77% of employees agree that a strong culture allows them to do their best work

• 76% of employees see the impact in productivity and efficiency as a result of a strong culture

• 74% of employees draw a correlation between culture and their ability to serve their customer base

So, going back to keeping remote teams engaged and motivated: Where do you start?

If you’re not familiar with remote communications, I have good news for you: communicating with remote teams is getting easier and more convenient thanks to technology. But I’m not talking about endless Zoom calls (Zoom fatigue is a thing.) You need to find the right balance and the right initiatives that make more sense for you and your team.

Here are some alternatives and tactics you can try with your team. I’ve divided these into two main categories: The team-building initiatives, and the remote team management side. Let’s get started.

Building Strong and Motivated Remote Teams

• Weekly social:

If you were one of those offices who did Friday afternoon pizzas or drinks, you could still recreate this weekly ritual online. Organize a weekly video call and ask your team to bring their favourite snack or drink and have a typical Friday afternoon conversation. Buying your team a gift card for food delivery or sending them something (as you would do at your office) is a nice touch.

Some organizations make this virtual event optional to attend. This means that they give team members the option to participate in the call if they wish to socialize or skip it if they are overwhelmed with work.

• Fun internal newsletters:

Newsletters are a place where you can share relevant news and updates about your company. But you can also make it a fun way to stay connected and make employees feel like they are part of a team. You can also use newsletters to allow others to tell their stories and know each other a little better.

You can start by creating a biweekly or monthly internal newsletter. Ask any team members if they have news they would like to share, create a monthly contest, a quote of the day, or any other idea that resonates with your work culture. Here are some ideas:

1. Fun awards: original quote of the month, best remote work setting

2. Recurring posts: employee of the month, featured pet of the week

3. Milestones: promotions, new hires, work anniversaries, birthdays

4. Recommendations: book, movies, recipes

• Celebrate special days together:

Staying connected in the distance doesn’t have to be a challenge. You only need some creativity to make it work. When I used to work as a social media specialist, I would ask my clients to send me photos of their team members doing a fun activity together. Without fail, those were the kind of posts that generated more engagement on social media. Why? Because we like to relate with other people, discover more of the things that we have in common, and feel part of a group.

Even when you’re not sharing the same office space, you can still celebrate small things together. Using a site like this one, you can quickly find special occasions for each day of the year. Some fun examples of days you can try with your team:

1. Dress your pet day: ask employees to share photos of their pets wearing their favourite attire and publish them internally for the whole team to see.

2. World music day: everyone gets to recommend their favourite music to others, or those who play an instrument can show their talent to the team.

3. World book day: encourage others to share their favourite books with the rest of the team or start an internal book club.

• Try Gamification

Sometimes we could all use extra encouragement to achieve our goals. In general, when we want to accomplish something, we tend to celebrate small milestones. We do things like tracking achievements or engaging in a little healthy competition with friends, and this helps us stay motivated and focused. The same can be applied in a work environment.

Gamification has become an essential tool to keep employees engaged and motivated, and more companies are implementing their own gamification strategies. In fact, the gamification market size in 2018 had a global value of $6.8 billion and is predicted to register a growth of 32%, reaching $40 billion by 2024.

Gamification is not about playing games, but rather, establishing a reward system for a job well done. There are many positive psychological implications of rewarding good behaviours, using positive feedback and celebrating achievements through gamification tools. All of that translates into the magic word: motivation.

With gamification you can:

1. Increase productivity

2. Help employees exercise or focus on their wellness

3. Enhance training

4. Motivate sales teams

How to Manage Remote Teams and Ensure Effective Collaboration

• Clear objectives

Leaving little room for ambiguity is critical when working with remote teams. Since you are not in constant communication as you would be working in an office, ensuring all members understand their responsibilities and tasks is crucial for accomplishing goals and boosting efficiency.

Having short interdepartmental meetings once or twice a week helps everyone stay on the same page. Some companies have found success in daily 15- to 30-minute sessions to update the whole team on what they are working on. They also use this time to ask for advice when feeling challenged by a project.

As a general rule, you should keep your meetings short and to the point. However, this is not set in stone. Some teams, especially those working in tech, might need more frequent meetings than others. Try to find a rhythm that works best for you and your team.

• Organization and planning

There are many tools business owners can use to help their teams collaborate and stay on track with their projects. One of my absolute favourites is Asana.

Asana is an online application that helps teams track and manage projects from beginning to end, and it’s fully customizable. You can create custom projects from scratch with your own steps and processes, or you can use their templates and modify them to suit your specific needs.

You can also assign projects and tasks to employees (removing any room for uncertainty) and set deadlines for every job. Asana also has chat boxes, so any team member can keep others updated about their work progress, share any roadblocks, or communicate changing deadlines and requirements.

Asana also integrates with popular tools such as Microsoft Teams, Salesforce, Adobe Creative Cloud, Slack, Gmail, and many others.

Other tools like Monday, ClickUp, Jira, and Trello can also help you organize and track projects. Choosing the best remote team collaboration tool will depend on your budget, needs, team size, and industry.

• Time Management

Some of the collaboration tools mentioned above offer basic time-tracking abilities. However, time management tools specifically created for that purpose can provide a more comprehensive suite of benefits ranging from customizable reports and budget management to invoicing and timesheets.

Why is time management critical? Remote or not, this is NOT about micromanaging your employees. Time-tracking software can be used to save money, increase efficiencies by evaluating the most time-consuming tasks, and visualize which employees are overburdened and could use some help from others.

Some of the more popular tools include Tempo, Harvest, and Everhour.

As you can see, there are countless ways to keep virtual teams motivated and engaged, that adjust to every industry and budget. You will have to implement the best tools and combination of tactics that work for your particular team.

One main consideration, though, is remembering work is still work. And one of the biggest mistakes managers make when working with remote teams is feeling the need to micromanage them. Many employees find that they are more productive working from home than at an office. If you make an effort to keep them engaged, they will stay motivated to do their job right.

If you can’t trust your employees to do the work while you’re not looking, why hire someone at all?

Do you have any questions? I know I do! How has your experience been with remote work? Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn or send me a message here.