How To Effectively Manage Remote Teams & Their Workloads

The work environment has changed significantly in recent years. With a shift to employees working remotely, the stage has been set for new ways of working together to ensure that workers stay connected, productive and satisfied—and that managers can effectively manage their teams. However, the complexities of managing remote teams are not without challenges for leadership.

In this blog, we’ll examine the need to adapt to remote team dynamics, some of the key advantages and challenges of leading remote teams, explore the best practices for remote team management, and discuss the best ways of building a remote working culture.

Why Leaders Must Adapt to Remote Team Dynamics

Because of shifts in the global working environment, many leaders must learn to adeptly manage remote teams. Mastering this skill is crucial for maintaining a competitive advantage in your business and adapting to employee expectations. If managed effectively, this increases the attractiveness of your business to new employees and helps to retain staff.

Key Advantages of Leading Remote Teams

Gaining Access to Global Talent

By implementing strong remote work policies, organisations are not limited by their physical location and are able to tap into a much broader talent pool. Geographical limitations are no longer an obstacle, especially if the business is niche or located in a sparsely populated area where local talent may not be readily available.

Financial Benefits of Remote Work

When implementing a remote team workforce, there are significant cost-saving benefits. Most notably, there is a reduced need for office space and related overhead expenses.

Employee Demand for Flexibility

In recent years, there has been an increasing demand from the workforce for flexible working arrangements. By offering such arrangements, you have greater leverage to attract and retain top talent to work for your business. It also helps to decrease turnover, limiting disruptions and further costs to your business.

Stress Reduction and Remote Work

The ability to work remotely can contribute to a better work-life balance and reduced stress levels among employees. Reduced commute times and associated cost and time savings are big draw cards for many. The flexibility of remote work is also more conducive to managing family commitments.

Challenges of Managing Remote Teams

Communication Hurdles

Good communication is at the core of all team projects, and this becomes more challenging when team members are not together in person. Lack of good communication can lead to frustrations and affect team projects and outcomes. It is important to constantly assess what the ‘blind spots’ are in communication and make adjustments, using a combination of tools such as group chats, video calls, screen sharing tools, emails, and other tools to redress issues.

Building Trust in Virtual Environments

Operating in a virtual environment sidesteps the usual face-to-face working conditions, so establishing trust between team members and managers is more crucial than ever. It’s a matter of getting the right balance between checking in and allowing team members to get on with their work. Setting realistic timeframes and deadlines helps ensure productivity is maintained. Also, ensure that all team members are appropriately trained and comfortable with the virtual work tools they are expected to use to prevent frustrations.

Navigating Time Zone Differences

While having a remote team broadens the geographical location of your employees and gives you access to more talent, managing people across multiple time zones can be a challenge for remote team management. It is important to bear in mind time zones when scheduling tasks and meetings to ensure fairness in workload distribution.

Best Practices for Managing Remote Teams 

Communication

It is necessary to cultivate proactive communication practices to build a cohesive and informed remote team. Instead of just focusing on project outcomes, also focus on optimising communication processes. And most importantly, communicate these to all concerned.

Measuring Team Effectiveness

Naturally, you will need to assess your team's productivity and effectiveness. But rather than focusing on specific activities and tasks, it may be better to steer your attention toward outcomes.

Selecting Appropriate Tools

Many of the challenges of achieving collaboration in remote teams can be rectified by using technological tools that are specifically designed to help manage a virtual work environment. Such tools support communication, collaboration, and security in remote settings.

Goal Setting and Review

It is pertinent to set clear, achievable goals for your remote team so that everyone is clear about expectations regarding their specific role on a project. To keep everybody aligned, schedule regular progress reviews to identify any obstacles and keep everyone informed about the progress of the project as a whole.

Fostering a Healthy Team Culture

Creating a supportive and inclusive team environment that values open dialogue and mutual respect is a great way to foster a healthy team culture. Remaining open to feedback and being flexible to team members' needs also helps to set a healthy, collaborative atmosphere.

Streamlining Onboarding

Effective onboarding plays a critical role in integrating newly hired employees into remote teams. It is essential for them to be thoroughly familiar with your remote team processes, the technologies you use, and the way the existing team operates. This will help them feel welcome and prepared.

Building a Supportive Remote Culture

Promoting Work-Life Balance

Reducing or eliminating the need to commute is a benefit for many employees and promotes a better work-life balance. You can promote this further by enforcing boundaries between work hours and personal time and encouraging your team to take regular breaks.

Continuous Learning and Development

Incorporating ongoing training and professional development for your remote team is important to help everyone stay on top of their game and ensure you retain good talent. Giving access to self-paced online courses is a great way to deliver this training.

Conclusion

The management of remote teams requires an adaptive leadership style, which presents both challenges and opportunities for business leaders. In the longer term, there is a continuous need to evolve strategies as you gain more experience with how you manage a remote team. Meanwhile, you can leverage specialised technology to help you do this.

Leveraging foundU to Enhance Remote Team Management

To help you adapt to remote team working arrangements and meet the ever-changing payroll compliance requirements, there are technological tools you can use that can make these much easier to manage.

foundU is Australia’s only true all-in-one workforce management platform. It brings you streamlined onboarding, scheduling and payroll capabilities that will help you stay on track. These include all aspects of your payroll obligations, such as correct new employee setup, and tracking various types of leave, overtime, penalty rates, updates to minimum award rates, superannuation, and more.  

Optimise Your Remote Operations Today with foundU!

Given the increasing importance of remote work for businesses, perhaps it is time to improve your operations. Find out how the foundU workforce management platform can help you manage remote teams with far greater ease.