When the pandemic first made landfall in North America, remote work seemed like a temporary solution for many companies. However, as the health crisis persists through the summer and beyond, businesses are realizing that their temporary remote situations will need to be extended far into the future. Some companies like Twitter, for example, are making their work from home options permanent.
If you’re managing a remote team or running a business with a remote workforce, you have unique challenges that you must navigate. For example, how do you handle different time zones? How do you ensure that your workers have adequate channels of communication to address concerns or ask questions? How do you track project progress and juggle deadlines? Remote work can make the answers to these questions significantly more thorny — but, it doesn’t have to be that way.
Below, we’ll explore how you can succeed as a remote leader and the technology you can leverage while managing a diverse remote team.
Consider tweaking your benefits package
If you’re a business owner, one of the easiest ways to attract candidates is to craft a comprehensive, thoughtful benefits package that addresses things like retirement savings, medical coverage, and PTO. But when your company is fully remote, it might make sense to change up what you’re offering your employees.
For instance, instead of catered lunches, consider giving your employees a monthly stipend to put toward their internet bills or utilities. Since they’re working from home, they’ll be dealing with their own overhead costs. Internet and electricity costs are much more expensive if for a shared office space — so, it makes sense to take some of those savings and give them to your workers in the form of a utility stipend.
You may even want to consider offering trust or will help or spousal death benefits, to give your employees peace-of-mind that their families will be okay should the worst-case-scenario happen.
If your business structure can handle it, you may also want to allow your workers to have a flexible working schedule. Whether that means your workers start a little earlier or later or allows them to work a 4/10 schedule, flexibility helps your employees achieve a work-life balance — this is especially important given the global pandemic and the stress associated with it.
Create a remote work policy
If working remotely is still new for your team, it’s worth the effort and time to establish rules and guidelines for working from home. For example, you can specify that their internet connection must be secured (rather than public WiFi) or that they must respond to messages or client emails within a certain time (4 hours or one business day, for example).
A remote work policy allows your employees to understand expectations. You can’t expect workers to read your mind or be able to anticipate something that they’ve never received clear instructions on. So, a written policy that your workers can refer to should any questions arise is a great idea to avoid miscommunication and frustrations.
Use emails and other forms of internal communication systems
Remote work teams need great communication. To help facilitate conversation and collaboration with your team, focus on two clear channels of communication: email and internal messaging systems. Email is a great way to officially record requests, send deliverables, and creates a “paper trail” for important ongoing business decisions.
But email isn’t always an effective way to get answers immediately or get advice. That’s where an internal communication system comes in. Slack is a great example of a piece of software that provides instant communication for quick questions or to make announcements.
Use project management software
Project management software is every leader’s secret weapon when it comes to unifying a diverse remote team. Whether you use Monday, Asana, or Trello — project management software gives you a bird’s eye view into your team’s productivity and allows you to manage all of your competing priorities. Many project management systems also include internal messaging so you can leave comments or instructions on tasks.
Nurture a rich virtual culture
Even when you have an in-person office, creating an inclusive and supportive company culture can be difficult to accomplish. When you’re remote, it’s even hard to maintain a positive work culture. Luckily, there are some great ways to foster a sense of communal belonging — even with a team flung across the country or world. Here are a few activities you can try out with your team to encourage bonding and trust between employees:
- Virtual happy hour: Sit back, grab a drink, and try out a virtual-friendly game like Pictionary or do a few rounds of trivia over a video conference call.
- Slack channel dedicated to pets: Even if you’re not a fan of people, almost everybody loves animals. Encourage your team to share pictures of their pets (or their dream pets) on a dedicated Slack channel.
- MTV Cribs: Even if your remote team never sees each other in person, you can still invite each other into your homes in a video activity modeled after “MTV Cribs”. Allow your workers to showcase their homes and talk about a few pieces of decor.
- Typing speed race: If you want to include a little bit of healthy competition in your team bonding, consider holding a typing speed race. To make it even more fun, you can split up your departments into teams and do this typing test “relay-style”. But remember, make sure everyone is taking the same test so it’s fair!
- Introduce new team members: Hired a new remote team member? Give them a few questions to look over and introduce them over a video call. Then, ask them relevant questions so the rest of the company learns a little bit about him or her.
Takeaways: Leadership Through the Ups and Downs of Remote Work
Being a leader isn’t always easy, especially when you’re suddenly in charge of a large remote work team. With that said, good leaders are flexible as much as they are strong, and you can learn to adapt to your new challenges. Using the tips outlined in this article, you can support and help your remote workforce get through any and all obstacles.
Noelle Fauver is a contributing editor for 365businesstips.com. She has a B.A. in Communication Studies from California State University, Northridge and experience in marketing, copywriting, and small business management.