The internet is such an important and useful tool that many businesses are quickly learning to use it to their full advantage. One thing that has emerged recently is hiring remote workers, or employees who collaborate online with other team members who are in other cities or countries. It allows businesses to hire talent from all around the world, save travel costs, and offer employees a more flexible work schedule. These are our top tips for managing a remote team:
Have A Communication Plan
The most important tip for helping manage your dispersed team members is to make a plan for communicating. Make sure all the team members have clear expectations and a set schedule of how they will interact, such as email, video conferences or through a cloud-based communications platform, like Slack.
Encourage Collaboration With Other Members
Running a remote team can have its benefits, but it can also be difficult to keep track of everyone. One way to help manage a team that’s not based in one central office is to make sure they are collaborating with each other, as much as possible, rather than trying to go off by themselves to complete tasks.
Provide A Solution For Online Chat
As a manager of a remote team, utilize the explosion of chat based technology that’s available to you. Create a chat-room, instant messenger application, or even Facebook private group that all the team members can access at any time. This will help you manage your team by making sure that everyone stays connected and everyone’s ideas are voiced.
Centralize All Work With A Project Management System
A project management system, like Asana, helps organize important documents, timelines and project information that needs to be dispersed across all team members. This type of system will allow you and your team the ability to keep all important information together and organized. It can also be a location for storing and sharing files in an online area that’s secure.
Make Meeting In Person A Priority
When possible, make meeting periodically in person with your team a priority. Face to face, in person meetings as a team can be a great way for them to bond and connect personally – which projects will often reap the benefits from!
The next time you and your remote team come together in person consider meeting at one of AMA’s Executive Conference Centers in Atlanta, New York City, San Francisco or Washington D.C. Perfect locations for team retreats, project meetings, and more – for details on our convenient meeting spaces click to connect with us.