COVID-19 has now compelled many businesses to begin using remote team workers. Yes, and it’s for a good reason. To avoid spreading the infection, it permits employees to isolate themselves from the rest of the workforce. Having a virtual team has other advantages besides enhancing one’s safety. Your firm can benefit greatly from virtual teams in a variety of ways! With distant teams, you’re more likely to locate an abundance of talent that isn’t readily available in your backyard. A flexible jack-of-all-trades might be a lifesaver for small business owners looking for a certain skill set.Â
5 Ways to Grow Your Business with Remote Team
We can’t forget about efficiency: Employees who work from home report feeling more productive in 91% of cases. It’s not a figment of their fancy: A team from Stanford University and Ctrip, China’s leading travel agency, worked together to examine work-from-home productivity. During research on productivity increases for telecommuters, there was a 50% reduction in employee attrition. To be clear: You as a manager are responsible for making your remote workforce as productive and efficiently possible. Even if they’ve never worked at your home office before, they won’t suddenly become efficient, confident, and capable. A person can’t fully utilize their surroundings unless they have the necessary resources and viewpoints. Take a look at these five suggestions for growing your company’s remote workforce.
1. Build Communication Channels
A major benefit of working from home is conducting all of your business interactions over the Internet. You can’t do anything if you don’t share information with the people around you. The best way to keep your team informed about your company’s aims and objectives is to use a single communication channel to keep everyone on the same page about what’s happening and who’s responsible for what. Slack, for example, is one of several useful tools for ensuring clear and safe communication. Slack and other collaboration tools make it easier to keep your teams on the same page. Your firm will become more “departmentalized” if you create channels in Slack. Marketing, sales, operations, financial management, and human resources will all have channels. It is possible to populate each of the channels with important individuals and leaders. There are 5 Reasons Why A Remote Team Building Is Better For Business
Additionally, you can link your work tools like Trello, Google Drive, and Dropbox to the communication flow, ensuring that all parties are on the same page. Suppose you want to streamline your workflow and communication. In that case, Slack can help you do so by allowing your employees to communicate in specific channels rather than creating heir separate conversations.
2. When seeking assistance, be as specific as possible about your encountering issues
People appointed to fix a problem must have a clear understanding of the problem at hand to come up with the best answer. On the other hand, managers are often only briefed on the issue at hand by their remote staff. The situation is like trying to solve a math problem without the assistance of all of one’s colleagues. You’ll receive a better solution if you tell your remote workers about the full scope of the problem you’re seeking to tackle. Provide an overview of the approaches already taken and the stumbling obstacles the company has encountered. These tidbits of information can stoke the fires of creative thought.
3. Be willing to change your mind
Working from home is a novel experience for many people. Those who aren’t tech-savvy, have young children, or work in an area that isn’t well-suited to a home office arrangement may find it stressful and inconvenient. Help your employees adjust to a new way of working in the early stages by being flexible and kind. In the early phases of setting up a work-from-home environment, be mindful of the distractions that normally don’t exist in the workplace. To help your employees get used to working from home, you should be flexible and receptive to whatever happens while doing their regular jobs.
4. Prioritize little, manageable tasks over massive, overwhelming ones
You’ll be more visible to your remote team if you set short-term goals for two days or less. You won’t be left in the dark when a major project is assigned; instead, you’ll be able to monitor your staff’s progress at every single milestone they reach. As a bonus, you can catch problems as they arise, so you don’t have to go back and correct them after the fact. Work backwards from the project’s overall goals to develop smaller targets. What needs to happen before October for your team to be able to put together a prototype? It is possible to define smaller goals for each individual or department, allowing for speedier work without distractions by documenting the procedures and breaking them down. You’ll also reduce the breadth of collaboration.
5. Have a daily huddle to discuss progress
A daily huddle has been proven to be effective due to the remote nature of today’s job. It’s also a time for the company’s CEO or visionary to reaffirm its long-term goals. Having a round-table discussion where all your employees talk about what they’re working on and the difficulties they’re encountering could also be a nice idea. I don’t know if things will get back to normal this year, but in the meantime, focus on your goals and remember how important your staff is to your company’s success.Â
In addition to all this, make sure that your remote teams have a straightforward approach to identifying and reporting issues. They must convey the gravity of the problem, the length of time and money required to remedy it, and the importance of resolving it to the project’s success. Having a backup plan in place if your existing resources aren’t enough to handle the situation is also important. Hire the greatest individuals possible, too. Whether your business specializes in web design or financial planning, this is an absolute must.
Related Article: IT Staff Augmentation – A Model to Extend Your Team
Conclusion:
We think that work and employment have changed since we entered the digital age. There are many strategies to ensure that you hire the greatest people, no matter where they are. They can contribute to increased productivity and a better quality of life for those who experience them. Consider the suggestions in the preceding paragraphs and see if implementing a distributed labour model makes sense for your company.
