Dear Justin,
In the past week, our entire workforce has been sent home. I manage a small team and I’m feeling a bit at a loss on how to manage a remote team and keep them afloat, positive, and accountable given the new normal. Our team is used to working face-to-face and seems our success has centered on that dynamic. Any advice for me on how to manage a remote team? Especially when everything feels uncertain and stressful?
Signed,
Adjusting to a New Normal
Dear Adjusting,
Thank you for your relevant and timely question. Based on the events of the past several weeks, every reader can relate to feeling disoriented and uncertain. I admire the fact that you’re thinking not only about your own personal journey, but also the impact to your team. A silver lining to monumental events like COVID-19 is that it allows people to show their true colors, and your leadership is shining through.
I’ll give you some very actionable tips on how to manage a remote team, tips that can make a big impact on the health, happiness, and productivity of your team. To your question about keeping people afloat and positive, I’d love to hear from our readers who likely have great ideas for moving through and past the stress and fear we might be experiencing today. Please share your suggestions in the comment section below.
The data from our recent survey on the impacts of the COVID-19 virus in the workplace was interesting. Here are some highlights:
- Most organizations have taken quick action to keep their employees safe and healthy.
- More than 1 in 5 employees don’t feel their team members have good enough collaboration habits to work effectively from home.
- Employees say that 1 in 5 leaders are either very unprepared or unprepared to manage remote teams.
A previous study we did shows that the difficulty of managing remote teams is not unique to a quarantine. Distance has a way of magnifying challenges in relationships. And that’s what our research shows. Specifically, people who work from home have a significantly harder time addressing challenges. When they had concerns, 84 percent of remote employees said their concerns dragged on for a few days or more, and 47 percent admitted to letting them drag on for a few weeks or more. Remote employees also reported seeing larger, negative impacts on results like productivity, costs, deadlines, morale, stress and retention than their onsite colleagues.
The key, as you might suspect, comes down to communication. The health and success of any team is determined by how quickly people say something when they see something or feel a concern. Teams that can hold candid and effective dialogue—minus the emotions and politics—experience higher morale and team cohesion.
And, you’re right in assuming managers play a particularly important role. We’ve found that when managers model stellar communication, especially when it’s really transparent and timely, the rest of the team follows suit. The less managers leave their people guessing or wondering, the better. You can’t overestimate the influence a manager has on his or her team’s ability to engage in dialogue and create a collaborative and healthy culture—especially when distance and technology are suddenly part of the equation.
7 Tips on How to Manage a Remote Team
As a manager of a new remote team, here are seven tips on how to manage a remote team that you can try right away. I realize that some will ask a lot of you, but with some amazing pay off.
- Frequent and Consistent Check-ins. Check in frequently and regularly with remote employees. The cadence of the check-ins can vary from daily to bi-weekly to weekly but should always be consistent and entail a standing meeting or scheduled one-on-one.
- Face-to-Face or Voice-to-Voice. Insist on some face time with remote employees. If in-person meetings are not possible, at a minimum use video conferencing technology or pick up the phone to ensure colleagues occasionally see one another’s face or hear one another’s voice.
- Exemplify Solid Communication Skills. You cannot overemphasize the importance of general, stellar communication with remote teams. Be a great listener, communicate trust and respect, inquire about workload and progress without micromanaging, and err on the side of over-communicating. At times it can be ok to have a conversation over the phone, and then email out the details to confirm people are on the same page with you.
- Explicit Expectations. When it comes to managing remote teams, be very clear about expectations. This is especially important now, because the “rules” of work have suddenly changed. Never leave people in the dark about projects, roles, deadlines etc.
- Always Available. Be available quickly and at all times of the day. Go above and beyond to maintain an open-door policy for remote employees—make yourself available across multiple time zones and through multiple means of technology (IM, Slack, Skype, Email, Phone, Text etc.). Remote employees should be able to count on you to respond quickly to pressing concerns.
- Mix Up the Tech. Try to use multiple means of communication to connect with your remote workers. Don’t just resort to phone or email but get familiar with video conferencing technologies and a variety of services like Skype, Slack, Zoom, GoToMeeting, to name a few. Get skilled at setting up and running meetings using these technologies, as if this was going to be your new reality moving forward.
- Prioritize Relationships. Team building and camaraderie are important for any team and remote teams are no exception. I challenge you to go out of your way to form personal bonds with your remote folks. Use check-in time to ask about their personal life, families, and hobbies. Allow team meeting time for “water cooler” conversation so the whole team can create personal connections and strengthen relationships.
I would love to hear your feedback on how to manage a remote team once you’ve tried some of the above tips. You might also find more ideas and resources here.
Best of luck,
Justin
Thank you for sharing this! I would add one other recommendation. Realize that co-workers with young children may not have childcare options during the day and need to swap focus time with their spouse or housemate. Be flexible and realistic. I also disagree with the ‘always available’ portion as it is still important to have focused time for your family and not feel like you are always at work. Yes, it is important to respond to your team quickly, but not at the sacrifice of having dinner with your family or getting a good night’s sleep! It’s important to care for our mental wellbeing during this unusual time! Thanks again for sharing the ideas.
Great points. I should have clarified that the “always available” tip was focused more on work hours; sometimes remote folks feel like they struggle to even get a hold of their manager during the day. Great clarification on your part. thanks
So grateful you emailed this useful piece out. we’ve gotten a lot of unnecessary junk the last three days and this shone through.
Hi, I recently came across a remote office setup at Remo.co it is a virtual office that allows easy communication while workers are remote and mimics the in office experience. might be worth checking out for some. (no I don’t work for Remo)
Great tip Jennifer. thank you for sharing!
Daily meetings are helpful to stay connected as a team. However, as soon as I’m on the phone, my dogs start barking!
Yes – the dogs! They are SOOOO thrilled to see us home and cannot, for the life of themselves, figure out why we stare at a screen the entire day and/or talk on the ear thingy without engaging them. They likely figure your daily meetings are an invite for their participation too! 🙂
thanks Mari! i love your comment – it probably starts to feel like Pavlov’s dogs 🙂
I find sincere praise goes a long way in times of heightened stress, as well as not taking it personal if someone seems more stressed then usual. I work in payroll for a large employer, and all that you wrote is very helpful.
thanks Mike! I’m glad it was helpful and I really love your addition.
Timely and consistent communication – I promise to update them once I’ve received information and I do, daily. Our prior face to face unit meetings are via Global Crossing and we all talk at some point. My 1x1s with staff – they are provided my cell phone and we talk, not just about what is on their plate but what is going on elsewhere right now and how they are coping (or not coping). I insert humor to keep things light. At the end of an email summary today I acknowledged on this, Day 3 of confinement, that although my pantry was sufficiently stocked, I was already bored of everything in it! I think I’ll start up a recipe sharing with everyone! It was also fun to estimate a decreased water usage at home because we could forgo showers now that we didn’t have to face each other. I’ve received multiple comments back from staff who were appreciative. The pandemic is ultra serious – when I can lead with a smile and help even things out even a little, I’m more than happy to!
You sound like an awesome manager to work for 🙂 thanks for your additional tips here Sacha
We are using ZOOM and Microsoft Teams (which hasn’t been used a lot by most of the staff) to stay connected. Our full staff is 13 full-time and 2 part-time staff. A weekly all staff ZOOM meeting is scheduled, plus I have scheduled bi-weekly meetings with my department. Along with all the great suggestions from Justin and everyone else, I am openly sharing with my staff that I know this is a challenging adjustment. Our desks are not setup the same way, stuff isn’t as easily accessible, and even the chairs we’re sitting in are different. I am encouraging them to get up and move. During their lunch break go outside. It’s easy for us to call or email each other, but I want them to be comfortable reaching out to each other using the video option in Teams. We all need face-to-face contact, or we will really fell isolated. I also wear the HR hat in our office. Today, I encouraged one staff person who is easily stressed to simply take a rest period if she needed. At least in this 2.5 weeks remote working environment, we are not nit-picking our hourly staff’s work time. We have a great staff and trust they are doing the best they can right now.
Thank you, Justin. Relevant, useful and crucial to successfully keep a team connected and informed. Appreciate you sharing the different technologies besides Zoom and Skype. As we experienced today a pause to our check in that lasted 15 minutes before our manager switched to a different platform.
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