How to Improve Productivity For Remote Teams in 2021

Thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic, the culture of ‘work from home’ is thriving expeditiously worldwide in the present time. Though, it seems more convenient to do your job while sitting at home. In reality, there are several challenges that remain hidden. The biggest challenge for employees remains to dodge distractions and stay productive in their home environment. Whereas employers and managers have their own issues of remotely managing the teams in an efficient manner. To overcome this issue, task management software are being utilized by the managers. By leveraging the team task management software, many challenges can be overcome more productively. 

Through this blog, we will discover some of the best strategies that will help you improve remote team management. Let’s start!

Best Strategies You Need to Follow to Improve Remote Team Management in 2021

The use of the right strategies can empower you and your team to work constructively in all kinds of situations. Hence, leverage these below-given strategies to manage your teams remotely efficiently. 

Establish the Right Set of Goals and Expectations

Making your remote teams understand the companies short-term and long-term goals is extremely crucial. Discuss the organization’s goals with your teams and try to align their interest with the organization’s larger goals. It must be clear in the mind of every employee what is expected of them and how their work contributes to the company’s growth. 

Clarify any expectations of the employees regarding availability, working hours, e-mail correspondence, meetings schedule, etc., so that they do not have any wrong doubts and are focused on the work from the very start.  

Encourage Transparency

Encouraging transparency is one of the biggest keys to improving remote employee management. Employees may lose interest in their job or the company’s value as they no longer are physically visiting the office. Hence, it is imperative to make them feel a part of the company. This can be done by making them participate in every little decision of the company or updating them on crucial business information. 

Team leaders and high-level management can openly appreciate deserving employees for their hard work. In addition, sessions can be conducted where employees may address their concerns from management so that they get a sense of involvement within the organization. 

Practice Regular Communication 

Communication plays a major role in effectively managing the teams remotely. Regular communication ensures that you are aware of your team’s work progress. Besides, communicating with them will not let them take you for granted, and they will stick to their work more attentively. 

Nowadays, there are multiple task management software and team task management tool that promote effective communication between employers and their teams. You can use the following tools to stay in touch with your teams: 

• Online Calls:

  Skype, Zoom, Zoho, etc., are some of the most popular platforms that let you connect with your teams for meetings and one-to-one calls. 

• Instant Messaging:

  Companies with large workforces may not get to call their teams regularly. Hence, they can make use of instant messengers for day-to-day messaging with their teams and employees. Separate chat rooms can be made for different teams, and accordingly, communication could be carried out for daily tasks, challenges, and file-sharing purposes. 

• Screen Sharing:

  It is an effective way of demonstrating or explaining a new project to your teams. Verbal communication sometimes isn’t enough to make teams understand the core of the project. Therefore, sharing your screen can make your team thoroughly understand the project. 

Motivate Teams Through Feedbacks 

Constructive criticism and positively addressed feedback are the backbones of team growth. The right comment made at the right time by a person remotely managing a team can make a world of difference. For instance, an appreciation given by a manager to his team’s employee for a well-executed job can raise the level of confidence for the employee. 

Furthermore, he/she will try to perform their duties more efficiently. When working remotely, schedule review meetings regularly with your teams to promote healthy work relationships and make them feel a sense of belonging. 

Also Read: 5 Ways to Help Your Team Reduce Injuries

Implement Tools to Track Team Activity

Being familiar with your team activity is part of every manager’s job. In order to complete work on time and achieve deadlines, it is important that you must have a track of the work of every team member. To successfully do so, make use of any task management software that can help you streamline and control the tasks of your team. 

A good team management software must comprise of the following features:

1. Task planning
2. Time tracking
3. Collaborations with different teams
4. Task prioritization 
5. Report generation
6. Visualization of reports 

Create a Weekly Session To Balance Out Distractions

One needs to understand that distractions while working remotely from home are far more prevalent than working in an office environment. Whether it is your kids, social media, or any family responsibility, the distractions will keep coming throughout the day for your team members. 

As a team manager, you must acknowledge these issues with your teams and provide them with a way to balance these out. Here are a few tips on how you can successfully do it. 

• Be Open to Share the Distractions:

  You and your team must not be afraid of disclosing their distractions within their team. Only when they will feel free to discuss their struggle with everyone can they get an optimal solution. 

• Create a Separate Chat Group for the Distractions:

  Let your team know how cool a manager you are by creating a dedicated messaging channel for everyone’s distractions. To avoid hampering the office work by distractions, give your team members a place to openly discuss and laugh about their distractions.

Give Priority to the Outcome Rather than the Activity

Monitoring the team’s activities and keeping them at their toes to do their job may seem productive at the start, but with time you will realize this way leads to more exploitation than efficacy. 

Hence, you need to be focused more on the outcomes of the teams rather than just monitoring their activities. If they are able to produce the desired outcomes and weekly goals for the company, then whatever strategy they may be implying must not concern you. 

Working from home is certainly quite different from working from the office, and every individual has a unique way of executing their job. So you must trust your team and keep a check on if they are or aren’t able to achieve their given goals.

Be Flexible with Teams and Encourage Learning New Skills 

Being flexible with your teams when they are working remotely is essential to develop a healthy employer-employee relationship. Nitpicking in the team’s work and micro-managing them can lead to annoyance among your team members. 

So be as flexible as you can and always give them the benefit of the doubt to encourage honesty and loyalty for the company. Moreover, once a week or month, create a session where everyone can learn or share any skill outside their office work.  

Wrapping Up

Right management practices and developing a productive workplace that caters to the needs of every team member is essential in managing teams remotely. The listed strategies and tips above will surely help you manage your teams more effectively and maintain performance outputs from the team. Good Luck!