More and more companies have considered working with remote teams. While remote working options can save a company a lot of money, especially in terms of workplace investments, there’s no denying that when poorly managed or executed, remote work can become a serious issue in business growth. You can lose your team’s trust, experience slow productivity, and even a drop-in staff motivation. In some cases, allowing staff to work remotely has been linked a decrease in the overall customer satisfaction. The question is simple: How can you best bring remote work without putting your business at risk?
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Is a remote team right for you?
Is remote working right for you?
Before deciding to shrink the workplace, it’s important to consider whether going remote is really the right solution for your team. A remote team and an office team are two different kettles of fish. When with an office, you can pick an advantageous location for your employees and your customers, a remote team can be spread across an entire country, or across the world if you choose to work globally. The matter of location becomes secondary, and it’s not a successful decision for every kind of business. Productivity is another key concern. Some roles are better left in an office while others can thrive from working at home. Additionally, you can arrange a workplace to support your team’s productivity, by adding a rest area, which can be difficult to reproduce in a home environment.
#1. Get the right tech
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When building a remote team, you need to establish a network environment that is safe and enables your employees to connect easily to be able to perform everyday tasks. Consequently, it’s easy to understand that remote work means customizable cloud computing – you can find more here about the configuration of a simplified secured network. You also need to add collaborative tools that let your team chat and engage throughout the day as if they were all in the same office.
#2. Learn to trust your teams
A common complaint from managers about remote work is that they can’t see whether their employees are working. It’s time to wake up and step out of the micromanaging approach before it eats your business away. According to this article, it turns out that people who work outside the office are not lazing around. They work longer hours than their office colleagues and are more productive. However, they don’t work 8 to 5: They’ve chosen remote work for the flexibility, which means that they fit their work around their personal life. In short, don’t call them at 8 am to check on them.
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Micro Manager Battle from the Lego movie (now that’s a fetching micro manager!)
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#3. Create work rituals
Just because your team is remote doesn’t mean you can’t have a workplace culture. Have a look here at what these remote experts say about their team culture: It comes in everything they do. By using collaborative tools, businesses can create a cyber workplace culture around appropriate rituals such as call conferences, open environment where people can trust each other and a shared sense of accountability.
If the remote work life is for you, make sure to keep an open mind as you engage in this world of open but secured tech communications. It’s not only a new way of working, but it’s also a new way of thinking about your company.