How To Work Effectively With A Remote Team, The Right Way

The sudden change in global affairs has likely created new challenges for you and your team, making it hard to keep up with what matters most to your business — your customers and employees.  

With many people forced into shelter-in-place by the current situation, the question of how to survive this pandemic has suddenly morphed to how to work effectively with a remote team. 

 

Working with a Remote Team? Why now is more important than ever to build a strong work culture 

Businesses around the world are affected by closures, buyers rethinking their spending and priorities, suppliers being slowed down, a huge market drop, and consumers wondering what will happen. 

Many people are working from home for the very first time and are most likely experiencing something much different than what they have at the office and even what they imagined WFH would be like. 

This includes having a designated workspace with the right technology; ways of dealing with kids, pets, and other potential disruptions; and a schedule that allows for the social contact and stimulation that ordinarily comes from being in a workplace with others. 

There is a feeling of uncertainty and it affects everyone in some way. How is it affecting your team? 

How to effectively work with your remote team? 

Whether you are in a high impact area or one that is yet to be hit by the virus, it is important to be prepared with a remote work policy that works for your business.  

Here are four tips on setting an effective work culture that can help operations run smoothly during this uncertain time.   

• Start off with regular and transparent communication (with your employees) 

Most people spend their days near their boss, meaning communication is easy and effortless. But that is all out the window with remote work. Communication breakdown is even more likely if your workplace isn’t used to remote working. 

If your employees aren’t informed and they do not understand what work culture they need to adapt, communications outside the organization (specifically with you customers) will become more difficult. 

You need to keep them updated via a virtual channel, email or even a Microsoft Teams channel. Ensure that they know how certain issues were resolved such as the ‘Shelter-in-place’ mandate. An organization must be transparent with their employees to keep the communication smooth – even if you don’t have all the answers. ALWAYS MAKE TIME FOR SMALL TALK. 

Likewise, an organization must be in touch with the customers and be proactive in sharing business updates with them. 

Read more: Communicating through the Coronavirus Crisis by Harvard Business Review 

• Be consistent with your one-on-one sessions (and don’t cancel them) 

There is a lot going on right now that can cause stress, anxiety, and frustration for you and your team. Whether you implement it as an organization or as a team manager, your one-on-one sessions are the best place to help support your team through all of this. 

While remote employees can miss out on a lot of things, they also miss out on the kinds of information that would naturally spread across an organization. 

Pick a time that always works for you and your remote employees. Make these sessions recurring on your calendar – like Microsoft Calendar. Go for video calls, use gifs and emojis to convey the right emotion. If you absolutely must, RESCHEDULE IT, but never cancel a 1-on-1.  

• Establish goals for employees (and don’t forget about their careers)  

Set clear goals and KPIs for employees who are not working in the office, so they have a strong sense of purpose. Setting goals motivates people who start to lose interest in their work without a stimulating environment and face-to-face interaction. For example, a remote worker can be asked to resolve a certain number of customer queries within a day or close a certain number of sales. 

You can also use project management tools like Trello to keep track of their tasks. Ensuring they make progress on their goals for growth avoids confusion or frustration. 

If you follow through on the recommendation to have an hour for one on ones with your remote employees, you will also have plenty of time to talk about their CAREER DEVELOPMENT during that time. 

“Alone, we can do so little; together we can do so much.” – Helen Keller

 

• Choose the right tools and technology (for security and automation) 

The rise of remote work might be unavoidable at this point. But allowing remote work can benefit not only your employees, but you as a manager and the organization.  

Equip your employees for success. Invest in technology that is designed to enable remote work such as instant chat, secure document sharing, automated group management, and web conferencing tools etc. These ensure effective collaboration and valuable face time which makes employees feel like they are part of a team. 

Above all, these tools should offer you SECURITY, AUTOMATION, and smooth TASK DELEGATION – such as password reset or profile management, data access, and group management. 

How can GroupID help in Active Directory Group Management? 

GroupID by Imanami is the leading Active Directory Group Management Software focusing on Security Groups and Distribution List Management Automation. It comes with a suite of modules like Self Service and Password Center that work best for security and automation for seamless group management.  

Our goal is to help as many businesses as possible navigate the shifts in customer demands while adapting to a remote workforce. Here are a few ways you can use our IAM solution to minimize business disruption and IT involvement during this challenging time: 

• Enable end–users to update their own profile information and attest to their organizational structure 
• IT can provide group management capability to end-users while keeping control 
• Save time by reducing IT involvement and delegating capability to end-users 
• Enjoy configurable password reset solution for additional security 
• Maintain distribution and security groups using smart groups 

• Enable automation to empower IT to establish policy and workflow around how groups should be configured 
• Groups are automatically updated anytime user information changes 
• Delegate end users to manage their own attributes, change passwords, and manage workflow requests through a customizable web interface into Active Directory 

Read more: When one plus one is greater than two 

Even though for the moment, the situation seems indefinite, there is a silver lining here.  

Because out of uncertainty comes opportunity. Those who adapt, those who stay optimistic, and those who look for opportunities are those who survive.