Remote Team Management: Top 5 Challenges & How to Overcome Them

Hiring a remote team is always a better option compared to building an in-house team in most aspects. But, managing a remote team is always a tough job. If you can’t manage your remote team, things will be messy. You will have many challenges like communication gaps, lack of productivity, isolation, governance issues, etc. To have the benefits of hiring a remote team, first, you need to learn how to manage a remote team. Then, you must remove the barriers creating distance between you and your team and keep your team engaged. Here are the top 5 challenges of remote team management and tips to overcome them to get the best output from your team.

Communication Gap

When managing a remote team, the first obstacle you will face is a lack of communication with your team. When working with your in-house team, it’s easy to communicate with them. Another thing is that human eye contact, voice tone, and face-to-face interaction are always helpful in understanding emotion. You are going to miss them both. You have to communicate with your team members individually, while you can communicate with them when you are working on-site. So, you might be thinking, how can you overcome the communication gap? Well, you need to be compassionate about your team members. Everyone has their tone, language, and style to communicate. You have to respect them all. Try to engage them all with a video call at least once daily. It will give you eye contact, facial expressions, and more interaction with your team. In addition, you can use google meet, zoom, or skype to communicate with your team.

Monitoring & Governance

As your team members are out of your sight, it’s not possible to monitor them directly. Monitoring and governance are essential to maintain discipline, track progress, and finish the work within the deadline. When your project depends on a remote team, you must find a better way to monitor and govern them. First, you need to set a number-based goal. For example, if you want to track the performance of your graphics designer, set them a goal that you have to complete 5 static and 2 dynamic visuals in a day. Now, it doesn’t matter what they have been doing, have a meeting with them at the end of the day and find out if he/she has done the tasks. This will make things easier for both you and your team. Setting a clear goal and guideline is always important for remote team management.

Team Collaboration

Team collaboration is a must when you are working together on a project. Suppose you are maintaining digital marketing that includes a graphics designer, content writer, and SEO Specialist. Now, your content writer has to follow the instructions of your SEO specialist to optimize the content he is writing. On the other hand, your graphic designer has to follow the instructions of your content writer to prepare their design according to the content. Now, if they can’t collaborate with them, you can’t expect them to give you the best output. So, overcome the team collaboration issues, and make the communication between your team members easier. Give them the chance to discuss and understand each other. When working with a remote team, your team members might be from different locations and cultures. You can appoint a scrum master to help them and create a better understanding between them.

Security Issues

Information security is essential. Your team members working in your organization hold sensitive information about your business and clients. Any data breach or hack might cost you money, reputation, or clients. Even in the worst-case scenario, you might lose them all. Even if they are honest and loyal, remember information is stored in their devices and wifi networks. Therefore, you need to train your employees about information security. Instruct your employees not to share information with their friends, not to share their devices with anyone, to use two-factor authentication for their accounts, and avoid using public wifi when they are doing their office work. You can appoint a cybersecurity expert to monitor any security breaches and train your remote employees regarding security issues.

Isolation

Human beings are social. Social life and surroundings have a lot of impact on them. When working remotely, they don’t have much opportunity to build relationships with their colleagues. A strong relationship between colleagues is essential for mental health. As remote workers work from home, they have little chance to create a social life. This might lead them to depression and demotivate them about their job. To avoid such situations:

Create virtual groups to engage your employees with each other to build relationships between themselves.
Let them spend time virtually & give them space to understand each other.
Instead of building a team, build a family. It will bring you long-term benefits.

Remote Team Management Tools

To manage your remote team, engage them, and bring out the best in them, there are some fantastic tools to help you. These tools will make things easier for you to communicate with your team, track their performance, and project updates. So let’s have a look at those tools. For Regular Communication: Slack, MS Teams, Skype

For Project Management: Asana, Trello, Jira

For Meetings: Google Meet, Zoom

CRM: Bitrix24, Wrike

How to Keep Your Remote Team Engaged

When working with a remote team, it’s essential to keep them engaged. Without their engagement, you are not going to get your expected output. Let’s have some idea on how to engage them.

Be friendly with your team members. When you are friendly, they will feel free to share their problems and thoughts with you. Ultimately, it will create more engagement and reduce the communication gap.
Treat them like your family. Instead of building a team, build a family. Make them feel that they are a vital part of your organization. It will motivate them to give their best.
Take care of your employees. Always try to get informed about your employees’ health and other issues. Helping them with those issues will keep them engaged.
Appoint Scrum Master. To take care of your employees’ mental health and keep them motivated, appoint a scrum master.
Avoid micromanagement. It kills productivity. Instead, define your ultimate goal and let your team work with their freedom.
Arrange team building activities at least twice a month. To know more about team building activities, read this article.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q-1: Is the remote team more efficient?

Ans: If you can manage, a remote team is definitely more efficient than an in-house team. According to some statistics, working remotely can boost productivity by up to 55%. Apart from that, a remote team is cost-effective too. Read this article to know more about the benefits of remote team hiring.

Q-2: How to motivate your remote team?

Ans: Take care of their mental health, value their feedback, appreciate their work, be friendly with them, make yourself available when they need help, and always keep in communication.

Q-3: How can a manager help remote employees?

Ans: Always get connected with your team, understand their challenges of remote working, give their required tools, specify their day-to-day tasks, specify your goals, and Follow up with them always.

Q-4: How to increase the productivity of your remote team?

Ans: Give your team proper training, give them updated tools they need, define your expectations with facts and figures, don’t give them extreme workload, & avoid micromanagement.

Q-5: What are some best practices for remote team management?

Ans: Always keep connected, build relationships virtually, set clear objectives, try to be flexible, appreciate their excellent work, and value their feedback.

Final Thoughts

Appointing a remote team for your company is a better choice regarding productivity, expenses, sustainability, and other issues. But, managing a remote team is not easy. It would help if you had a lot of effort and workforce to maintain them. So, instead of building a remote team by hiring them from freelancing sites, hire a managed team for your project. Then, you don’t need to take on the challenges and hassles of managing your team. The hiring company will take care of everything needed to manage the team. TechCare is one of the best remote-managed team providers around the world. It provides a vetted and experienced tech team for your project. They will take care of your team and guide it according to your needs. Contact them for any queries regarding your remote team management.