Overcoming 4 Big Challenges in Managing a Remote Team

Do you hire remote workers or let your employees work remotely? If so, then you are in the growing majority. The trend of hiring remote workers is becoming more popular day by day. Of course, the reason behind this growing popularity among employers, as well as employees, in recent years is quite evident. If your company has a mobile workforce, you can save money, both on tech equipment and office space, while increasing the overall productivity of your business. But you must know the steps to hire outsourced manpower. This is beneficial for the remote workers as well as offering the freedom to work from anywhere they want. They are able to save money normally spent on transportation and are offered a better work-life balance.

Remote team challenges

There are many challenges that you may face while while managing employees who do not report to an office. So, here is discussed some of the biggest challenges along with some helpful tips for managing remote employees.

1. Communication problems

Communication is very important both for personal and professional success. Communication is crucial not only at the beginning of the task, but throughout the whole process. A problem for communication can come from the issue of varying time zones. In a remote team, as all the members are situated in various locations in the world, it becomes a real challenge to communicate. In order to deal with this problem, you can make use of different tools such as Slack. With Slack, you can easily keep your collaboration and communication seamless. All the conversations are easily searchable and accessible. There may be times when face to face meetings are needed. For those times, you can make use of programs such as Google Hangouts or Skype.

2. Adjusting to different time zones

It is great advantage to have access to expertise from around the globe,  but this can come with certain challenges. When the members of your remote team are located in various parts of the world, you have to adjust your work methods and processes accordingly. In order to overcome the problem of coordinating various time zones, you can set your deadlines a day before the actual deadline. This way, if you have to make any changes to your project, you can do that within time. Another thing that you can do is to notify all your team members via email that they should be available during that given time. In that way they can adjust accordingly.

3. Collaborating on projects

You might have already heard that unity is strength. Your business can achieve higher levels of recognition if there is collaboration between your remote team workers, but with remote team workers, there can be a lack of collaboration and coordination among the team members. The reason behind this is the fact that they are hundreds and thousands of miles away from one another. Of course, there are many ways in which you can improve the teamwork of your remote employees. You can use the help of task management tools that are available, such as Basecamp. With this tool, each team member is able to see the status and updates of all the projects. They can even discuss and comment on each project. This way, all the members of your remote team can stay on the same page.

4. A unified company culture

Another big challenge that you may face while managing your remote team is while making sure that your remote team members are a part of the company culture. As people are social beings, they crave contact. In order to strengthen the bonds among them, you can ask them to get together in person at least once a year. If this seems out of the question, you can arrange frequent virtual meetings where they can discuss unanswered questions and hot topics. This way, every one of your team members will feel connected.

The aforementioned challenges can be easily overcome if you hire experienced remote workers, who have all the required knowledge and know all the tips and tricks of the trade. Be sure to use digital collaborations as well as communication tools so that you can stay in touch with your remote workers.