We’re in the midst of a revolution in the way that we work, and for many people today it’s taking place right under their nose. Today, 37% of people work remotely in some capacity in their jobs, up from 30% just nine years ago, and that trend is only going to increase. The benefits of remote work to employers are obvious: reduced employee overhead (think less office space), and an increased talent pool, but the benefits seen by employees can be just as large. Reuters does a great job of laying out the benefit to the employee: while the average commute in the US today is 25 minutes, but a dramatic portion of commuters (10.9 million) have commutes of 1 hour or longer, and the longer your commute is, the higher chance of obesity, cholesterol, pain, fatigue, and anxiety.
We’re all ready to take our workforce remote, but how can you go about actually managing that workforce to maintain or improve the output that you expect from someone in your office? Here are a few ways that you can start thinking about managing remote full-time employees and freelancers.
Focus on Productivity, Not on ‘Screen Time’
In your office today, ‘face time’ is an important factor in your employee’s minds, and that can drive the behavior of your workers who remain in the office, but when you manage remote employees, you need to move away from that mindset and begin to think about your employees in terms of productivity. Rewarding value, not face time is key here, and with cloud based product management like Basecamp or Flow, you can focus on assigning tasks or projects to your remote team and measure them based on their actual output. This will not only allow you to better track who is doing their job well (both within the office and on a remote basis), but it will also set more direct expectations with your team about what it means to do a good job at your company.
Utilize Technology for Collaboration
Technology is the great force that drives remote work, and while faster internet connections, cloud based services, and more powerful technology has enabled us to work from anywhere, it’s also important to use this technology as a means of collaboration between you and your employees (or between team members who work on a remote basis).
One great way to keep your entire team on the same page is by starting to use a group chat application like Slack on a regular basis. Not only does this allow all team members to talk with each other, but the history of your conversation is shared, which allows team members to catch up on the conversation on their time, particularly if they are in a dramatically different timezone than your own.
Check in Regularly With Your Employees
Just because your employees are now around the world, doesn’t mean that you are able to treat them like people who are just there to complete tasks for you. While someone working in the same office might have many touch points every day with you, which they can use to gauge their effectiveness and how good of a job they are doing, those who work remotely need to have a way to gauge their effectiveness when they can’t interact with you in-person on a daily basis.
The best way to do this is to schedule regular check in times with your employees. This is best done on a weekly basis when both of you can meet, depending on time constraints and time zone limitations. If you do have a check in however, you need to make sure to meet it. While a missed meeting in an office might not be too much of a problem, missing a meeting with a remote employee can create an impression that you don’t care about their work, or that you don’t value them as an employee – not exactly the culture that you want to foster with your remote team.
Use Video as Much as You Can
You’ve probably read the studies or heard it crop up anecdotally in conversation: 93% of communication is nonverbal. This poses a serious problem for remote workers, because they are going to inevitably spend most of their time speaking to you over a communication medium (email, Slack, or even on the phone) that is almost entirely focused on that 7% of verbal communication. This can create issues with communication, which is why it’s always important to use video when communicating with your team, as much as you possibly can.
The problem is that this experience isn’t always the best, particularly when using technology that isn’t designed to handle issues like poor connections. Tony Zhao, communications company Agora.io, makes the point well: “The big problem for easy hassle-free embedding of real-time communications within Internet-based applications is the lack of Quality of Experience (QoE). If connections are unreliable, voices keep cutting out and video images break up, then people will not use these embedded real-time capabilities.”
Make sure that as much of your communication is done over video, but that you are using high definition video communication that doesn’t lag or drop out. This is almost always the best way to communicate with remote team members on a regular basis.
Build Rapport With Your Remote Team to Establish Trust
We sometimes forget just how much of our conversations in the office are about things other than work. These conversations are what really make us connect with our coworkers, and it’s important to build rapport with your remote team in the same way. Don’t just talk about jobs that they need to do, talk about their family, friends, interests, and anything else that you might talk about with someone in your office.
Working with remote team members can be challenging, but the rewards are definitely worth the risks and the changes that you need to make to your management style to get there. Are you working with a remote team today? Let us know about some of your issues in the comments.
