The world is shifting away from traditional working values and leaning toward the comfort of the individual more than ever. The popularity of remote jobs is growing, so more and more companies are choosing outstaffing and outsourcing instead of having in-house experts. This saves a lot of time and money as your remote employees don’t have to commute or you don’t have to pay for their relocation (example in this post). However, it also comes with a bunch of challenges in both talent acquisition and management.
Hiring a Remote Employee
When you have a position to fill and decide to hire a remote staff member, you need to prepare and handle the process. It includes (but is not limited to) a proper description of the position, clear interviewing process and proper evaluation of the results.
Brand Representation
Before posting any information about open spots in the company, you need to evaluate your company’s online representation. Does your digital presence convey the right message? Can a potential employee find enough information about you? Is your company mission clear and do you know what types of people would fit in?
Set Clear Job Requirements
There are a lot of job offers that seem to be copy-pasted from the same source, including some of the most general terms like ‘dedicated specialist’, ‘deep knowledge’ and ‘fit the team’. Make sure to include important information in your job listing, like tech stack, experience required and language. Make sure to include information about any compensation packages or meaningful benefits.
Plan the Interviews
Most people get nervous when they are invited to an interview in the company’s office. They keep thinking of the way they look, whether their palms are sweating or if the way they sit is appropriate. All these factors are eliminated while carrying out an interview for a remote position.
Provide Feedback
We all hate saying ‘no’ to a candidate, but providing meaningful feedback is crucial both to an employee and employer. An applicant will learn what they can improve upon. Your company will learn where they can improve the job description or any requirements, based on the reasons for the rejection.
How to Manage a Remote Team
Having a distributed team comes with a lot of challenges, including communication, time and performance tracking, as well as team-building issues. Here are some of the things you need to focus on:
Clear and Realistic Expectations
All people are different, and when it comes to remote team collaboration, you need to be extremely specific about results, deadlines, process details and schedules. Think of the ways to share your vision of the projects with the remote employees (or the whole team). Give them a chance to discuss, challenge or contribute to the existing system as it can benefit the workflow.
Provide Equal Opportunities
A lot of companies have trust issues when it comes to remote employees on the team. However, you cannot expect someone to fully commit to the project if they are not allowed to access the same sources as in-house staff or cannot communicate with members outside of the team (e.g. CTO when it comes to making important decisions or simply their career advisor).
Set Regular Meetings
One of the biggest issues is remote team communication, so following the advice from Neal Quesnel, we would recommend setting regular meetings. They should cover daily progress, sprint planning and results, quarterly updates, as well as one-on-one meetings to learn more about the people themselves.
Provide Video On-Boarding and Coaching for Your Remote Employees
One of the key factors that defines team productivity is learning. Plan and carry out the ramp-up of your new employee, introduce them to the team, but don’t forget to give them space to grow via continuous learning. It is extremely important to guide the remote employee in their integration and learning. This is much easier done using video conferences.
Learn to Trust
When having an employee or even the whole team working remotely, it is important to establish a common ground. While you don’t have to check up on them every hour, you need to introduce basic rules. These may vary depending on the project or team, but some of the most common ones are:
- Respond to emails within 24 hours;
- Inform about sick leave and days off at least 12 hours prior to the workday (unless it is an emergency);
- Limit calls between certain hours (this is extremely important for teams that work in different time zones);
However, you have to bear personal responsibility for contacting the remote members of the team. This is vital for building mutual trust.
Build Smart Rapport
Regardless of how many team members you have, everyone needs to be included and feel a part of the team. Give your team a chance to get to know each other, build a personal relationship and share their interests. Some companies allow their employees to have a quick catch-up before discussing work-related matters. Other companies include fun activities into their regular routine. Inc. offers some great insights into building personal relationships between remote employees.
Focus on Goals, Not Activities
Don’t be tempted to control every minute of your team’s work process (either in person or via project management tools). Instead, learn to value the progress and goal achievement. No matter how good they are, they all need time to think, plan, and rewind, so make sure you avoid multitasking. For the sake of team efficiency, give clear instructions, set one task at the time and let them handle it at their own pace.
Take Advantage of Technology
There are a lot of remote team management tools which allow teams to communicate, track progress, create inquiries and achieve goals. For example, remote communication tools such as Slack or Mattermost can help communication among a team. Services like Jira, Trello or Rally will help the team track all the tasks. For a manager, remote management software can provide useful insights into the group’s dynamics, tendencies, and overall progress. But don’t forget that technology might not account for your human factors and some people feel violated when they are forced to use time-tracking software.
When you’re looking for a remote employee, understand all the pros and cons. Any project manager working with a distributed team or with a remote specialist needs to take care of regular communication, create strong bonds within the team and learn how to use project management software to their advantage.
