Yesterday we touched on a few simple issues as to how to manage remote teams effectively and also enjoyable, both for them and for you. If you haven’t done so yet, book some time in your calendar to study remote management because some people are going to be working remotely for quite some time! And if you’re looking for an outstanding calendar app, (see what I did there?!) look no further than Calendar.AI.
Now onto our tips!
Hire the right people
Huh? Shouldn’t we always be hiring the right people? Yes, that is obviously true, but in this case, hire the right people for working remotely. If your team is going to spend the next 2 years working remotely, you’ll need a special sort of talent for that. You need people who can work independently and also know how to communicate effectively remotely. For some people the transition from an office setting to remote working is overwhelming and doesn’t allow them to channel their energies into doing their best work, while others flourish with a more flexible schedule and limited oversight. You want to hire the second kind of people!
This goes without saying but the best to research new candidates is with Calendar.AI’s insights tab. If you have a meeting with a prospective employee, just tap insights and get all the information you need about them, including work history, twitter fees, social media channels, news mentions etc.
Avoid micromanaging
And this leads to our next point. Granted it’s never good to micromanage employees, but when they are working remotely, it can be even worse. Popping into someone’s cubicle for a minute to see how things are progressing may seem like friendly behavior, but calling them and asking for status reports every 15 minutes is simply annoying. Assuming you’ve hired the right people for your remote team, there’s no need to micromanage them. And if you do indeed find yourself micromanaging someone, best to ask yourself why?
Go above and beyond to help
Getting employees the help or resources they need in an office environment is sometimes as easy as strolling into a fellow manager’s office and requesting it. But we all know how things work remotely. Your job is to go above and beyond for anything your employees need to succeed. Noise cancelling headphones? Buy it for them and send it over. Help getting data from the BI team, make sure you’re on top of it as well. Mental health day? Give it to them!
Communicate, communicate, communicate
This is different from micromanaging. This means finding a medium for all those previous water cooler/coffee types of conversations to take place. Making sure any and all informat your employees need to know or might even be interested in, gets to them. Remember how you used to walk out of a meeting with your VP or CEO and update the team. Keep doing that remotely, even if it’s just a short email. Did you hear they opened a new position somewhere? Update your team immediately so they can refer friends!
One great tip is to book yourself some update time in your calendar app so you don’t miss a day without providing your team with some updates! And if you are using Calendar.AI you can even check with everyone what’s the best time for any update meeting with our meeting poll feature.
So, Google “managing remotely” and start learning some effective techniques. But more important, install Calendar.AI to help manage your scheduling and get insights into the people you meet with!
