Managing remotely comes with many advantages, but there are also a few challenges to overcome.
One of the biggest challenges for remote managers is ensuring that their team maintains a healthy balance between work and life without productivity taking a hit. Keep reading to learn our top five tips for managing a remote team without burning out.
1. Communicate and Listen
Remote work eliminates the possibility of in-person communication, but there are many ways to compensate for this such as email, work chat apps and video calls. Understand that communication becomes even more critical when everyone works in their own homes. Managing a remote team means making your expectations and goals clear and listening and responding to questions, comments and concerns from employees promptly. If you expect employees to respond quickly to your messages, set a good example by returning the favor.
2. Utilize Calendars and Daily Task Lists
The Bureau of Labor Statistics recently reported that only 10% of workers who found themselves teleworking during the pandemic have returned to the office; therefore, remote managers must establish a new normal for employee routines. Utilizing a shared calendar or organization app to map out the coming weeks and months can help your remote employees get their bearings. Likewise, setting up a daily list of tasks for each employee helps keep everyone moving in the right direction.
3. Track Work
Ask your employees to give you an end-of-day or end-of-week report. This will provide you with a way to gauge whether things are running smoothly. However, some employees may find this intrusive, so be prepared to communicate the benefits of daily or weekly check-ins to the entire team. In other words, “What’s in it for them?”
By keeping a record of productivity, you can identify things that are draining unnecessary amounts of time, such as meetings that do not contribute to the team’s overall success.
4. Embrace the Flexibility of Remote Work
While managing remotely, you face the unique challenge of establishing a structure that ensures everything gets done while also allowing your employees to get the most out of what remote work has to offer.
Research has shown that balancing family needs with work results in higher job satisfaction. In addition, embracing the flexibility of remote work by allowing employees to set their working hours to the best times for them helps increase productivity. Of course, this doesn’t mean that you can’t schedule meetings and have times when employees need to be available to discuss projects or answer questions. However, a little flexibility can go a long way toward helping employees maintain proper work-life balance.
5. Encourage Healthy Time Management
While maintaining peak productivity is a worthy goal, you should also be aware that many remote workers struggle to take the recovery time they need after work. Many managers fear employees are wasting time working remotely, but the opposite is often true. Remote managers should encourage employees to deliver quality work while on the clock and then to unplug and take the rest of the day for themselves.
Managing Remote Workers Effectively
According to the Pew Research Center, over half of the employees who experienced a shift to remote work in the past few years prefer it over traveling to a physical office or workspace. Managers can help employees enjoy all the benefits of working remotely while still ensuring that things move forward efficiently and everything on the to-do list gets done. Best Upon Request can help eliminate unnecessary stressors for you and your employees through our concierge and errand running services. Contact us to see how we can help your remote team work more efficiently today.