Do you run a company in which all or part of its members work from home? Then you will have experienced difficulties in communication and coordination on more than one occasion. This is relatively common; Many remote companies are still trying to apply the same management formulas that are used in conventional companies without taking into account the factor of distance and this is usually not effective.
Remote companies must implement their own strategies and find their own tools. A simple business chat or an effective reporting system is enough to instantly improve team coordination.
In this article we will review keys to manage remote computers effectively and without suffering communication or coordination problems.
Define a well Work Policy
Defining a work policy is especially useful in remote companies. Remote jobs are more flexible as a rule and this makes the workers can take certain freedoms that the company does not contemplate. It must be borne in mind that each enterprise has certain needs and workers (including those who work from home) must adapt to them.
A well-defined work policy will avoid many problems. It is important that this policy be well explained to a possible candidate for a job in remote work within the company as the future worker must accept the conditions as they are.
Use the Right Tools
Luckily advances in communication technologies are increasingly facilitating the work and coordination of remote teams. There are dozens of tools that can be of valuable use to teams working scattered across different parts of the world. And technology helps shorten distances.
Custom Tracking 1-on-1
A good leader should not only take into account the collective needs of his team, but also the individual needs of each of its members. This is of vital importance in remote teams since not seeing the members of your team directly is more difficult to detect possible motivation problems.
One way to perform this personalized monitoring is to establish a recurring a small video-conference with each of the team members. The objective of this video-conference will be to know how each person feels, what is the progress in their objectives and to advise on professional growth within the company.
Goal-oriented
One of the main fears of managers who have teams in remote is the difficulty to know if their team is working what it claims to be working. Not seeing the members of your team next to your desk working can generate the feeling that they are not working.
But this fear can be easily solved with a clear direction of the company towards objectives. If each employee or team has well-defined objectives to meet, it will be easy to see who meets them and who does not. In addition, the objectives must always be accompanied by a periodic report system so that all the team can follow the progress of the objectives and make decisions according to these objectives will be fulfilled or not.