Due to the COVID, thousands of people found themselves in a situation where they had to work from home. And although the world pandemic is thankfully behind us, working from home is still with us. The leaders must address this. While there are many managers who would like to work in the same office as their colleagues again, employees now expect to be able to work flexibly, in whole or in part. This means that managers must also be able to lead remote teams. And following best practices can help overcome initial difficulties in such cases.
In short:
- Set clear expectations and boundaries to avoid misunderstandings and burnout, define tasks, deadlines, deliverables, and working hours explicitly.
- Maintain regular contact through predictable check-ins (daily or weekly) and choose appropriate communication tools like video calls, chat, and email.
- Shift focus to outcomes, not hours, by trusting team members’ responsibility and measuring performance based on results.
- Monitor engagement and well-being proactively using pulse checks or tools like Team Sociomapping to detect issues early and support team morale.
Set clear expectations
Setting clear expectations for your team is an essential factor of success not only in a traditional office environment but with remote teams as well. Pay special attention to define the tasks, the deadlines, and the deliverables as clearly and straightforwardly as possible. Share the reasons behind and help your team understand how exactly you will measure success. In case of remote work, communication channels are often narrowed, giving more room for misunderstanding. Therefore, ask more questions and double-check if your messages are perfectly understood.
Define limits
One of the pitfalls of working 100% from home is that people can’t let go of work. Don’t spill oil on the fire by thinking that they have no other business to do anyway. Continuous overtime does not only lead to a deterioration of productivity and human relationships, but also to burnout. And that applies to you as manager as well if you also work totally from home! Managers of remote teams should, therefore, define clear boundaries and guidelines, which should include the definition of availability: when you and your colleagues will be working and how to be reached for different needs. This will not only set expectations for all team members, but it will help ambitious workers from becoming burnt out.
Keep close contact with people at the home office
Successful remote managers are in regular contact with their team members. If you are leading a remote team, establish a regular daily or minimum weekly check-ins with your colleagues. They can be one-on-one calls if they work independently or team meetings if the team is working on something collaboratively. The important thing here is that the calls shall be regular and predictable. Thereby your colleagues will know that you are reachable, they can consult with you, and that their concerns and questions will be heard. On the other hand, you shall use these forums to share updates and news concerning your team first hand as well.
Trust the responsibility of your remote employees
One of the most common concerns managers used to have about working from home was that team members would not work as hard and efficiently as they would in the office. Consequently, they have tried to control every aspect of the team’s work, which is not only impossible, but also a highly uneconomical activity. Moreover, working during a pandemic could prove the opposite of this assumption.
It is therefore worth taking a different approach to reviewing and measuring team performance during telework. If you have clear expectations from your colleagues, trust your team and focus on results rather than activity or hours worked.
Choose the right tool for remote work
As a manager, it is your responsibility to keep your team connected. Today we know that with the technology tools available, this is perfectly possible.
We know that emails, text messages and phone calls are essential methods of communication, but they are not enough on their own. Your colleagues need to see you and you need to see them. Of course, using communication and group collaboration platforms such as Zoom or Hangouts, this is absolutely possible.
For seamless collaboration, also define which tools you use for which purposes. For example, use video conferencing for team meetings, emails for general questions and text messages for urgent matters.
Keep an eye on engagement
Even though you meet and see each other with your team regularly during your daily or weekly calls, it is much harder to recognize when a colleague is struggling with difficulties – be it a work-related issue or the challenges of home office work. Gather regular feedback about the well-being, stress level, and engagement of your colleagues by the help of such quick and easy solutions like various pulse check tools (by us the most preferred is Happy at Work from our partners) or more complex communication and collaboration assessment tools like Team Sociomapping. Using such tools allows you to intervene immediately in case of a decline or negative trend of an individual.
There’s more to leading people at home
Many people experience great difficulties in actually following the myriad of rules about working from home and leading their remote teams. As an experience leadership development company we will be glad to help your people on this journey using our Leading Home Office Workers training programme, which is customised for remote delivery. Find out more here or directly reach us via form or call below.
