How to help your remote team feel more connected

A remote team’s success depends on mutual trust, communication, and collaboration. With talent dispersed around the world, it’s almost a fantasy to believe everyone can be co-located all the time. Also, there’s often a misperception that remote teams aren’t as productive. Yet numerous studies have found that remote teams are often more productive, with fewer distractions than at a physical workplace.

Finding the best ways to communicate with your team is imperative when you’re not working face-to-face, because you’re missing most—if not all—of the context of each person’s situation. Hiring employees in more time zones to improve our support coverage and development cycle. There are a lot of people who don’t have the organization, focus and motivation to be productive working remotely. Working remotely has a lot of advantages, but it’s far from perfect. Birthdays are ideal occasions to celebrate your employees remotely and show them they are appreciated and included in the community.

Read more about remote team india here.

Ice Breaker Questions to Level Up your Virtual Meetings

For full-time W2 employees, this might consist of an annual meeting or a shared trip to an exotic location. A fourth step to lead a remote team effectively is to monitor performance and results of your team members. You should use the relevant metrics and indicators to measure your team’s progress, output, and quality. You should also conduct regular check-ins, reviews, and evaluations with your team members to provide feedback, guidance, and coaching. By monitoring performance and results, you can ensure that your team is meeting the standards and expectations and identify any issues or gaps that need to be addressed.

This allows you to focus on what you need, instead of sifting through a single conversation channel with hundreds of irrelevant messages. They allow you to instantly get in touch with your teammates, anytime and anywhere. Effective communication is the cornerstone of any successful team. Looking for creative and strategic ways to engage your remote, gig, and seasonal employees? Download our 200 Employee Engagement Ideas for HR & Managers ebook. It’s clear that remote work is here to stay—at least on some level for most organizations. However, while there are many benefits to remote work, there are unique challenges too.

Communicate Frequently

Every Thursday morning or afternoon , we get together for lightning talks, demos, and/or interviews. With over 300 people in seven major departments and even more smaller teams, it’s hard to see everyone on a weekly basis. These hangouts are a chance to say “hi!” to folks you may not normally see. Also, the people who build the product also end up supporting the product. If a customer is angry about a bug, then the person who introduced said bug is going to hear about it and fix it right away.

But don’t be too harsh when you identify problems and make corrections. Encourage your employees to take breaks now and then so they can relax and feel refreshed. Taking breaks is one of the simplest ways to keep mental health in check. When you schedule check-ins, you give yourself a break from constant overseeing, allow your team to be more accountable, and reduce unattended projects. Even teams of independent contractors can plan to meet each other through an annual meeting, convention, or conference. Some remote contractors plan to visit each other when they are nearby for other obligations.

Thinking creatively about how to communicate and celebrate your remote team’s successes will help you inspire their confidence and build their trust. An equally overlooked communication challenge for remote teams is ensuring that all voices are heard. The good news is that there are a plethora of highly effective tools to help you facilitate remote communication techniques.

Again, though, make sure these activities are always voluntary, and feel that way. With so much going on right now, it’s a big ask for a parent to spend “play time” with the team after a long day instead of with their children.

We’ve even held games during virtual meetings to have some fun and get to know each other. Before you can effectively track your company’s progress, you must first evaluate workers’ performance, which begins with properly managing remote teams. Provide breaks to build a happier working environment and encourage successful performance while managing remote teams. Due to business shifting to remote working from the typical office workspace, managers should acknowledge stress, distractions, and rate of adaptability. Then, exercise flexibility in task supervision while managing remote teams.