Companies that never liked the idea of remote work do not have any other option right now. As the entire world has gone into lockdown, employees are working remotely from their homes. COVID-19, without any hinge of doubt, has brought the world to a standstill.
If you don’t have any experience of managing remote workers, this might be particularly challenging for you. You not only have to adapt to this new model of work but also ensure everyone is working like they are supposed to.
To help you in keeping tabs on everyone, without you overdoing anything, we have listed five ways you can manage your remote employees in a proactive way during the pandemic:
Communicate effectively
The first piece of this puzzle is effective communication.
As a team manager, you need to build a good professional relationship with all of your team members. Just because they are located in a different continent or region, does not mean having only work meetings/chat with them.
For your team to trust you and effectively communicate with you if they are facing any issues, you have to create a two-way communication channel for them.
The better you know your team members, the more efficient you will be in dividing work among them and thereof getting optimal output.
If a team member is having a personal problem that is affecting their work, having a good relationship with them will help you in understanding their situation while motivating them to work hard.
A good manager is ready to take any criticism or feedback from his/her team members. Arrange weekly or bi-weekly meetings with your team, brief them about the current progress of the project they are working on, encourage everyone to participate actively and share what they have done.
Tell your team members to contact you via text/email etc. if they ever need to talk to you. When team members believe the manager cares about them, they show more productivity and loyalty with the organization.
Use Tracking Tools
Start using tools like Zoho, Jira if you haven’t been using them already.
A team manager does not only have to manage remote members of his/her team but also have regular meetings with the higher hierarchy and also deliver tasks assigned to him/her.
Being bombarded with management, meetings and tasks – you might forget to keep tabs on your team or know the tasks that are assigned to everyone. This is where using digital tools can help you immensely in always staying at the top of your game.
You can use Zoho, Jira or any other tool that provides you with an overall update about the tasks assigned to team members, task they are currently working on, tasks that are in the pipeline, tasks that are dependent on others etc.
Delegate tasks but don’t micromanage
Successful delegation starts when you give people tasks that are aligned with their skills, expertise and experience.
For instance, delegating android mobile development task to an iOS developer is not a good idea. Identify the core skills of each of your team member and play it for your benefit. Instead of taking all of tasks yourself, allocate them justly among every team member and get the project delivered in time.
Daily reporting
When you are working with remote teams, the scenario changes completely. You can no longer see and differentiate between a hard-working employee and a lazy one. Henceforth, daily reporting is a great tool to get regular updates on your team members.
This will help you in identifying the best team members and the ones who are more prone to slack off. Daily reporting also encourages the members to work more efficiently as the understand that their work progress will be directly reviewed by you, thus increasing their productivity levels.
Last but not the least …
It is important to be empathetic. The world is going through a pandemic and this is the time when you need to come some slack to your employees. Just like you are getting used to this new work model, so are they. Be mindful of their issues and try to understand them.
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