Working with a remote workforce has huge benefits for both businesses and employees alike. However, as with anything, there are drawbacks as well.
One of the major drawbacks businesses struggle with is effectively managing and coordinating their remote workforce. While this does present challenges, all businesses can overcome them, and these five tips can help you do it.
Set Clear Expectations
The only way this is going to work is if everyone is on the same page. If you’re not clearly setting expectations, then everyone is going to be doing something slightly different, making it much harder for you to manage.
Remote working should allow flexibility for both your business and your workers, but there have to be parameters, and your workers need to understand exactly what those are.
Create clear guidelines, and make sure everyone is aware of them.
Use the Right Software
Technology is at the heart of remote working because it’s what allows us to communicate and collaborate effectively when we’re not all in one place.
If you’ve got any aspirations of managing a remote workforce, then you’ve got to make sure you have the software that allows you to do this. Your workers need to be able to access data, communicate, and share their work as if they were all in an office together, and to a large extent, this is possible if you’ve got the right software.
Focus on Communication
Communication is important in any situation, but when you’re coordinating lots of people in many different places, it becomes even more important.
When you’re running team meetings, it’s vitally important that you’re getting your message across in a concise way, so you’re maximizing your efficiency. An enterprise-level software such as Verbit, which uses AI to transcribe your meetings, is a huge help in this area, ensuring everyone has quick access to everything that’s been said.
Keep your communication concise, and make sure everyone is clear on what they’re doing.
Be Organized
To run a great remote workforce, you’ve first got to be organized yourself.
Keeping track of what everyone’s doing and ensuring you’re meeting deadlines is hard enough, but it’s doubly difficult if you yourself aren’t organized. Make use of tools such as Trello, and make sure you’re on top of the organizational side of things.
Everyone else can be doing their jobs, but if there’s not someone there to bring it all together, then you won’t see the results you crave.
Get Feedback
You should always be looking to improve your efforts, and some of the people who can give you the best insights on how to do this are your remote workers.
Certain things might seem like a great idea from a managerial point of view, but they don’t work for your team in practice. When this happens, you want to know about it, so it’s always helpful to communicate and get as much feedback as possible.
If you’re new to managing a remote workforce, it will take some time to get things right, but good feedback can help make this process easier.