How To Build An Efficient Remote Working Team

Creating remote teams within your company can help you find top-tier talent from anywhere in the world, potentially save money, and provide an added benefit to recruits who are considering joining your company. To ensure that your remote team is productive, efficient, and successful, you’ll need to create the right conditions and implement best practices.

1. Choose a Remote Team Structure

Each company has its approach to implementing remote teams. For example, your company could be entirely remote, have specific teams that work remotely, or have specific individuals who work remotely. Whether you’re a new company starting the hiring process for the first time, or you’ve decided to allow employees to work from home, you must decide which approach to take. This decision is usually left up to your preferences or the specific needs of your business.

2. Recruit Carefully

As you are aware, hiring is a critical process that must be handled with care. However, when it comes to assembling a remote team, the need for disciplined, dependable, and skilled workers may be even greater. This is because off-site employees must be much more autonomous. After all, they are not directly supervised and may not have the same level of support as they would in an office environment. There is always room for improvement in your hiring process, so review it to ensure that it is effective in assisting you in finding outstanding talent to strengthen your remote team.

3. Establish Specific Guidelines and Expectations

Setting performance goals and establishing workflow guidelines are critical to increasing your team’s productivity and holding them accountable. Here are a few examples of how you can set expectations and guidelines for your off-site employees:

Work hours or times when they should be online

How frequently they should check-in

Task process documentation

Whether or not they should keep track of time

Team and individual employee objectives

Who should be the primary point of contact for specific projects/issues?

Which modes of communication should be used in which situations?

4. Continue to Engage Your Team

It is common for remote workers to feel estranged from the rest of the team. If your entire workforce is located off-site, this issue can have a much greater impact on your business. Disconnection can have an impact on work quality, morale, and your bottom line. If only a portion of your team is remote, it is critical that they are included and acknowledged during these meetings. You can provide opportunities for socializing in addition to work-related meetings, which can help foster kinship among team members. This could include virtual happy hours, games, or anything else that encourages team bonding.

5. Establish Dependable Communication Channels

Communication is essential in any business setting, but it is especially important when working remotely. It is, however, one of the most difficult challenges. Fortunately, staying connected is easier than ever in the digital age, no matter where your employees are in the world.

6. Provide the Tools Required for Team Success

The right tools can significantly boost your team’s performance. While some tools, such as project management software and direct messenger, may be required for your entire remote workforce, others may be required for a specific department or individual. It is critical to ensure that every member of the team has access to these tools (that they must), whether by providing them with company-wide credentials or by setting them up with their accounts.

7. Use Time Tracking

Time tracking is one method of holding employees accountable for meeting work expectations. Time-tracking data can be useful in pricing products, identifying inefficiencies in project workflows, determining which employees are on-task and which require more structure, and paying employees based on hours spent on a project, in addition to holding employees accountable for meeting their time requirements.

When onboarding new remote employees or transitioning your team to remote for the first time, make sure all expectations, processes, and resources are communicated to your team. Of course, there are other things you can do to boost the efficiency of your remote team, but these seven steps are a good place to start.