Remote team management is truly challenging. With your team members working from various locations, it is often difficult to have everyone in sync and inspire them to work towards a common target.

However, you can follow these proven tips to lead your team in a better way.

1. Set Up a Common Working Time Zone

Remote teams, consisting of members from different time zones, often struggle with time zone management. Such a team needs to discover a time zone suitable for all. It is crucial not only for weekly team meetings, but also for real-time communication for urgent decisions.

If your team members reside in time zones with a gap of one or two hours, you can set a standard time when all members should be available. However, the Spacetime app will be useful for teams spread across the world. It lets you skip the manual time zone conversion and locate the common time zone suitable for everyone.

2. Allow Flexible Timing for Work

When someone works from home, they need to perform household chores like rearing children and taking care of the elderly. Consider these points and handle the team with empathy. It’s a good idea to let them work at a convenient time and day. Instead of focusing on when they work, you need to shift your focus to the actual amount of work they do.

Pushing them to work only at the designated time might put them under pressure and reduce their productivity. Time management tools like Time Doctor let you track how much time a member invests in a task or project. Thus, you will know who invests sufficient time to complete the assigned task.

3. Setup SMART Goals

Remote teams can't function without specific goals or objectives. You can use SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound) criteria to set up goals for your team. As your team is clear about their target, working towards it becomes effortless.

While implementing this method, try the goal-setting app Weekdone to choose attainable goals, using features like goal dashboard and goal hierarchy.

4. Assign Task Accountability

Since remote work lacks personal supervision, you might see a dearth of accountability. To avoid this issue, you need to make people accountable for the tasks they do. Besides, offer them the autonomy they need to complete a project.

This action will have a positive effect on the team members and make them sincerely perform their work. ClickUp allows you to assign tasks to accountable people and track their performance.

5. Review Project Progress as a Team

Even after having a good start, projects can go off track halfway. Some projects even fail to get completed successfully. Tracking the progress of a project can help you avoid such mishaps. Regularly review the progress as a team and listen to what everyone has to say about it.

With contribution from everyone, it’ll become easy to follow the roadmap towards successful and timely project completion. Hibox lets you manage tasks and engage in a virtual review meeting from the same platform.

6. Set Aside Time for Training & Feedback

Working from remote locations takes away the opportunity of learning from colleagues and their feedback during the work in the office. To compensate for that, arrange for separate training sessions where team members will learn from their employees. Ask people to volunteer to train others on the topics in which they excel.

Thus, every team member will benefit as the training sessions sharpen the theoretical knowledge and practical skills. Having a weekly training session on Zoom will be highly effective in this case. Also, offer individual and team feedback regularly so that your colleagues can locate their pain points and improvise accordingly.

7. Set Up Transparency Within the Projects

To make remote teamwork efficient, you need to ensure an environment of transparency and trust. You can become a role model by communicating with them regularly. In case of any big decision or potential change, send an email putting every employee in CC.

Inform your team with clarity if any substantial changes are in the pipeline. In terms of project management, use apps like Asana to log every sub-task of a project. Thus, everyone involved in the project will have a clear idea about the assignees and progress.

8. Implement Open-Door Policy

While it’s easy to directly talk to someone about any grievance or concern, discussing such matters virtually may be difficult for some team members. However, you must encourage your team to raise concerns and ask questions without any fear or hesitation. It is vital to create a safe space in the virtual world. Thus, others can freely discuss sensitive matters.

Arrange for a one-to-one session with the team, where they can ask for clarification on any decision or raise any issues that have been bothering them. Apart from that, explicitly mention that they can contact HR or someone from the admin to talk about anything. You can also use Google Form for people to share their concerns anonymously.

9. Promptly Resolve WFH Conflicts

Yes, conflicts can happen among remote team members too. If you don't resolve it immediately, the productivity of the concerned remote worker will suffer. To prevent disputes from brewing, you need to learn more about the issues and settle them without any delay.

Lack of initiative to resolve conflicts might force employees to quit and take legal steps.

10. Plan Team Building Activities

Team bonding is a crucial element to motivate a team to work for a common goal. Members of a remote team are deprived of face-to-face interactions, often leading to a feeling of isolation. By arranging online team-building activities, it is possible to strengthen the team bond.

If you can plan for such events when someone new joins the team, you can make them go easy with each other. Popular team-building activities include trivia quiz, storytelling, team workout, virtual murder mystery, comedy workshop, ghost hunt, etc. Either you can arrange them through personal initiative or take help from platforms like TeamBuilding.

Manage Remote Teams With Proven Tips

When your remote team realizes that they get the deserved value, they work to achieve the goal. You can implement the methods mentioned in this article to manage the remote team properly and complete the projects well ahead of deadlines.