6 Secrets: Advice for Private Practices Seeking to Successfully Manage Remote Teams

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6 Secrets: Advice for Private Practices Seeking to Successfully Manage Remote Teams

Several tips for private practices to successfully manage remote teams. One definitely needs to see them all in order to select the one that works best.

Innovations, the arrival of hi-tech and the pressing need to meet human needs overtime has made it imperative to have remote teams in some working environments. The relationship between employees and that between employees and the employer used to be fostered through several means. The spirit of camaraderie was instilled and grown through things like trust falls, ropes courses, corporate retreats and their likes. But these days, it is no longer very easy because working remotely has become the order of the day. All the surveys in the United States and other developed countries reveal that the number of people that work remotely keeps increasing by the day. There is also a very huge increase in the number that works from home.  

However, one of the major problems that this brings about is how to manage a remote team of employees scattered in different locations effectively from a particular location. One indisputable fact is that people have different or nuanced ideas of what the best result in every endeavour is. So, how do you get the remote team you’ve put out there to see things from your own prism and deliver results that are good enough to get a well-done from you? Below are some of the ideas that can help you to achieve effective remote team building and management.

1. Employ the Best and Most Fitting Hands

Now, if you have the worst workers, you wouldn’t achieve much even if you learn how to manage work properly. Now, while many people dream about working in a very relaxed environment like their home, only a few can produce the desired result from such locations and conditions. The interaction, glaring and visible competition and minute by minute monitoring and supervision that happen in every office space has a way of pushing some people to function properly. But some get the best out of themselves when left alone in a private and secluded atmosphere. Always search for the second set when hiring remote workers. If you go for people that fall within the first set, it will be an onerous task for you to manage them successfully.

2. Make the Tools Available and Workable

Working remotely means that your employees are away from the office or site. However, they are still working for the office and site. There will always be calls, chats, conferences and meetings online. You can never manage them well if the tools to ensure these communication avenues are not working properly. So, you should start by making sure that whatever tools you will be using for the regular human interaction works perfectly well. The phone lines, internet, chat rooms, email accounts and all that must be in perfect working conditions. Remote team building is not an easy thing. It will become worse when the people you are trying to build can’t understand what you are telling them. So, communication is a key factor.

3. Meet Them Face To Face

Now, though the world is going ‘virtual’ in all angles, the place of face to face meeting is still not negotiable in many angles. So, you have to seek for that special connection that happens when you meet with members of your team. Depending on how remotely they are positioned, a quarterly or bi-annual meeting is always encouraged. When this meeting happens, be nice and make them understand how you value them and why they should make you proud. Emails, chats and calls do not replace this, as it is one of the most important team building activities for remote teams.

4. Stay In Contact

You may have hired the best hands in remote work and may have motivated them amazingly. You may also have met them face to face and gingered them, but remote team building does not end until you guys are no longer together. Because of this, you have to ensure that you keep in contact with them all the time. You can chat, email, call or do it anyhow you feel like. Just make sure your shadow is felt around people of the team no matter where they are. The use of chat rooms for group chats will be very beneficial. But you also have to make it personal for that feeling of belonging. Call every week and check in with them as much as you can to get feedback and reports, and things will be easier for you.

5. Do Proper Onboarding

Of course, from time to time, you will need to add one or two new hands to the team. If they are not properly brought in, it will be a very big problem in the future. So, learning how to manage remote teams will involve understanding the best onboarding process to use. You must put more efforts toward ensuring that the new members you are bringing in are well informed. Teach them about the firm, the culture, structure, work ethics, communication systems and styles, technologies, etc. You can tabulate these into a comprehensive guide and give them time to read and assimilate such. This makes management easier.

6. Enforce Availability

Now, when employers work offsite, there will always be the tendency to normally go AWOL when they are needed by the team. While the working hours are flexible for remote teams, ensure that there are sacrosanct virtual and physical hours that they must be present online or offline, and enforce it. This ensures that all departments are consistent with their dreams. Let every one of them be available when the time comes.

Antony Garlton is a journalist from Kansas, blogger, writer, and content marketing expert. He always tries to find something new in experiments with his writing style. Antony graduated The University of Kansas and after he started his career as a journalist and writer. After presenting his business ideas at Max Polyakov’s Noosphere conference Antony runs his own content marketing project.