Efficient Remote Team Management | Tips & KPIs

“When you are not left with any options, you start to look at the cons from a newer, more positive perspective.”

Before you question the placement of this quote, take a minute to relate this to remote working… that’s right, it fits right in.

As an offshore agency, remote working has worked wonders for us. When we got started almost 2 decades back, there were some communication gaps, scoping issues, and missed deadlines but guess what? We overcame all these challenges and many more by following a few (after experimenting many) of best practices that ensure that remote team management and coordination is highly efficient.

Scheduling Daily Check-ins

Daily check-ins are a must, and we encourage all our TLs to touch base with their team members regularly. This helps build a routine and keeps everyone in loop. One can also modify tasks as per priorities, brainstorm for ideas and be aware of what their teammates are working on. There is no compulsion on having video calls but it sure does help in increasing attention and engagement from everyone.

Building the Right Team

Right set of people by your side will help in managing remote teams a little easier. Working remotely requires way more discipline than a typical office working. You need to ensure that there are enough resources at your team’s disposal as well, like software, hardware and internet facilities.

Establish Rules of Engagement

Setting rules of engagement will ensure that individual workflows are not interrupted. Many believe that WFH model needs more communication, while we agree on that part but it is also vital to not disrupt your colleague’s productivity.

Thus, laying down some ground rules never hurts. Say you can have Skype, emails for your projects and Slack channels for sharing interesting news or even Reddit threads.

Document Procedures

This may seem unnecessary but it comes handy all the time. A set procedure helps in getting the timeline right, spot any delays, and retracing your steps. Also onboarding of new team members becomes easier. But this should not limit teams strictly following the same, there should always be room for flexibility and betterment of the whole process.

Monitor output but not with working hours

Office desk sitting and being present for conference meetings marked the attendance of employees in typical office settings. You know that a person is being productive (or not). Remote work arrangements do not work out like this. Instead, what you can do is set clear expectations regarding work outputs within set timelines. You don’t have to bother if the work gets done in 10 or 6 hours and even when, as long as it gets done to meet the set goals and deadlines.

Flexible Working Hours

This one is in continuation of the previous point. Being at home, one has to be considerate towards potential distractions like attention seeking kids, elderly parents medical needs, noisy neighbors; the list is endless. Also sleep cycles are not the most ideal amid the pandemic. So, flexible working hours will be appreciated by your teams.

Right Technology Stack by your side

You need to find the apt tools for all your teams be it design, development, hiring, sales, marketing or even happy hours (more on this later). Communication and collaboration should be easy and hassle free at all times. You need to invest in multiple channels for communication to avoid dependency, project management tools, virtual whiteboards for brainstorming, time tracking software.

Our ideal mix has 2–3 customized communication channels, one project management tool, two file sharing/editing software and rest are as per individual department requirements (design, development, testing, ecommerce, HR). You should experiment and explore before you narrow down on tools especially if you are going for paid versions.

Mentoring over Micromanaging

Micromanaging is never a good go-to-leadership methodology until requested for. And just because one can not see team members working at their desks all day long, it is still not an excuse to micromanage. Mentoring on the other hand is an ongoing process, it helps in growth and keeps motivation levels high.

Get Together for Social Interactions

Importance of social interactions like ‘water cooler conversations’, ‘coffee breaks’ can not be undermined. Such communications help in building rapport and getting to know your colleagues beyond their professional selves.

Social distancing does not imply social isolation in any way. Get together over calls for happy hours, friendly leg pulling, or even for a round of charades. The aim is to build relations and blow off some steam. This will also help in tackling burnouts with your teams.

Empathize

We are not in the most ideal work scenario. Frustration levels can be high, there will be burnouts, even few genuine mistakes. As a manager you need to empathize with your team, recognize their problematic situations, or just listen. You can also encourage teammates to take days off, it will help in resetting their minds.

How to create the right set of KPIs?

The accountability that comes with numbers can not be denied by any growth oriented person. And setting KPIs is the right step in this direction. It will ensure that there is minimum slack in your teams and expectations are crystal clear. And remote working models necessitates laying ground rules about assessment.

All this said, how can you ensure that your set KPIs motivate team members and not hinder their working? KPIs need to follow certain principles namely,

• Aligned well with personal and organizational goals
• Specific to different teams
• Measurable output
• Realistic and simple in nature
• Have a set timeline
• Molded as per changing business cycles

Let’s elaborate a bit on the above mentioned points.

All your teams, be it sales, marketing, development, design, HR, need to be aligned with your organization’s goal. And all the TLs need to be aware of individual goals and expectations.

For example, an employee with just one or two years of experience will look into how they can build more skills, have exposure to a variety of projects, etc. Whereas an experienced person will be looking forward to more incentives like ESOPs (if that’s an option), moving to bigger projects, maybe even mentoring the new blood.

Your sales team needs to be assessed on the basis of leads bought in, conversion rates, customer retention, etc.

Your development teams will be concerned with time taken to complete projects, adherence to the timelines for code development and testing, average number of bugs detected and fixed, etc.

Your social media marketing team needs to see engagement rates, organic traffic, followers count, website visits, etc you get the idea here.

Also, the best KPIs revolve around numbers that are simple to understand and assess. Reason being, complicated metrics often lead to confusion and things tend to get lost in translation.

2020 has made one thing perfectly clear, the quicker you adapt, better are your chances of survival. Together we have witnessed a pandemic, forest fires, murder hornets, and crawling economies, successfully managing a (or many) remote team sure is something within our control.

These are our takeaways from our years of experience. Here’s our secret sauce in action for remote collaboration. In case you wish to talk more about our workings, feel free to reach out to us.

About Galaxy Weblinks

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