How To Make Your Remote Team More Effective
We asked entrepreneurs what they are doing to make their remote teams more effective
During the pandemic, businesses around the world have transitioned to remote work. We asked managers around the world what they have done to make their teams more effective.
Andrea Loubier, CEO of Mailbird
When managing a remote workforce, keeping everyone on the same page (literally) is imperative. That’s why it’s a great idea to research tools and apps that can help your team stay productive and on time.
Slack is a great go-to app for communication.. This message-like service is ideal for quick check-ins that don’t require the time it takes to send a formal email and then wait for a response. The recipient gets a ping to his or her phone or computer and, if they’re on top of things, you can have a response in mere seconds.
Now, when it comes to delegating tasks and scheduling assignments, Asana is definitely the way to go. You can quickly and easily create tasks with descriptions, images and documents, easily assigning them to members of your team. The app will keep track of your tasks and notify you when something is due. The cool thing is that you can even task yourself!
Now, keeping employees immersed in company culture and avoiding burnout seem to go hand-in-hand. Beginning with the hiring process, let your new employees know that your culture is one of innovation and creativity. To support this, encourage impromptu brainstorming sessions, and be sure that everyone understands that all ideas (even those that prove to end unsuccessfully) are important and worth investigating. Sticking to fresh methods and constantly implementing new strategies will concrete your company culture and keep burnout at bay.
Mailbird makes it easier to manage multiple accounts.
Janet Patterson, VP of Marketing Communications for Highway Title Loans
Flexible working hours: Working from home comes with several distractions, such as taking care of the house chores or the unavoidable noises neighbor noises. You can’t expect all employees to have the same pace of work when at home, because certain family commitments get involved as well. For this reason, it is best to provide a little flexibility in choosing their working hours — a concept known as flextime.
We are following this for our employees, and it has helped improve their productivity levels and quality of work massively. People who are morning risers and feel more active then, are working 8 full hours during the day by choosing their start and end times themselves. Similar is the case for employees who are night-owls and perform better during evening hours.
Use calendar and time-tracking tools: Keeping track of your employees and their tasks can be challenging with remote work. It becomes hard to monitor their activities. For this purpose, we are using project management tools to keep a close eye on what and when it is being done. This helps us have consistent insight into what is in progress, what hasn’t started yet, and what needs to be done. One such tool that we are using is Trello, through which we assign tasks to all employees. A separate dashboard has been created for each department so that their manager can look into their activities directly.
Highway Title Loans is an online lender that provides car title loans.
Robin Brown, CEO of Vivipins
Working from home has had a negative impact on employee productivity. The one most effective practice during this time to raise the motivation level among employees is to challenge the team. I have Introduced new standards and given my team challenges to achieve to keep them motivated. Later I judge a team or an individual based on their accomplishments, I give them remarks so they can know how their performance has been. This keeps employees encouraged to achieve something and keeps them competitive. When employees work wholeheartedly they are more likely to offer maximum productivity compared to when they lack motivation.
We have one informal meeting every week. Now that we are into the pandemic, we do it virtually. The informal meeting is fun and the team waits for it. So here, we discuss everything apart from business meetings and team agenda. During the conversations, the internal problems come up somehow and are solved in the most hilarious ways. This has helped us a lot! The team has understood that everyone is working for the growth of the company and most of the issues happen due to miscommunication. So those issues should not be taken by heart and everyone should focus on productivity.
VIVPINS uses the latest technology to customize coins and pins for more than 5,000 business.
Susan Fennema, CEO of Beyond the Chaos
If the day to day tasks are getting managed but you want to have oversight into your team’s capacity and priorities, I cannot recommend Slack enough. This is a great instant messaging tool to keep team members connected, while not working in the same spot. Since the beginning of the pandemic, I implemented two channels with my team which are “The Daily Huddle Channel” and the “Ice Breaker Channel”. The daily huddle helps me make sure that team members are working on the appropriate tasks, not running into any blockers, and understand their daily schedule. It allows team members to ask for help across the board, and I have noticed that I’ve started delegating more, by having a basic idea of what they are working on that day. The“Ice-breaker” channel started as a nice check in across departments to ask a silly question and get to know each other more, but I have found that by team members having a better sense of one another’s personality, they also have begun to ask for help and expertise from each other more, leading to more efficient work across the board.
Beyond the Chaos consults with other small companies on streamlining their operations and project management support.
CarrieMcKeegan, CEO & Co-Founder of Greenback Expat Tax Services
Working remotely seems to offer increased efficiency because, to be successful, remote work requires that there be time-management procedures put in place to be successful and productive. Perhaps the most important thing is to migrate to a tool that allows teammates to communicate seamlessly during the day and then turn off after work to avoid burnout. We use a combined project management and communication tool called Podio. In one system, we can track tasks, manage projects, and chat.
Additionally, this allows us to take a look at our tasks and determine if we are utilizing our time appropriately and with the greatest impact on deadlines. It can also help in understanding the time that is typically spent on specific tasks, as well as hours dedicated to particular clients. In doing so, team members can learn to work more efficiently and, as a company, we have a deeper understanding of time expectancies.
Greenback Expat Tax Services take the hassle out of filing American expat taxes.
Johan Hajji, CEO & Founder of Upperkey
Although many members of my team have worked remotely for some time, this year has been the first time that all of my staff have been working from home. Because of this, I have had to implement a number of new procedures to ensure that all employees are working effectively and feel supported. These include:
Keeping an ‘open line’ via Messenger to ensure that employees are able to reach me whenever they need to.
Conducting obligatory daily catch ups via Zoom to ensure that all employees know what they should be doing as well as being clear on targets.
Sharing files and chats via Slack.
As you can see, for me, keeping a remote team effective is all about communication — the importance of which cannot be stressed enough.
Upperkey offers guaranteed rent & property management.
Milosz Krasinski, Managing Director at Chilli Fruit
Until the arrival of COVID-19, my team was primarily office-based and the transition to remote working has had its ups and downs. Because of this, I have recently implemented KissFlow’s workload automation software to help my team work more effectively. This has been incredibly helpful as it cuts down on task repetition and therefore reduces wasted time and money. It also helps to keep the team focussed as they are able to mark tasks as complete and move onto the next. Communication has also been really important and, I make sure that we have team video meetings at least twice a week to address any issues and make sure that we’re all on the same page.
Chilli Fruit is a web consulting company.
Carla Diaz Cofounder of Broadband Search
One thing that we did, which had a positive impact on remote employees’ productivity, was implement flextime into our business. I think employers sometimes forget that working from home means there are often other distractions we need to account for — especially now with entire families at home all the time. Giving employees the freedom to customize their work schedule helps to minimize distraction and allows them to focus on the specific tasks they need to do at specific times. In addition to improved productivity, this working model has created a stronger relationship between employees and our brand, which has a number of other positive outcomes companies tend to strive for. I’d strongly suggest any remote business to look into implementing flexible schedules and what the specific benefits could be for the business and its employees.
Broadband Search helps people to find the best internet and/or television service in their area.
Elliot Blackler, Founder of Evopure
We’ve been working hard to make remote working as productive as possible in an effort to remain remote permanently in 2021.
We now have less meetings.
At first we tried to have meetings every day to check in with everyone and make sure everything was going well. But we found that a meeting at 9am would last for 30–45 minutes, most of the first hour had been used up, and our employees were suffering from ‘Zoom Fatigue’ and it was taking time to regain focus after the meetings.
Instead, we now have weekly team meetings so we can keep up to date with what is going on, and we just use emails and the occasional 5 minute individual call if there is a problem. Everyone works better, the first hour of the day isn’t wasted, and we’ve realised that a lot of things don’t need to be dealt with over a video-call, and can instead be dealt with through a couple of emails or WhatsApp messages.
Evopure is a farm-to-door organic CBD brand with transparent lab-testing and a focus on education.
Mike Sadowski, CEO and Founder at Brand24.com
You need to create the right environment for the home office. Providing your employees with equipment, software and instructions is crucial for it to work. You need frequent meetings with them, preferably short daily briefs to talk about pressing matters and weekly longer meetings. Try out different types of project managing and communication software and see what fits your team the best. In remote work, communication is key. Isolation and talking via a Hangout can impair the communication you normally would have when you see someone in person. Hence, it’s critical to make it as convenient and effective as possible. Don’t keep the meetings going on for too long, too, as it’s exhausting.
Brand24.com is a SaaS that analyzes online mentions
Liam Anderson, Principal Designer at Liam Anderson Interiors
One thing that has proven very effective for us, while working remotely, is having a clear agenda for every single meeting and a hard-out time. Time is the most precious resource, and wasting a considerable amount of it going off topic or trying to address things that are not on the agenda is plainly wasteful. A hard-out time is a predetermined end time of the meeting. The most we’ve gone over that was about 15 minutes in very specific scenarios. Otherwise, the meetings always end by the hard-out time. Regardless of, what you managed to accomplish during that time. It is better for you as a business owner to spend 10 minutes after a 25-minute meeting analyzing the conversation and figuring out why you did not manage to accomplish what you wanted out of that meeting. Then, addressing that in a broad manner across the company. Versus, spending another half an hour in that meeting trying to force a result. For all you know, that extra time spent on the matter in that moment could just complicate things further.
Liam Anderson Interiors is a boutique interior design firm based in New York City.
Laurie Wilkins, Founder and Editor of Call Outdoors
We’ve introduced flexible working hours — supported by CRM.
Our remote team is based in several countries and a result of this is time zone differences. When I began employing new team members during the early stages of the blog, many members tried to match my working hours, but some are in time zones as far as eleven hours behind mine, which means that they would have had to completely shift their work cycle. After adopting a CRM solution, we were able to monitor project progress, streamline communication and ultimately bridge the gap between time zones.
Having a platform where you and your employees are able to track and manage work is key in ensuring that everyone is on the same page, which assists in reducing remote work stress.
Call Outdoors is a comprehensive outdoors lifestyle blog that promotes our readers connecting with nature!
Albert Lee, Founder of Home Living Lab
We’re always looking to prove the 80/20 rule, seeking the 20% of tasks that will drive 80% of the results.
In my experience, one of the ‘20% tasks’ that we’ve implemented with our remote team has come from our weekly KPI meetings.
In our weekly KPI meetings, each of our team has the opportunity to go over any problems they may have encountered through the week that hasn’t been addressed, improvement suggestions, their KPI numbers and an action plan for the following week, based off those numbers.
Not only has this allowed each of our team to suggest improvements from the frontline of the company, but it also leaves us with a clear set of tasks that we’re looking to have completed by the following meeting. Once these tasks are completed, we can reassess the impact on the business and start the cycle over with a new plan.
Using these meetings, we’ve seen a 30%+ improvement in monthly revenue and up to a 75% decrease in task completion time, compared to weeks prior, leaving us more time to focus on other growth opportunities.
One way we have used to keep our team motivated is to offer highly flexible working arrangements and work hours. We recognize that our employees may have new commitments during this period such as online schooling, grocery shopping and meal prepping for their children. Some of these activities can only be done during the typical work hours and employees can get stressed out trying to juggle these at the same time. By offering flexible working hours, we shift the focus to actual job deliverables rather than their physical hours spent working. This keeps their energy higher and helps everyone get a time that works for them. In a way, we are also slowly changing the company culture to one that is more results oriented. In the long run, this might actually prove to be a game changer!
Home Living Lab is a company centered on home improvement solutions.
Kate Feeney, Vice President of Content, Brand, Communications, at ZoomInfo
When we first moved to remote work, my department was rapidly growing — from 9 to 17 over three months — so I held team check-in meetings every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday so that each team could provide regular updates on their work and so everyone could get to know each other a bit. As we all got more comfortable collaborating with each other and with working from home, I reduced these meetings to once a week to open up my staff’s calendars and allow them to be more productive.
ZoomInfo is a data intelligence platform for B2B sales and marketing professionals.
Elizabeth Harrin, Director of GirlsGuideToPM
We were always a remote team, but we never had collaboration tools beyond a task management app. We’ve introduced Slack and it’s made a big difference for how the team chats with each other throughout the day. Previously, for the odd chat message, we used the text option on Skype, but unless we were scheduled to be a call, people weren’t logging into that. What I like about Slack is that I get notifications on my tablet and also on my desktop. Everything syncs across devices in a way that just doesn’t happen for us with Facebook Messenger. Slack has also given us the ability to split up conversations into topic threads, so we can be far more intentional and specific with messages. It’s also a lot easier to find historical discussions, and it keeps my inbox feeling lighter!
GirlsGuideToPM is an education and mentoring site for project managers.
Alex Savy, CEO and the Founder of SleepingOcean.com
In my opinion, there are a few ways to help your remote team become more productive:
Allow flexible working hours. It’s hard to balance work and life when your office is in your home. Therefore, not all people can work the office hours remotely. Letting your team members set their own schedule can actually help them get more things done (and improve the quality of their work), as they won’t stress about the deadlines and can work when it’s the most comfortable for them.
Set clear goals and expect results. Be specific about what you expect from each team member and what results you want to see. Additionally, you can use Google Sheets to track everyone’s progress. Yes, this tool isn’t that fancy, but it gets the job done.
Communicate. This will help you create a friendly, healthy atmosphere that is beneficial for work. You don’t have to be too pushy or always present, but checking occasionally on your employees is always a good idea. Be open to their questions or suggestions as well.
SleepingOcean.com helps people sleep better.
Caio Bersot, Manager of the Media Team at Rank-It.ca
Since March, we have decided to set realistic expectations. We provided people with all the gear they needed, from desks to extra screens, so they could feel as comfortable as possible and create their own office space at home. Still, we knew productivity wouldn’t be the same, at least initially, so we projected our growth and strategies based on productivity levels of around 20% lower than in-office goals. That protected us from bad surprises, and it provided us with positive news over the course of the year.
For WFH to work, we were also concerned about not bringing another burden to our employees’ shoulders and making them feel more pressured. So, we decided to create clearer weekly targets for our projects, so people would have the freedom to work on their projects without that hourly, ‘every minute counts’ mentality. Providing people with a clearer set of long-term goals allows them to organize their workloads as they see fit and remove a bit of the pressure of working from home during a pandemic.
Zoom meetings were also an important part of the WFH process for us. Zoom meeting fatigue is real, so we wanted to make our calls as dynamic as possible. We had video conferences not only for work but also for leisure activities and group games. We also noticed how important it was to have multiple types of meetings, such as individual conversations, team- and company-wide video chats. That provided our team with a sense of belonging, they were still feeling like they were part of a team, but it also gave them an open, flexible channel to share their concerns, struggles and improvements
Rank-It.ca is a product review site that helps people find the best household and tech products for a variety of needs.
Kevin Miller, founder and CEO of The Word Counter
Remote employees require more written guidelines than in-person employees as well as a higher degree of feedback. The main thing to remember when working with people remotely is that remote work can create uncertainty within an organization about how much work an employee should be doing every day, when they should be responding to emails, etc.. The key is for management to set clear goals and expectations so that remote employees feel at-ease knowing what is expected of them.
I manage my remote team by doing two things. First, we do daily standup meetings at 10AM PST. During these meetings, we discuss what we did yesterday, what we are working on today, and talk through any issues we are experiencing. Second, we do all of our meetings via Zoom to keep each other accountable. Also, we have every task set up in Basecamp to keep things tracked and organized. It’s important to ensure that deadlines have been discussed so there is no guesswork and you don’t have to micromanage anyone.
One of the most important things businesses can do is to focus exclusively on KPIs and deliverables. Managers should not start wasting everyone’s time by measuring and tracking every little move that employees make while working from home. Again, set clear expectations in terms of KPIs and deliverables that each employee is supposed to achieve and let it rip. These goals should be just as ambitious as the ones you would set if your employees were in the office, but they must also be achievable. You don’t want to sandbag yourself, and you don’t want to overshoot. Set SMART KPIs.
The Word Counter is a dynamic online tool used for counting words, characters, sentences, paragraphs, and pages in real-time, along with spelling and grammar checking.
Matt Stormoen, Co-Founder & CEO of Mobibi, Inc.
Here’s what we have done to help our employees become more productive no matter where they’re working: (1) Give employees clear tasks and deliverables for the day; (2) Help break down tasks for them already, i.e., what is required to get this done; (3) Stick to a fixed number of hours of working and make it a point to get things done in that given time; and (4) Limit the amount of meetings done in a week so that employees can focus on getting tasks done. We also don’t use time trackers since we’ve found that it actually backfires (i.e., employees tend to find more ways to work around the system and slack off). Just be clear with the tasks and deliverables for the day, and trust your employees to be honest and accountable.
Mobibi, Inc. is a content marketing platform that empowers creators and brands to tell their stories and strengthen their influence.
Benedict Jones, CEO of Traced Mobile Security
At Traced we’ve always planned to be initially working remotely, so maintaining productivity with our remote working practices has always been a key focal point. We know that people are most productive at different times of the day, so we all attend the virtual stand up every morning, but otherwise we’re free to drop in and out of the working day as we please. We chat all the time on Slack — sometimes even about work — and we jump on calls with one another several times a day to work through problems, brainstorm, or just catch up.
We also set clear quarterly and yearly Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) — which is a goal setting methodology used by Google that we’ve ingrained into the DNA of Traced from the outset — to help us to keep focus and track of our progress towards our goals. We focus our OKRs around our product to ensure that we prioritise the features that most highly contribute to the value-stream to our customers and work in 2-week “sprints” to ensure we’re all working collectively towards them.
Knowing that everyone else is dependent on our own input keeps us focused on what we can realistically achieve, so there’s less room for procrastination. Finally, we reward ourselves. We’re each other’s biggest fans, and we’re constantly celebrating — from coding wins to new product features!
Traced is a UK-based cybersecurity startup that protects mobile devices from phishing, ransomware and other threats.
James Boatwright, CEO of Code Galaxy
What has been helpful for our team is a few key factors. First, I encourage our team to dress for success. Even though we are working from home, sometimes hanging out in your pajamas all day can psychologically affect productivity. I want my employees to feel as energetic and professional as possible all the time. Second, we have established check in times throughout the week. I have a small team so I am able to make a one-on-one check in with each person throughout the work week. Third, we do Zoom team meetings every two weeks to just really communicate, and at this point nothing is off the table. If they want to talk about what is going on at home or their struggles, we are open to that. But mostly it is to get everyone one on the same page and moving in a positive direction.
Code Galaxy provides nationwide computer programming classes and camps for kids ages 7–14.
John Ross, President & CEO of Test Prep Insight
One thing I have done as manager to increase my remote team’s productivity is to require that all scheduled meetings be 15 minutes or less. At the outset of COVID, when team members needed to schedule an internal meeting or call, they would always set it for longer timeframes, generally either 30 or 60 minutes. I realized that folks were doing this because Outlook suggests these longer time blocks for meetings by default, and it is easy to just select the default, suggested time.
However, there is generally no meeting we hold that can’t be accomplished in 15 minutes or less. This new policy forces people to be concise and efficient in getting what they want out of a call, and there is no time for idle chit chat or BS’ing. This then opens up more free time for actual work. Since implementing this change just two weeks after going remote, our team’s content output is up 34.5%.
Test Prep Insight is an online education company that provides detailed test prep product reviews, comparisons and buyer guides.
Phil Santoro, Co-Founder of Wilbur Labs
Wilbur Labs identifies pain points and builds businesses to solve these problems. Since 2016, they have built and invested in 13 technology companies, including VacationRenter, Vitabox, Joblist and Barkbus, and plan to launch several new companies over the next year. I wanted to reach out with some thoughts on how teams can be more effective working from home.
The biggest change we made to improve working from home is to support employees’ remote workspaces. In an office setting, equipment and IT support are usually an afterthought for most employees. When working remote, employees will need to manage both. From troubleshooting internet issues, workstation peripherals, and computer issues, the added work can take away valuable time. Businesses which don’t support their employees’ equipment remotely can end up increasing workforce stress and reducing productivity.
Businesses can adapt to this by supporting teams with work from home needs. For example at Wilbur Labs, we make employees have all the equipment needed to work productively. We give everyone a $1,000 workstation stipend and IT works with employees to plan and order the equipment that works best for them. This varies by person and results in a lot more one-on-one support than IT typically provided. By taking on more upfront work and investment, we could ensure everyone working remote could do so in the most efficient and productive way.
We want to make sure our teams are happy and productive no matter where they are. Every single person globally is dealing with some level of increased stress since early this year. For our team, we have tried to remove any stress we can, and better supporting remote workspaces went a long way to support that goal.
Wilbur Labs is a San Francisco-based startup studio turning bold ideas into market-leading companies.
Kevin Vandijk, CEO and Founder of Tree Online
It’s almost impossible to manage every aspect of a remote team. For this reason, I have allowed more flexibility to my employees who work from home. Instead of tracking how many hours an employee works I focus on outcomes and goals met. Place the responsibility on your employees!
Being on top of your team non-stop can cripple their productivity. Clearly state what each team member must accomplish for a certain period and give them the chance to prove that they can be independent. You will observe that micromanagement may not be the best approach for remote teams. Give your employees freedom and you will win their allegiance!
We’ve had great results using this approach for the last six months and we plan to continue to use remote teams. Remote work is the future, we must accept it and adjust.
Tree Online is a digital marketing agency based in the Netherlands.
Dave Hoch Co-founder of BigCupofCoffee.com and Colibrily.com
One trick I use with my remote team is to do a quick check-in before start our daily meetings. It gives us a chance to be more personal with each other and not just focus on work content. We’ve found our staff are more engaged and likely to be focused when foster relationships that are more than just professional.
Colibrily.com is a holistic web design and development company and BigCupofCoffee.com is a niche site related to coffee
Jolene Caufield, Senior Advisor of Healthy Howard
As the business world enters a new age of digital operations, there have been plenty of changes and adjustments taken out from the companies’ management side in order to fulfill the demands of these migrations. It brought out a whole new level of pressure for business leaders to successfully adopt a foreign operation style while delicately looking after the employees’ needs within just a short period of time. Those who have successfully managed to do so faced an equally difficult challenge which is to maintain employee morale and work productivity despite the alterations in the work setting.
Us at Healthy Howard, we adopted a daily motivational email blast set to go out at the start of the shift, in the middle, and right before the end. Although working remotely, these simple things let the staff know that the company is thinking about them and their wellbeing. The emails may include a motivational quote, self-care reminders, and funny videos to lighten everybody’s day and improved mood. Incentives and perks also work wonders — giving out hygienic kits is a hit especially due to our current global situation. Who wouldn’t be happy with free stuff?
Healthy Howard is a non-profit organization advocating for healthy lifestyle choices.
Sam Ogborn, founder of once + more
There is one thing that has been an absolute game-changer for my team… Keeping everything consolidated to one to two channels! Hear me out, I know it sounds simple. My team keeps everything in Notion (and I mean everything.) It’s replaced Airtable, Google Docs, etc. This has made my team so much more productive because there aren’t any questions like “where is that document?” they automatically know that it lives in Notion, color coded with specific categories. Notion has every possible template so every team member can find something that works for them. And then all of our communication happens in Slack. Keeping everything in one to two channels is a real game changer! It creates a lot of clarity and efficiency for us.
once + more is a marketing firm turning startups and founders into powerhouse marketers.
Jake Sacino, CEO and Founder of Web Pop
When faced with a more permanent remote work experience, it’s only natural to assume that many people will want to continue to experience this freedom that excludes dressing in business attire in the morning, a busy commute to and from the office, and eating a rushed lunch, sometimes alone, in your cubicle. And to boot, many companies are seeing how remote workers can actually help them save money with reduced overhead and other expenditures. This means that many companies are also seeing this new “experiment” as a success, and are hoping to work remotely as well. I definitely feel that productivity increases when employees are working remotely. When not in a daily team-based environment, people find that they must carry more personal accountability, which means completing their work with both high-quality results and timeliness in mind. This type of working culture also leaves plenty of room for innovation, creativity and other traits that inspire workers to be as productive as possible. Asana, Podio, Teamwork and others are great project-management tools, which can also be used to manage productivity and efficiency. With just a few clicks, you can easily see if team members are completing their projects in the time allotted. As long as you take the time required to complete a task in an efficient manner into consideration when setting due dates, this can provide a general scope of whether time is being used wisely.
Web Pop is a SEO and marketing firm.
