5 Secrets for building successful Remote teams
There are 5 key elements you should consider at the moment of building a Remote team. Building a team by itself can be underestimated, even without being Remote. When I say team, I don’t mean a group of individuals that work in the same project on their own. I mean a group of people that can share values and perform the best to achieve a common goal.
Here are some 5 tips I strongly suggest you to check:
- Communication
- Strong HR Team
- Culture Values
- Timezone Difference
- Meetings
Communication
If your team is remote, you need to make sure your team can interact as smooth as they can. Paying attention to this, providing tools and process will make their life simple and more productive.
This is not only about the right tools, but it is also institutional.
How do you communicate changes in the organization?
- Share changes in your organization with all the company.
- Share your company direction with Management.
- Make sure your Management communicate to their teams.
- Provide feedback to the team as often as you can. (Weekly/daily).
Having a strong HR Team will help you validate a good fit with your culture, career roadmap, team bonding and motivation.
How do you manage to create a common culture with your remote teams?
Cultural Values
You need to have clear values in your organization. Having them in place will help align expectations.
- Identifies the organization core values. (This post will help you)
- Reinforce these values in events, common places, when providing feedback.
Timezone Difference
This is quite important, always try to overlap as much as you can between your team and your client. In case you have to deal with many timezones at the same time, plan to re-organize the team.
Communicate among all timezones and working hours to avoid conflicts in meetings and expected work to be delivered.
Try to share calendars among all in your organization.
Meetings
Try to have video conference instead of audio only. Getting use to this will close the gap of being remote and recognize only a voice.
- Get your team use to use: Hangouts meet, Go To Meeting, Slack Pro, Webex, Hi5, Skype, Zoom.
- Try to have at lease once a year a meeting a person with all the team in one location (ideal).
- If possible, define a unique tool for communication.
Here are some questions you may find useful to evaluate with your team:
What do your actions say you value?
What specific area do you need to work on in your communication?
Is your team aware of the company direction?
What can be improved in your HR team?
Are you interested in improving your Remote team performance? Working with Truelogic Software makes a difference not only for our clients but also for employees, let’s be in touch, tell us more about your challenges.