Work From Home: How to Hire and Manage Remote Employees
Virtual teams are the future of work, and this future is already happening. Geographically independent employees are more common than ever before. A laptop, good internet connection, and a relevant set of skills are all you need to start working remotely. No wonder why so many people choose to build a remote team instead of an on-premise one. And so did I.
Being able to manage your work and personal life more flexibly sounds too appealing not to try becoming location independent. However, building a work-from-home team from people who are scattered all around the world and maintaining a healthy remote culture isn’t as easy as it might seem.
As a co-founder of a fully-remote company Zima Media, I’m going to tell you all the ins and outs of hiring and managing employees who work from home. And if you take my advice seriously, you’ll know how to build your own successful remote team by the time you finish reading this article.
What’s the Difference Between Remote Staffing and Outsourcing?
Before we dive deep into the nuances of creating a virtual team, let’s first draw a line between outsourcing and hiring remote workers.
Outsourcing is when you use resources external to your organization. Whether you outsource a task/project/entire operation to a freelancer or a whole team, they’re not your direct employees. Plus, they’re the ones holding the responsibility for completing a task. It means that those people aren’t necessarily remote workers.
In short, those who perform the outsourced activities aren’t considered your staff.
When you use remote staff, you hire them directly, which means that they become your employees. You manage them, check their performance, and of course, you can fire them if they don’t perform well or violate the contract.
The difference between regular staff and remote staff is that remote employees work from wherever they feel like doing it. Whether it’s a cafe, a coworking space or home, it’s up to them to choose.
What Problems Do You Face When Hiring Remote Employees?
As fun as it might sound, hiring remote employees also comes with a few difficulties. Becoming a part of a remote company is very tempting. That’s why the number of applications you receive for one job posting can be simply overwhelming.
So, here’s what you should be ready to face when assembling a remote team.
Unqualified candidates
As I said earlier, now, a lot of people dream about working from home for a decentralized company. It means that whenever they see “fully-remote” in a job posting, they’re sending their application, sometimes without even reading it till the end. Sure thing it’s easy for them to click the “submit” button, but at the end of a day, you’re the one sorting out such applications.
Solution: If you don’t want to pull all-nighters trying to find a perfect candidate, make sure the job application process isn’t too simple and requires more than just a submission of a CV. If applicants make an effort to submit a lengthy application, they’re already worth your attention.
Gaining trust
Trust is a crucial aspect of successful collaboration between employers and employees. When you physically meet a candidate for an interview, it’s much easier to gain their trust and prove that you’re a legitimate business. So, how do you succeed in it online with no face-to-face interaction?
Firstly, let the potential employee know that you’ll always be there to help them out, give advice, or share opinions. As a virtual manager, you won’t be able to keep an eye on what your remote team is doing every single minute. So, you should also make sure you hire people who will be doing their work from home knowing that no one is looking.
Once you establish a trustful relationship with your decentralized team, you’re already one step closer to building a successful remote company.
4 Ways to Hire a Remote Team Effectively
I get it. Everyone wants to shorten the hiring process as much as possible. However, from my own experience, I can tell you that it’s worth spending time if you want to hire a qualified employee. Here’s how you can do it right.
#1 Create a detailed job posting
A remote job post should be compelling and very detailed. There’s no other way around it. The more you describe what you want from a future employee, the better your chance is to find the one you’re looking for.
#2 Check references
Ideally, you’d want to hire someone who already has experience working from home (aka remotely.) I’m not saying it should be your priority, but you need to ensure the person can work without anyone looking over their shoulder.
#3 Test them
If you want to hire someone who’d be great at what they do and stay with you for a long time, then check it straight away. Give the applicant a test task, something similar to what they’ll be dealing with every day if they’re accepted. It’ll help you determine whether this person suits your requirements and is a good fit for your business.
#4 Create an interactive onboarding process
Before you let a new employee jump into the routine, make sure they know all the ins and outs of your business. So, take it slow. Divide an onboarding process into stages, let them get acquainted with new colleagues, and monitor the workflow. Also, make them comfortable with asking as many questions as they want.
How Can Remote Employees Maximize Their Effectiveness?
Now that you are done hiring a remote team, you need to ensure their effectiveness. As a manager, it’s your task to help your employees be more productive while working from home. Here are a few tips:
Communicate a lot
The more you stay connected within your remote team, the more you can accomplish as a company. Create different discussion channels, let everyone express their ideas, and ask for advice. It will allow everyone to solve problems faster and improve the quality of work. Moreover, try spending a few minutes for a fun talk with your employees at the beginning of conference calls. This way, everyone will feel more relaxed and cared for. For instance, my coworkers love sharing jokes, GIFs, and memes, yet we still manage to stay professional when it comes to our work duties.
Set guidelines
Any remote company needs to have clear guidelines. Remember that the employees might be anywhere in the world. So, everyone needs to share their availability to avoid getting disturbed in the middle of the night. It’s also a good idea to have a shared calendar to know when someone has a vacation or celebrates a national holiday. Plus, don’t forget to set communication guidelines, too. Define the number of controversial topics that cannot be discussed (e.g., politics, religion.) It’ll help your team stay focused and avoid offending each other.
Sustain work-life balance
Since working remotely usually doesn’t mean having set working hours, it’s critical to separate work from leisure. Believe me, it’s so easy to get stuck on a task for hours and not even notice that you spent the whole night working on it. So, make sure your employees have time to enjoy their lives and don’t feel like they should be working non-stop. It’s vital to stay motivated while working from home, and this video can show you how to do it.
Track performance
As I said earlier, virtual managers don’t have the opportunity to monitor their employees in real-time. But they still can do it virtually. It doesn’t mean that you should track how many hours each team member spends working per day. It means you should track their performance, not presence. That’s the difference between remote and on-premise employees. You hire a person you trust, and you know they’ll do what you’re paying them for. The amount of time an employee spends on completing a task shouldn’t matter as much as the quality of its outcome.
5 Essential Tips for Managing Remote Employees
If you want to avoid the most common challenges of managing remote employees, I have a few useful pieces of advice for you.
#1 Set clear expectations
Let your employees know what you expect from them and what they can expect from you. Simple as that. It’ll help you avoid misunderstandings and let you keep everyone on the same page.
#2 Schedule regular video calls
Make your employees change from their pajamas at least once per week (jk…) and jump on a video call. Since you cannot see each other regularly, it’s a good practice to have these types of interactions to check how things are going or raise any concerns.
#3 Let the cloud rule
Shared drives and docs are all you need to keep everyone on top of what’s going on in the company. The easier it is for your employees to access all the important files, the better will be their performance.
#4 Incentivize
A little incentive never hurt nobody. Let your remote workers spend some of their work time on improving their skills. For example, provide them with an allowance for online courses, conferences, or books. Make sure they know you’re interested in their professional growth.
#5 Structure workflows
The bigger your company becomes, the more projects appear. So as not to confuse everybody, provide each team member with all the essential training and tools they need to do a good job. Plus, make sure that each person or team is responsible for their own project. Don’t create a mess in their heads by making them follow all the internal operations.
Tools to Help Manage Your Remote Team
There’s no way you can successfully manage a remote team without using the latest technology. In our company, we use several tools to help us collaborate and complete our assignments:
- Slack: We use it to talk to each other by creating various topic channels. Also, we have many automations set up to accelerate the work process. Plus, we have a bot that sends us good morning gifs every weekday.
- Teamwork: It’s our project management tool where we keep track of all the internal projects, create tasks, and discuss them. Teamwork is also great for onboarding and improving the team’s performance.
- Intercom: We’ve served more than 2000 clients, so having a tool that helps us manage the communication with them is critical. Intercom is an excellent software to keep an eye on all the ongoing customer interactions and support other team members if needed.
- Zapier: Zapier automations make our work lives so much easier. We use it to automate internal processes, even including the hiring of new employees. I don’t know what I’d do without this software.
- Google Hangouts: This is where our video calls are happening. It lets us discuss important work-related issues as well as share our vacation plans. By having regular video meetings, we stay more connected and positive.
- Airtable: It’s a cloud collaboration service that lets us manage both our internal projects and clients. Airtable is like a sophisticated version of Google Sheets. And since we like all the colorful boxes and extra features, we prefer using it. It makes our daily tasks much more fun.
Bottom Line
Creating a remote company is a very demanding process, and you might face a lot of challenges while assembling a virtual team. However, if you invest enough time in it, you’ll be able to reap a lot of benefits in the end.
The recipe for success is very straightforward. Define and set clear goals, hire people who’re excited about working from home and growing with you, give them all the essential tools, structure the workflow, and communicate often. Only then you’ll be able to create a remote team with employees who love their job and are ready to help you scale your business.
