How to manage remote teams
Remote work has become a viable and lucrative way of doing business in the last few years. And because of the results of COVID-19, pursuing the introduction of work from home policies is only being pushed more and more companies.
For many it has definitely been a tough process. Yet there are significant benefits to be enjoyed by both workers and employers as they transcend the initially growing pains.
Studies show that remote employees frequently find themselves more active and happy with their jobs. By hiring remote workers who use their home offices to complete their daily tasks, businesses often save on overhead costs for office supplies, parking, and computers. And now, as their workers work from home, many businesses know that productivity will stay high, and business will proceed as normal.
Having said that, there are still problems and obstacles that exist and will occur. And if businesses view long-term remote work as a choice for workers, they would need the right tools together to supervise jobs, manage tasks and innovate.
Here are our top 10 favourite digital communication resources to help you find ways for your team to get the most out of the remote job.
Disclosure
Being away from the workplace will make stuff like communication and teamwork a little more complicated. You no longer have face-to - face meetings or those swift water cooler talks. In essence, less knowledge is exchanged, and various communication networks need to be created to facilitate further collaboration. Perhaps even more so than in the workplace when the team was in.
Here are our contact framework recommendations that help various stay in touch methods.
1. Sluggish
When working remotely, swift and easy communication is needed. You can't just pop up to someone's desk to ask a question or share a text, so that you need something to replace those experiences. This is why Slack is such a useful instrument.
You can have it installed on your desktop or phone, send direct chats to specific team members, and even create custom channels for various teams to work together over time. But don't worry if you need some concentration time, you can always set your alerts to snooze or even attach a calendar app to turn your status automatically when you're in meetings or when you're working hard.
Quick, simple to use and fully customizable it's a great tool that can be tailored to suit your team's exact needs.
2. Outbound
The lack of face-to - face contact has possibly caused email correspondence to increase. And if you handle some kind of customer service through general emails like info@, sales@, help@, etc., you can find it difficult to remain organised and attentive.
Therefore we built Outpost at Palo Alto Software. Yes, this is our own product, but we designed it primarily for our own use in the beginning, because we saw a need for a tool that did not exist. We started sharing it, after seeing how useful it was for our business!
Outpost helps the team to work together in one common inbox in a way that informs you who exactly is assigned to each email to prevent duplication of responses. Save email management many hours a week by getting rid of inbox spam and allowing team coordination and improved response times when chating with customers. It also helps you to incorporate internal private notes, tasks, saved templates, warnings for incidents, and more to help the team stay on top of contact and outreach.
3. Meet Google
And if you can't meet face-to - face physically, that doesn't mean you should end face-to - face meeting. There are occasions where there is a need for discussion and interaction to move projects forward, work on a design problem or air problems the team is experiencing. Therefore it is so important to use a video chat service like Google Meet.
Honestly there are plenty of feasible chat resources available, Zoom, Skype even Slack has a feature of video chatting. But for the most part we've usually used Google Hangouts as our teams have adjusted to remote work. It's open, it allows a large number of participants at once, and it links directly to your Google Calendar. Google has continued to develop the platform as the need for these video resources has increased and shows no sign of slowing down any time soon.
Productivity and working together
Productivity is something of a double-edged sword when operating remotely. There is plenty to say about the upsides. Employees are no longer wasting time travelling, feeling fully relaxed with their work atmosphere, and even scheduling their own hours when they feel productive.
That being said, it can be hard to supervise as an employer and to ensure that workers remain productive. Employees may also have trouble maintaining a balanced work-life balance when there is no longer a physical separation between the two. Here are some of our favourite tools to help you and your team harness the productivity-enhancing ability.
4. TrelloTrello
Trello is an efficient system of project management which facilitates collaboration. Using the boards of Trello, you can build steps, delegate tasks to the team members and map the progress of your project. If you'd rather imagine the progress and timeline of various activities from a wider viewpoint, you can also look at assignments from a calendar view.
There are no caps for users, and the software is free — so you can use it on your computer , smartphone or tablet. If you want to integrate with Evernote, MailChimp, Google Drive, Dropbox and other apps, there is a Business Class option for a monthly fee of $9.99 per user.
5. Basiscamp
Now if you need a collaboration tool that helps you track projects involving multiple teams, you might want to check out Basecamp. It's a perfect platform for exchanging ideas, debating projects together, setting up individual tasks and marking off things when complete.
Although the visual interface found on Trello is not as easily digestible, the list structure of assignments and the ability to browse through them is extremely useful. The required team members will easily create bigger tasks, nest assignments, and targets underneath and hand-off assignments. It also allows you to subscribe to unique cards that you aren't working on, just in case you want to keep track of the progress of other ventures.
If you need a second productivity and organising tool to help you manage multiple teams, then Basecamp is a great choice.
6. Internet Geschwindigkeit Tool
Internet speed can be tied to efficiency according to a Washington Post report. The study described in the report showed that high-average internet speed states also had higher per capita GDP, whereas low-average internet speed states had lower per capita GDPs.
To be efficient working from home, the workers need secure, high-speed Internet. The amount of internet speed needed by each employee depends on the daily tasks. Have the workers use an Internet Speed Calculator to ensure that they have a high enough Internet connexion to transfer large files, use online services and host video conferencing. It is a free application which is simple to use and lets you gauge the internet needs of your team.
The tool will take the workers through a series of questions that seek to collect information about their use of the internet. Your workers will get a number at the end of the query sequence for their desired internet speeds. They should then take this number to their respective internet providers to ensure they have adequate internet speed to control their personal and professional internet use and to reduce lag times.
File Sharing / Asset Sharing
Although you can exchange documents and photographs with many of the collaboration platforms out there, it's not always the most successful process. It also allows revisiting and arranging documents outside of particular tasks or assignments difficult, and is not the most reliable method for sharing. That's why you'll need to settle on a forum for file sharing to make this phase simpler for yourself and your team.
7. Google Login
Studies have shown that locating the right documentation and details required to complete a given task takes the average worker eight searches. This method becomes much more difficult for remote workers who can't fix a problem easily by coming to your desk to decide where to locate a paper. For this reason, sending different copies of documents to various members of the team is a fiasco waiting to happen.
Google Drive enables the production of files and the real-time collaboration. You and your team members will see updates from each other, add comments and still work on the same text. When an employee saves files in their Folder, on any computer, they can access them.
Google Drive is free to use for anyone with a Gmail account, and the number of collaborators is infinite.
Timekeeping
Time management specifically ties in with efficiency. And while a typical work environment lets workers differentiate between when it's time to concentrate and when it's not, it prevents being at home. If you or your workers know they 're struggling to keep track of the time or spend enough of it on specific tasks, this is a tool that might improve.
8. Pünktlich
Case studies on companies that have adopted time tracking have shown that using a time tracking system to keep tabs on how workers spend their time is not only useful for supervisors to consider how their employees behave on an ordinary day, but it can also improve employee productivity significantly.
It is hard to track the hours of remote workers and to control how long it takes for them to complete tasks. With Timely running in the background of computers of your team members, you can keep a digital log of all the tasks. You can set targets for completion, compare time spent with estimates, and coordinate projects based on priorities
Life / Work Balance
Although not directly linked to work , providing your workers with resources to help them strike a balanced work / life balance will improve the end result. It ensures that they get enough rest, exercise, social contact and turn their brains off work to relax and heal. It also demonstrates that you and your company care for their well-being, making them more likely to engage positively and remain happy with their job and employer.
Here are a few ways to explore to help the team lead happy, safe lives inside and outside the workplace.
9. Miro Miro
Statistics indicate that workers that are actively active in far-off companies are 87 per cent less likely to leave than employees who feel disengaged from their businesses.
Although ensuring that your off-site workers are engaged is a little tricky, finding a way to make them feel like a part of your business would be an important step in avoiding a high turnover rate among your remote team.
Remote work can be less stressful than driving, but water cooler talks and brainstorming sessions on the whiteboard are lacking. Miro acts as a virtual whiteboard, and is a visual networking app that offers a digital version of these opportunities for team bonding. You can create diagrams, analysis, brainstorm in real-time, add sticky notes and more. The app is free for up to three members, and plans for five members start at $40.00 a month.
10. 10. App to Train
Working from home can mean a lot of sitting; you don't have to go to and from work and you're usually just a few steps away from the kitchen, toilet, sofa and everything else you may need. That's why it's important to get your workout in a different way!
If you have shut down your usual exercise routine due to gym closures or just want to get involved during this period of loneliness, consider downloading a free fitness app right onto your phone or tablet! Several top-rated applications are now available and whatever you pick depends on what you're trying to get out of it.
Nike Fitness Club allows you to pick which group of muscles you want to target and have unique exercises tailored to cover the amount of time you need to spend and whether you are interested in exercise, agility, yoga, or mobility. You will have to have the option to work with your own body weight alone, or with free weights and other equipment around you!
Daily Burn is another great app that normally costs $25 a month but currently provides a 30-day free trial. Having answered a customised questionnaire about your usual workout routine and current physicality, Regular Burn offers you a tailored workout schedule that can consist of everything from bar, yoga, and kickboxing to dumbbell strength training and more!
There are several free mobile apps available, and an variety of choices helps you to choose the type of workout that is right for you. Staying active from home when working will help keep your mind focused and your body feeling good!
Manage the company remotely
Managing a remote team can be difficult but it can be easier to collaborate, connect and monitor success through investing in technology. Using a few of these resources will help streamline your company processes and make a more cohesive and efficient workforce for your remote team.
And if you are looking for an online tool that can help you manage your company, you may want to consider checking out LivePlan. It's a strategic planning tool with a simplified dashboard that lets you effectively control and track your strategic' health. It also provides automated finance that directly synchronises with your accounting system, and the ability to build and change several financial forecasts at a time. With different permission levels you can also add team members to your plan , making it an perfect solution for teams working remotely.
If you have found yourself interested in improving your business planning capabilities, please check out LivePlan. It could be the perfect addition to remote work resources for your team and make your company accurate and easy to schedule, manage and pitch.
For many it has definitely been a tough process. Yet there are significant benefits to be enjoyed by both workers and employers as they transcend the initially growing pains.
Studies show that remote employees frequently find themselves more active and happy with their jobs. By hiring remote workers who use their home offices to complete their daily tasks, businesses often save on overhead costs for office supplies, parking, and computers. And now, as their workers work from home, many businesses know that productivity will stay high, and business will proceed as normal.
Having said that, there are still problems and obstacles that exist and will occur. And if businesses view long-term remote work as a choice for workers, they would need the right tools together to supervise jobs, manage tasks and innovate.
Here are our top 10 favourite digital communication resources to help you find ways for your team to get the most out of the remote job.
Disclosure
Being away from the workplace will make stuff like communication and teamwork a little more complicated. You no longer have face-to - face meetings or those swift water cooler talks. In essence, less knowledge is exchanged, and various communication networks need to be created to facilitate further collaboration. Perhaps even more so than in the workplace when the team was in.
Here are our contact framework recommendations that help various stay in touch methods.
1. Sluggish
When working remotely, swift and easy communication is needed. You can't just pop up to someone's desk to ask a question or share a text, so that you need something to replace those experiences. This is why Slack is such a useful instrument.
You can have it installed on your desktop or phone, send direct chats to specific team members, and even create custom channels for various teams to work together over time. But don't worry if you need some concentration time, you can always set your alerts to snooze or even attach a calendar app to turn your status automatically when you're in meetings or when you're working hard.
Quick, simple to use and fully customizable it's a great tool that can be tailored to suit your team's exact needs.
2. Outbound
The lack of face-to - face contact has possibly caused email correspondence to increase. And if you handle some kind of customer service through general emails like info@, sales@, help@, etc., you can find it difficult to remain organised and attentive.
Therefore we built Outpost at Palo Alto Software. Yes, this is our own product, but we designed it primarily for our own use in the beginning, because we saw a need for a tool that did not exist. We started sharing it, after seeing how useful it was for our business!
Outpost helps the team to work together in one common inbox in a way that informs you who exactly is assigned to each email to prevent duplication of responses. Save email management many hours a week by getting rid of inbox spam and allowing team coordination and improved response times when chating with customers. It also helps you to incorporate internal private notes, tasks, saved templates, warnings for incidents, and more to help the team stay on top of contact and outreach.
3. Meet Google
And if you can't meet face-to - face physically, that doesn't mean you should end face-to - face meeting. There are occasions where there is a need for discussion and interaction to move projects forward, work on a design problem or air problems the team is experiencing. Therefore it is so important to use a video chat service like Google Meet.
Honestly there are plenty of feasible chat resources available, Zoom, Skype even Slack has a feature of video chatting. But for the most part we've usually used Google Hangouts as our teams have adjusted to remote work. It's open, it allows a large number of participants at once, and it links directly to your Google Calendar. Google has continued to develop the platform as the need for these video resources has increased and shows no sign of slowing down any time soon.
Productivity and working together
Productivity is something of a double-edged sword when operating remotely. There is plenty to say about the upsides. Employees are no longer wasting time travelling, feeling fully relaxed with their work atmosphere, and even scheduling their own hours when they feel productive.
That being said, it can be hard to supervise as an employer and to ensure that workers remain productive. Employees may also have trouble maintaining a balanced work-life balance when there is no longer a physical separation between the two. Here are some of our favourite tools to help you and your team harness the productivity-enhancing ability.
4. TrelloTrello
Trello is an efficient system of project management which facilitates collaboration. Using the boards of Trello, you can build steps, delegate tasks to the team members and map the progress of your project. If you'd rather imagine the progress and timeline of various activities from a wider viewpoint, you can also look at assignments from a calendar view.
There are no caps for users, and the software is free — so you can use it on your computer , smartphone or tablet. If you want to integrate with Evernote, MailChimp, Google Drive, Dropbox and other apps, there is a Business Class option for a monthly fee of $9.99 per user.
5. Basiscamp
Now if you need a collaboration tool that helps you track projects involving multiple teams, you might want to check out Basecamp. It's a perfect platform for exchanging ideas, debating projects together, setting up individual tasks and marking off things when complete.
Although the visual interface found on Trello is not as easily digestible, the list structure of assignments and the ability to browse through them is extremely useful. The required team members will easily create bigger tasks, nest assignments, and targets underneath and hand-off assignments. It also allows you to subscribe to unique cards that you aren't working on, just in case you want to keep track of the progress of other ventures.
If you need a second productivity and organising tool to help you manage multiple teams, then Basecamp is a great choice.
6. Internet Geschwindigkeit Tool
Internet speed can be tied to efficiency according to a Washington Post report. The study described in the report showed that high-average internet speed states also had higher per capita GDP, whereas low-average internet speed states had lower per capita GDPs.
To be efficient working from home, the workers need secure, high-speed Internet. The amount of internet speed needed by each employee depends on the daily tasks. Have the workers use an Internet Speed Calculator to ensure that they have a high enough Internet connexion to transfer large files, use online services and host video conferencing. It is a free application which is simple to use and lets you gauge the internet needs of your team.
The tool will take the workers through a series of questions that seek to collect information about their use of the internet. Your workers will get a number at the end of the query sequence for their desired internet speeds. They should then take this number to their respective internet providers to ensure they have adequate internet speed to control their personal and professional internet use and to reduce lag times.
File Sharing / Asset Sharing
Although you can exchange documents and photographs with many of the collaboration platforms out there, it's not always the most successful process. It also allows revisiting and arranging documents outside of particular tasks or assignments difficult, and is not the most reliable method for sharing. That's why you'll need to settle on a forum for file sharing to make this phase simpler for yourself and your team.
7. Google Login
Studies have shown that locating the right documentation and details required to complete a given task takes the average worker eight searches. This method becomes much more difficult for remote workers who can't fix a problem easily by coming to your desk to decide where to locate a paper. For this reason, sending different copies of documents to various members of the team is a fiasco waiting to happen.
Google Drive enables the production of files and the real-time collaboration. You and your team members will see updates from each other, add comments and still work on the same text. When an employee saves files in their Folder, on any computer, they can access them.
Google Drive is free to use for anyone with a Gmail account, and the number of collaborators is infinite.
Timekeeping
Time management specifically ties in with efficiency. And while a typical work environment lets workers differentiate between when it's time to concentrate and when it's not, it prevents being at home. If you or your workers know they 're struggling to keep track of the time or spend enough of it on specific tasks, this is a tool that might improve.
8. Pünktlich
Case studies on companies that have adopted time tracking have shown that using a time tracking system to keep tabs on how workers spend their time is not only useful for supervisors to consider how their employees behave on an ordinary day, but it can also improve employee productivity significantly.
It is hard to track the hours of remote workers and to control how long it takes for them to complete tasks. With Timely running in the background of computers of your team members, you can keep a digital log of all the tasks. You can set targets for completion, compare time spent with estimates, and coordinate projects based on priorities
Life / Work Balance
Although not directly linked to work , providing your workers with resources to help them strike a balanced work / life balance will improve the end result. It ensures that they get enough rest, exercise, social contact and turn their brains off work to relax and heal. It also demonstrates that you and your company care for their well-being, making them more likely to engage positively and remain happy with their job and employer.
Here are a few ways to explore to help the team lead happy, safe lives inside and outside the workplace.
9. Miro Miro
Statistics indicate that workers that are actively active in far-off companies are 87 per cent less likely to leave than employees who feel disengaged from their businesses.
Although ensuring that your off-site workers are engaged is a little tricky, finding a way to make them feel like a part of your business would be an important step in avoiding a high turnover rate among your remote team.
Remote work can be less stressful than driving, but water cooler talks and brainstorming sessions on the whiteboard are lacking. Miro acts as a virtual whiteboard, and is a visual networking app that offers a digital version of these opportunities for team bonding. You can create diagrams, analysis, brainstorm in real-time, add sticky notes and more. The app is free for up to three members, and plans for five members start at $40.00 a month.
10. 10. App to Train
Working from home can mean a lot of sitting; you don't have to go to and from work and you're usually just a few steps away from the kitchen, toilet, sofa and everything else you may need. That's why it's important to get your workout in a different way!
If you have shut down your usual exercise routine due to gym closures or just want to get involved during this period of loneliness, consider downloading a free fitness app right onto your phone or tablet! Several top-rated applications are now available and whatever you pick depends on what you're trying to get out of it.
Nike Fitness Club allows you to pick which group of muscles you want to target and have unique exercises tailored to cover the amount of time you need to spend and whether you are interested in exercise, agility, yoga, or mobility. You will have to have the option to work with your own body weight alone, or with free weights and other equipment around you!
Daily Burn is another great app that normally costs $25 a month but currently provides a 30-day free trial. Having answered a customised questionnaire about your usual workout routine and current physicality, Regular Burn offers you a tailored workout schedule that can consist of everything from bar, yoga, and kickboxing to dumbbell strength training and more!
There are several free mobile apps available, and an variety of choices helps you to choose the type of workout that is right for you. Staying active from home when working will help keep your mind focused and your body feeling good!
Manage the company remotely
Managing a remote team can be difficult but it can be easier to collaborate, connect and monitor success through investing in technology. Using a few of these resources will help streamline your company processes and make a more cohesive and efficient workforce for your remote team.
And if you are looking for an online tool that can help you manage your company, you may want to consider checking out LivePlan. It's a strategic planning tool with a simplified dashboard that lets you effectively control and track your strategic' health. It also provides automated finance that directly synchronises with your accounting system, and the ability to build and change several financial forecasts at a time. With different permission levels you can also add team members to your plan , making it an perfect solution for teams working remotely.
If you have found yourself interested in improving your business planning capabilities, please check out LivePlan. It could be the perfect addition to remote work resources for your team and make your company accurate and easy to schedule, manage and pitch.
