5 Tips on How to Be the Best Boss for Your Remote Team

It doesn’t matter if your business was conceived to work with a team of remote employees from the very start or you were forced to shift to this approach due to the coronavirus outbreak – you have to ensure you are properly organized in order to tackle everything your business deals with on a daily basis.

As the business owner, it’s your responsibility to make it all run smoothly and achieve your goals. However, you also have to take care of your employees and make sure they are all able to work in these conditions. Here are some tips on being the best boss you could possibly be for your remote team.

Understand the possible obstacles

The first thing you have to understand is that you will certainly encounter some obstacles when telecommuting. For example, working from home comes with many distractions.

If you don’t have fixed work hours and your employees are not good at self-disciplining, the possibility of them getting distracted by their families or TV shows is quite high.

Then, not having routine interactions with coworkers and managers can impact those workers that thrive in a busy environment and need other people around to perform better.

Plus, not having regular meetings in person can impact their efficiency. It is important to stick to your everyday plan and try to avoid all distractions that may happen.

Finally, one of the biggest obstacles is a possible breakdown in communication. If things are not properly explained or understood, precious time can be lost and detrimental errors can be made.

When working in an office, issues can be discussed face to face but digital communication can sometimes go unnoticed which prolongs the problems and frustrates other members of the team.

Don’t worry, though, as there are many ways how you can tackle these issues and have a productive and satisfied team.

Invest in tech solutions

Plenty of the abovementioned problems can be solved by implementing the right technological solutions. For example, in addition to having fixed work hours, relying on software that tracks what your employees are doing is a great option.

That way, you will know how much time they actually spent on their assignments and how long they were absent from their computer or scrolling their social media feeds.

Other than that, you should invest in various other programs that will make working from home more efficient. There are various task management platforms available so that everyone can have access to all the files they need.

Depending on how sensitive your line of work is, you might have to invest in security as well. Maybe you’ll need to provide everyone with a top-notch anti-malware software as well as a secure VPN.

Plus, perhaps you’d feel safer by providing every employee with a company laptop that they should use only for business assignment. Remember to educate your employees in terms of internet safety and sharing company information with other people.

Establish ways of communication

As we mentioned earlier, breakdowns in communication can have a detrimental effect on your operations. Well, luckily, technology can help in this aspect as well.

For one, those task managing platforms allow for quick communication in addition to sharing files. Instruct all your team members to keep their notifications on so that they receive messages instantly.

Furthermore, you have plenty of options when it comes to how you want to communicate. From sending group emails to everyone to spread important info to discussing a task one-on-one with the help of various video call software solutions, you can choose what to implement.

It is also up to you to decide how frequent you want these meetings to be. Maybe there is no need to talk to everyone on a daily basis if the work is being done on time. However, maybe you’d like to stay in touch with a weekly meeting of the whole company.

Every once in a while, you can organize a get-together. That way, your employees can get to know each other better. Regardless of whether the event is virtual or not, event marketing services can help you out a lot if you know what you want.

Set clear goals

In order for everything to run smoothly, you have to set clear goals. For example, ensure your employees know by which time all assignments must be completed. Furthermore, insist they let you know if there is a problem that will delay the task completion as well as that they are available during work hours.

What is more, the standard of the work has to be discussed as well. Sloppy and quick work should not be allowed. If you notice someone is slacking off, have a chat, see if they need disciplining, and act accordingly. Your company should not suffer due to one employee not trying hard enough.

Follow up regularly

Finally, while conference video calls should be used to inform everyone in the company of the upcoming projects, you also need to set up meetings with each employee individually. This can be a monthly or quarterly meeting, depending on what you think is better. These are important because you can go through their performance with them and explain in which areas they were lacking and where they were thriving.

Additionally, you should also ask them for feedback. Ask how you can improve and whether they have any suggestions for making the company better. Showing your workforce that you care about their opinion will mean a lot to them and will impact their work satisfaction. And, if possible, try to implement their suggestions in some way.

As you can see, by understanding potential problems and looking for ways to solve them as well as listening to what your employees have to say, you can become the best boss for your remote team. Being at your best will sure help your employees give their maximum and that is a win-win situation for everybody.