Motivate the Distributed Team The process of creating and managing a remote team is not as easy as pie. Nowadays, the ability to coordinate this new dynamic is very important for all new entrepreneurs. After COVID-19, work from home is a new way of working. Therefore, most business owners want to know “How to manage a Distributed Team?”
Here, in this blog, we are going to describe various simple ideas to manage and motivate a distributed team:
1. Schedule Regular Meetings
It is quite challenging to manage a geographically distributed team. If you will regularly conduct meeting with the distributed team, then it will become quite easy for you to manage your team. Team leaders should ask for a daily progress report of their team members. In addition to this, the team leaders should do audio or video conference calls to discuss the team projects.
It is important to make sure that all meetings have a particular agenda. Set the targets for your team members and provide the specific time for the completion of the assigned task. Make sure that your team members do not overshoot the specified time limit because it will hamper productivity. By conducting regular meetings with the team members, you can keep the productivity of each employee high.
2. Set Goals and Measure Progress
Without objectives and goals, your distributed team will never work efficiently. The team leaders should set the team’s and individuals’ goals so that everyone works hard and work collaboratively to improve the performance of the entire team. After setting goals, it is imperative to measure the progress of the whole team and every team member as well.
The Key Performance Indicators will help in measuring the success and productivity level of the team. Goals and KPIs encourage the remotely working team members to pay attention to their tasks and activities. The team members will work hard to achieve the goals within the specified deadline. It is one of the most effective tips in managing a distributed team.
3. Encouraging Social Interaction
The distributed or collocated team is not supposed to working like machines. They also need some time for leisure, vacations, bandwidth flexibility, and interpersonal connections. Therefore, it is very important to promote social meetings and interactions. The team leader should interact with all team members and also encourage them to interact among themselves.
One of the best ways to promote social interactions is conducting quizzes, chitchats, sharing personal interests, etc. There are various benefits of social interactions such as feeling refreshed, supercharging your brain, strengthening up bonding between team members.
4. Set Work Schedule on Mutual Agreement
The biggest challenge in managing the distributed team is that the people working in different time zones. It is difficult to set the standard work schedule for all. It is a good idea to discuss with the team members and create a specific work schedule after taking consensus from the team members.
If the team leaders want to conduct the meeting with the whole team, then it is important to choose the time that is convenient for all. Also, you should send an email regarding this meeting to all team members in advance.
5. Be Result-Oriented
It is not a good idea to force your remote working employees to maintain a specific schedule. It can lead to dissatisfaction and increase the rate of resignation. The main objective of people to work remotely is time flexibility. It is imperative to pay attention to objectives and results. Thus, you should motivate your team members to deliver the desired results.
The team leaders or managers should communicate the objectives to each employee and set the deadlines as well. The remotely working professionals should be allowed to work at any time of the day, but they should complete the assigned tasks before the deadline. If all remotely working team members are meeting the deadlines, then you should trust them.
6. Set-Up Virtual Work Environment
Continuously checking emails is frustrating and it is not a viable means of communication. It will result in deterioration of productivity and the team members may not be able to efficiently communicate. Imagine that your email inbox is flooded with so many emails.
You will start struggling to find out the right one. To set up an efficient communication system, it is imperative to set up a virtual workspace environment. In this virtual workspace environment, there should be the proper facility of file sharing screen sharing, and quick messaging.
7. Randomly Check the Progress
Along with regular meetings, it is very important to occasionally check the tasks performed by the team members. You can randomly check the program by doing random calls or video conferences. It will make sure that your team always stays motivated. These random checks will also help you find out whether your team members are satisfied or not.
Employee Productivity Monitoring
Another free employee productivity monitoring app, ActivTrak helps you track your employees’ actions on practically any installed device. When you install the program, it’s completely invisible and will send you regular reports and screenshots of the employees’ actions.
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