The challenges of Managing a Remote Workforce

In recent years as remote work began to grow and people were taking it more seriously, along with the pros, there were the cons of managing a remote workforce. This article will discuss the challenges of managing a remote workforce and how to overcome them.

Creating a distributed workforce allows you to welcome more talent and different views on ways of working to achieve goals together. There is undoubtedly an increase in people’s interest in remote work for many reasons, such as work-life balance, no travel expenses, and many more. Along with this high demand for remote work, managing a remote workforce has become easier with the help of some tools that make employee development and engagement more accessible.

When working remotely, we have all experienced the communication gap between teams and leaders; some were uncomfortable sharing their thoughts or weren’t encouraged to share at all and felt unheard. This will all come to an end with the help of anonymous employee feedback, which removes the barriers around remote communication. A plan needs to be in place to manage the remote workforce; hence, a deadline, working hours, meetings, and many other factors make a remote workforce succeed. Incognito for Slack app helps you get a closer look at how your team is doing daily through their constant feedback, pulse surveys, and comments on the anonymous slack channel.

Challenges of Remote Teams and Solutions

There are challenges of all sorts in remote teams that need your attention, and below we will guide you through some of them and show you ways to overcome them.

Social and interaction challenges

This is the most common challenge of remote workforces. It is proven that positive and healthy engagement between team members improves work quality. This boosts the team’s productivity and keeps them more engaged day-to-day. One way to reach this level of social interaction is by implementing tools like Incognito for Slack that allow your team to share their thoughts anonymously. Keep in mind that continuously improving the workplace with the help of the teams’ feedback will boost their morale. Feedback is essential; you can check the anonymous slack channel and learn more about this matter.

Team collaboration and trust 

Trust issues among remote workers are a common thing. This is due to many factors; for example, one colleague complained about another publicly, one missed deadlines, one was never online, and the list goes on and on. Trust issues are a part of remote teams before meeting and knowing each other, mainly because of the lack of solid connections, difficulties engaging in meaningful personal interactions, and a lack of nonverbal cues.

As a result, interactions happen less frequently, and they end up having a cold relationship. When that happens, usually, teams do not finish deliverables on time, they lack discipline and respect for one another, and everyone is worse off. That is why leadership should always consider organizing activities that help build the team’s morale and help them to get closer to one another, most importantly, get along together.  Managers or leaders can help solve that by encouraging their team to share their concerns and everything they have to share related to the workplace in their anonymous employee feedback.

Planning and scheduling

Having a remote team in another time zone makes it harder to keep track of their work. This new term is called “Asynchronous Working Time,” meaning you match the team’s working hours based on where they are located. This doesn’t require everyone to be online simultaneously, as the work gets done either way. An excellent way to determine if this works for your team is to check in with their anonymous weekly feedback. Anonymous employee feedback helps you to get a better understanding if this is working out well for them or not.

Showing appreciation

Simple acts of showing appreciation toward your team’s hard work goes a long way. Your team needs to be seen and heard, this is much easier for people who work in an office where you can celebrate small wins with them daily. So you need to take careful consideration to ensure your remote team’s morale is boosted and encouraged. By doing so, you can reduce staff turnover and increase employee satisfaction. When your team feels valued, everything flows smoothly; daily tasks and Friday feedback get more positive responses, anonymous employee feedback holds fewer complaints, and everything runs more smoothly across the board..

Showing appreciation towards your team encourages them to perform better in teamwork and get along. Look out for small wins that usually go unnoticed; when giving feedback to the employees, mention that you have noticed that they did an excellent job on the last pitch for the customer or they performed well on some random task they had to work on.

When working remotely, there are a lot of challenges. However, remote work has far more positive effects than challenges. When you take the considerations above seriously and work hard to address the challenges of remote work, we’re certain your team will thrive!