Remote work is becoming normal, with many companies now either going full remote or allowing a hybrid work arrangement. Remote teams also have certain benefits such as allowing businesses to hire from a larger talent pool and helping them keep costs down. Managing a remote team can be very challenging because of the very nature of the distributed steam or workforce. It is still possible to succeed and get high-quality work done even when team members are located around the world. Here are some tips to help increase your remote team’s efficiency.
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Make Sharing of Ideas Easier
When working with a remote team, it is very easy for everyone to be in their own silo, working on their own thing while everyone else works on something completely different. This disjointed way of working reduces efficiency because there is no collaboration, sharing of ideas, or a cohesive strategy for working towards the same goals.
To improve efficiency, team leaders, project managers, and business owners must find a way for the members of their teams to share ideas, especially when they are working on the same team. Fortunately, there are lots of tools that make this easier, ranging from communication tools that your team is already familiar with to diagramming tools that they may not be familiar with.
Diagramming tools make it easier to put all ideas surrounding a project in one cohesive place so all members of the team can contribute. They also allow easier communication between team members while also allowing each member to have their input so they can aid in the improvement of ideas. In addition to all the above, a diagram online tool also helps team members leave feedback, ask for clarification, and improve upon the ideas in the diagram. All of these combine to help make the team more efficient.
Encourage Good-work Life Balance
To ensure team members can put everything they have into their jobs and thus be more efficient, team leaders should encourage a good work-life balance. The two best ways of ensuring team members remain efficient are reducing the number of distractions when working and separating their personal lives from their work lives.
Interruptions and distractions, unless absolutely necessary, break concentration and cause people to take additional time to get back to what they were doing. They can also cause people to go on tangents that take them away from their work and thus their output suffers.
On the other hand, team members should be encouraged to be as engaged in their work as possible by not bringing their personal lives to work. This can be achieved by encouraging remote workers to have flexible schedules that work around their personal lives and needs.
Encourage Team Members To Own Their Work
For a remote team to work together and be successful, every member of the team should have a sense of accountability. This accountability extends beyond the quality of their work but also into deliverables, schedules, and how they interact with the rest of the team.
A lack of accountability by one team member can cause friction within the team and this reduces its efficiency. When each team member is accountable for their work, the rest of the team does not have to worry about holding them or the whole team accountable. This lessens the burden on team members, makes them more productive, and improves the quality of their work.
Set Clear Goals and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
When setting goals and KPIs, start with those that pertain to the team in question. If the team knows what to aim for, it will be more efficient. This is especially true in teams with individuals who do not want to be seen as not being able to hit their mark. Team members should also know what the goals and KPIs for the overall organization or business look like.
Setting clear goals and KPIs helps remote teams prioritize tasks, work better together, and find the best approach to ensure the best service delivery.
Challenge Team Members to Be Innovative
It is understandable why many team members want to follow the set rules and guidelines and keep things as they have always been and work within the confines of how things have always worked. It is important to encourage team members to challenge the status quo. One way of doing so is challenging them to come up with best practices and ways to improve various processes and products.
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By doing this, the overall team performance is improved as well as its deliverables are improved. This sense of accomplishment fuels future success by leading the team to seek additional improvements.
Encourage Self-governance
Self-governance in a team means that team members can keep each other motivated even in the absence of their project manager, team leader, or other leaders in the organizational structure. Motivation is not the only goal though as best practices, good habits, interactions, and other things also fall under the umbrella of self-governance.
All team members should be able to check themselves and ensure they are performing their best. Past that, the whole team should have a consensus or agreement on how they are going to work together. In doing so, they should also establish how to keep personal biases and destructive behavior away from the team since both can affect performance.
Develop a Strong Team Vision
Every team should have a vision and guidelines that help guide everything they do. Each team member should recognize they are part of the team, and they will play a part in meeting these visions and maintaining set guidelines,
This sense of a shared vision guided by clear guidelines can help a teamwork better together and this increases its efficiency. It also allows team members to focus on team performance while finding ways to increase individual contributions and their impact on the team.
Working with remote teams is quite difficult, especially when you start considering productivity and efficiency. There are some best practices that team leaders and other leaders in the organizational structure can follow to ensure remote teams remain as efficient as possible.
