7 Ways to Boost Your Remote Team’s Productivity

These days companies overcome geographical barriers and are more prone than ever to hire employees from other states and, even, countries that are different from theirs. In this way, they are able to take advantage of labor costs as well as tax costs. Of course, you may face certain difficulties if you work with remote teams. Your team might lag behind if there is a lack of supervision, or the productivity of your team may decrease because of different time zones. In spite of all these challenges, it is worth having a remote team. All you need is to follow some tips to boost the productivity of your remote team. Here are some ways that you may consider to help in that process.

• Develop a good relationship between your teams

The first thing that you need to increase the productivity of your remote team is to develop a good bond between the teams. If they have a good attitude, then it will affect their workflow in a positive way. This will help you to get efficient results. You can use apps or chat rooms and let your employees contact and communicate with each other, not only on a professional level but also on a personal level. Let them be a part of important projects of your company. Keep them well-informed about all the achievements of your company and always make sure to praise your team members for their hard work.

• Tell them what you want exactly

If you are working with remote workers, it is essential to let them know what you expect from them. Tell them at what hours you want them to be available, how they will have to share files and how they should communicate with other members of the team. If there are strong guidelines for them to follow, then it will definitely help in increasing the productivity of your remote team.

• Online file and document sharing

In order to get the work done, employees must have access to all the files and documents that they need. There are many companies that only use emails when it comes to file sharing. This has a number of disadvantages. Sometimes, employees forget to attach the file and sometimes the document can get lost. Above all, the document that is emailed stays only in the account of the receiver and the sender. To overcome all these problems, you can make use of social intranet document management systems. This will enable you to upload and share files from anywhere and at any time and all the members of your team can see any and all the changes made.

• Share calendars

It is quite difficult to get all the members of a remote team to get together for a meeting for even a conference call. So to cope with this difficulty, you can make use of shared calendars and plan events and meetings effortlessly. All the members of the team can see who is available and when. Once the meeting is scheduled, everyone in the team will get notified.

• Keep track of all the work

Your team members may become less motivated if the work schedule is flexible and if you have a team that is virtual. While it is possible in a physical setting to know when your employees arrive and leave, in a virtual setting, it is not possible. You can use Timedoctor for this, as this will let you know when your team arrives and leaves if they are working or chatting with friends, and much more. Also, you can use Basecamp, which is a great project management tool to track the productivity of your remote team.

• Use virtual meeting tools

There are a number of means that an organization or a company uses in order to keep the workers of a remote team stay attached to their work. The importance of face-to-face meetings cannot be overemphasized. The lack of it can make your remote employees feel isolated and left out from the rest of the staff. You may find companies that require their remote workers to come to their office once a week or once a month. If that is not possible with your remote team, then you can make use of virtual meeting tools to make your remote team members feel validated. Getting to see all the other team members on a video chat will definitely let them connect with each other on a more personal level and help in strengthening bonds. This, in turn, will increase their productivity.

• Communicate with clarity

In most cases, in-person communication can be regarded as the best means of communication. When you are face-to-face with someone, you get to pick up on things such as body language and tone. But when you are working with a remote team, this is not always possible and you need to make use of technology. To increase the productivity of your remote team, make sure you take that extra care to communicate with them. Use easy, clear and understandable language when sending messages. You need to state your needs explicitly via emails.  

Managing a remote team and giving their productivity a boost can be a real challenge, but if you make use of proper and effective tools and follow the above-mentioned ways, then you can make your remote team perform at their peak.