For the past few years, the tides have changed massively for traditional work systems.
Remote and hybrid work has risen to higher levels than ever before.
Managers have been coming to terms with these new work systems, and striving to optimize their remote work teams.
That’s why we’re here, to help managers understand and adapt to remote work, and to use optimal practices and principles to maximize remote working.
Let’s do this!
How can I address the challenges of remote work?
“Remote working” is defined as a working style that lets staff work outside of the traditional office space.
Technology has completely overhauled traditional work systems. Rising trends in remote work are being adopted and are felt by leading companies around the world. By 2025, 32.6 million American workers are expected to be working remotely, equalling around 22% of the workforce.
Remote work is not just a passing trend either and it certainly looks like remote and hybrid work is here to stay. Young workers are expressing their desire for remote work. In fact, 98% of respondents surveyed expressed they want to work remotely at least some of the time.
But are managers making the most of their remote teams? That’s what we really wonder. We feel that to get the most out of your remote teams, they need more than a traditional task allocated to them. Young, remote workers thrive on creative challenges and social, team tasks.
We’d love to lay out for you our best practices, tips and principles for managers who want to sink their teeth deep into remote work systems. Following these tips and practices will help your remote workers stay engaged, no matter the distance.
Best practices and tips for managing remote teams
Here are our best guiding principles and practices to get the most out of managing remote teams:
Being a compassionate leader and checking in
One of the most beneficial principles and practices to focus on for your remote workers is understanding that even more compassion than usual goes a long way.
Without getting too dramatic, take a moment to consider a 2023 survey analyzing loneliness levels felt by remote employees. The data shows that one in four remote employees working from home felt “lonely a lot of the day,” and that is a statistic from workers worldwide, not just in one country.
Employees who feel lonely can struggle with sustained engagement throughout the day. This is especially true for workers of a more senior age, who might need help understanding how many apps and programs exist to keep them in touch with coworkers, friends, and family.
Therefore, compassion toward your remote workers is worth its weight in gold. There are enough digital communication platforms out there to easily set up a schedule for check-ins with your remote staff.
Honestly, don’t overlook this one, as a lot of workers won’t vocalize their loneliness until it’s reached a level that is harmful to their work efficiency. Even if you aren’t sure someone needs it, extend some compassion with thoughtful check-ins, and you’ll be doing your remote teams a massive favor.
Utilizing the “hands off” approach
Remote work systems have created novel challenges for traditional styles of management. Being a manager for a remote worker is simply not the same as being there physically with them, in the office. One of the biggest changes managers have faced is an increase in being “hands-off” with staff while they work, and this is a powerful skill to utilize.
New levels of trust need to be placed in your remote workers. It’s unfortunately true that too many managers micromanage their staff in the office, whether they recognize they are doing it or not. By being in close physical proximity, managers often rely too much on surveilling workers to pressure them into getting the job done.
Exhibiting trust means a lot more than telling an employee “I trust you to do your work.” Solidifying trust is done through delegating tasks and empowering them with more autonomy over their work methods.
Remote work (when done well) is saying goodbye to all of that. If you’re getting the trust element right among your remote workers, you’ll see just how much more motivated and engaged they are. When they’re given more free reign, remote workers are much better equipped to work on their work-life balance, which manifests in better efficiency in their work.
Learning to become more “hands-off” with your remote workers takes time, trust, and careful observation of both yourself and your worker. Maximize this trust to help remote workers reach their prime.
Being an enabler, not an enforcer
Leading on from a more “hands off” approach to remote workers, remote managers need to consider that they need to become less of an “enforcer” and more of an “enabler.” As you manage your remote teams, what you do often remains the same, but how you do it can be vastly different.
You’re likely going to have thoughts about how you can manage your employees when you can’t see them. The truth is that presenteeism, or the act of just showing up in the office does not apply to remote work systems. However, remote workers are showing that they are just as productive, if not more so when they are left to their own devices.
Employees, of course, appreciate having a manager to report to. When working remotely, staff are often more appreciative of a manager who measures results and outcomes, rather than time or physical presence doing a task.
By letting go of some traditional management habits, you’re enabling your remote workers to experiment with their tasks, rather than enforcing them to complete them. Make the most of the benefits this management style brings.
Mastering new challenges in problem-solving
For managers to get to grips with optimizing their remote workers, old skills in problem-solving need to be updated and renovated. Having more remote workers means your workforce is more globalized than ever before, which means you’re going to need to keep many eyes on matters all around the world.
One of the simplest and most immediate examples is solving work problems while being conscious of time differences. One way you can try to get around this is by first paying attention to the physical location of where your remote workers are. Some managers have to face geographical issues presented by different time zones. In this case, get some core working hours set up for team members who are collaborating across regions and time zones.
It can also be beneficial to make sure you have basic communication teams set up that cover different locations. You can have Europe, Asia, Africa, the US, and Latin America teams ready for time-sensitive work challenges. If possible, these teams from different continents should have one lead person who reports directly to you.
Remote team communication is fraught with challenges. These challenges can create a host of problems for an unprepared manager, so make sure you’re ready to take the plunge when heading into fully remote settings.
Acknowledging uncertainties
Most companies have already started to come to terms with the rise of remote work. In fact, the U.S. Bureau Of Labor Statistics has researched that up to 20% of employees teleworked or worked from home last year. Full-time remote work is a relatively new practice for businesses, and many companies have their own apprehensions about heading into fully remote work.
If your company is relatively new to fully remote work, you might have quite a few concerns you want answers to. On the surface, you might be looking at the expected perks of remote work and asking: so, what’s the catch? It’s true that remote work is changing the way businesses operate, and there are some changes that companies need to make adjustments for.
Some of the uncertainties and questions you might have before making your workers fully remote may include:
- Won’t there be a productivity dip if my staff sit at home and work?
- Will communicating with my staff become more difficult if they’re not in the office?
- Are there security risks that come with having full-time remote workers?
A certain amount of apprehension about these uncertainties is justified at first, but by preparing beforehand, the pros of remote work await and the risks of remote work are minimized. It might be the case that managing remote teams is done best with a shifted perspective. For example, a perceived productivity dip might not be as damaging as you think. Remote workers are often more engaged and get tasks done quicker when left to their own devices. For this, focus on evaluating the output, rather than time spent on the task.
Don’t be afraid to adjust your outlook on efficiency and productivity as your workers become fully remote and incorporate new work styles.
Setting new priorities and clarifying
Getting into fully remote settings means you’re going to have to become ultra-efficient in setting priorities and clarifying every piece of information you give out. In a traditional office setting, you can afford to give out information or instructions, and if anyone is unsure, they can quickly and easily pop into your office for clarification, or even clarify it with their work colleagues.
One way companies are overcoming this is by paying special attention to color-coding task priority. A remote worker working in a faraway location can’t always be reached like a worker in the office can. This means that there might be times where you’re waiting for your remote workers to simply wake up and see the severity of a new task. Spend time making crystal-clear priority systems that need addressing in a particular order.
Removing the physical proximity between you, your staff and their colleagues also means that miscommunication can become critical. Workers aren’t able to quickly stroll down the corridor to their coworkers to ask for a little bit of information on something they missed.
Setting group tasks can also present new challenges. As you give an important task to a large remote team, you’ve really got to make double and triple sure that you clarify their expectations. Remote collaboration principles encourage over-communication, as it’s always better safe than sorry in a remote setting.
Up your clarification and prioritization game, and you’ll be getting the most out of your remote employees in no time!
Staying on top of “burnout”
The rise in remote work is forcing companies to come to terms with completely new workplace systems and principles. Sure, lots of companies are utilizing remote workers now, but the research on remote work is still relatively new and not completely understood.
One aspect to consider is the fact that remote workers are indeed bearing the brunt of layoffs if a company needs to start downsizing. Last year, the Wall Street Journal published data to illustrate how fully remote workers were 35% more likely to get the boot than hybrid or fully in-person workers. Further analysis of the data shows that remote workers were promoted 31% less frequently than hybrid or in-office staff.
What this often means is that remote workers simply overwork, out of fear of the relatively unstable nature of remote working. They compensate for the precarious nature of remote work by pushing themselves up to, and beyond their limit, which can result in a devastating work burnout.
At Surf Office, we’re really into finding unique ways to stop employee burnout, as we know of all the remote challenges that come from burnout. Learning to spot the telltale signs of burnout early can provide an olive branch for “remote over workers,” and it lets them know you’re there for their wellbeing.
Be the person your remote staff needs when they risk entering a state of burnout, and keep a watchful eye for symptoms, before it’s too late!
Upholding organizational culture in remote settings
Another principle that managers should remember as they take over remote teams is upholding the organizational culture that is important to them.
“Organizational culture” is understood as the collection of values, expectations and practices that guide and inform the actions of all team members. As companies delve deeper into the remote arena, organizational culture can be weakened or even lost, if the company is not careful.
Culture is one of those things that cannot be easily seen, heard or measured, but we all know good culture when we are inside it. Gallup Polls indicate that this year, there’s a 1% increase in employees who feel connected to their company’s culture. That still only counts for 2 in 10 employees who actually feel connected to their workplace culture.
Company culture gives staff something to hang onto and strive to improve, especially when they’re far away and disconnected from the office and their colleagues. You might want to start developing a “remote-first” work culture that transcends geographic locations and puts remote work above everything else.
You could default to “asynchronous communication (async),” to optimize everyone to work at their own peak periods of energy and creativity. This might require extra remote tools and transparent communication throughout.
Ensure that your employee handbook communicates the importance of your organizational culture, and strive to convey it in your remote hiring and onboarding practices.
Keeping everyone on the same page when you don’t have a strong organizational culture certainly is no easy task, so strengthen the cultural practices among your remote teams as much as you can!
Being the example you want to see
Our last piece of advice for managing remote teams is more of a principle that should be carried into all other remote practices and tips. That is, to embody and become the change you wish to see.
There’s no doubt about it, not all workforces are made up of Gen-Z workers who are wizards with remote software and are fully comfortable with remote working. Spare a thought for the senior workers in the office who aren’t tech-savvy. A skilled manager is able to properly express empathy and provide patient support for a senior worker getting to grips with remote work.
Also, you want to make sure you are there, present, and participating in all remote team building activities. Nobody can get behind a leader who says do one thing, then they turn around and do another. This is true also for remote settings. You have to become a representation of a confident, solid, remote manager, unafraid of changes and challenges in the remote setting.
So embody the shining emblem you need your remote workers to be, and look towards a brighter future. You’ll be helping remove doubts among your coworkers and instilling a sense of confidence and trust in them. Here’s to your bright, remote future!
Remote workers benefit massively from team retreats!
As your list of remote workers grows, you might strive to maintain company culture and workplace engagement as best as you can. The truth is that bringing everyone together for a remote team retreat is the best way to build bonds among remote employees.
A twice-annual remote team retreat that brings everyone in the company solidifies teambuilding like nothing else!
Here at Surf Office, organizing team retreats is what we do best.
Here’s what we offer:
- Stress-free transfers? We got you! ✅
- Quality-assured accommodations? Check! ✅
- Engaging team-building activities? Our speciality ✅
- Restaurant reservations? That's on us! ✅
- Expert retreat planning assistance? Of course, we have this covered! ✅
- Onsite support, tailored to your needs? Absolutely ✅
Not only this but we also have access to 160+ locations around Europe, APAC, the US, Latin America, and now Africa, meaning the sky is your limit when it comes to choosing the right location for you and your team.
Don’t overlook the importance of face-to-face encounters as you strive for teams with rock-solid bonds. A remote team retreat gels everyone together perfectly!
Let us sort out the tricky logistics for you. Spaces are very limited, so get in touch now!
