Managing Remote Teams

Managing Remote Teams

Venkata Naga Manogna Velpucharla

Northern Illinois University

September 18, 2017

Remote management at this point is a long-lasting reality. Remote teams basically provide flexibility to the managers to come into the office by themselves and aid in finding the best ability. In addition, for the present-day workforce, it isn’t just a decent to have. At this moment, the consuming inquiry would be how to deal with a remote team and what difficulties would it confront in the present-day scenario.

Challenges:

Managing a remote team is not simple. There are numerous difficulties that come in way while dealing a remote team. Some of them being,

1. Varied time zones: As majority of team members reside in different parts of the world, organizing a meeting would not be simple as we will have to lay down a time that is beneficial for all the team members, if not most of the team members wouldn’t be able to attend the meeting.
2. Poor communication: Since majority of the team members are in different time zones, staying in touch with each other and conveying day by day is testing.
3. Collaborating on Projects: Again, as the team members are far away from each other, the idea of collaboration and teamwork is challenging.
4. Building strong relationships: This, is troublesome on the grounds that in a remote team setup we communicate with our team members less frequently.
5.  Finding Balance and Structure: Keeping up a work-life balance is difficult because a remote employee must reach the expectations at both the individual level and company level.
6. Embracing the organizational culture: Since, the remote workers do not generally follow the company rules and policies, embracing the organizational culture is extreme for them.

Techniques:

1. Establishing parameters for the remote team: This involves setting clear guidelines for the employees to work toward a goal.
2. Usage of video conferencing when necessary: Since nonverbal prompts and body language play an important role in verbal communication, up close and personal meetings even though virtual are vital.
3. Addressing cybersecurity issues:  Since remote employees rely mostly on their own equipment, they confront higher security issues when contrasted with the onsite employees. To overcome this, training sessions on VPN to be conducted for the remote employees.
4. Maintaining a good office rapport: This can be accomplished by hosting an online hangout, scheduling a monthly or regular in-office meeting, organizing a lunch or group activity for team building.
5. Obtain feedback from remote team: This involves collaborating most effectively with the rest of the group. Here, we ask the remote employees for their input on the difficulties that they are facing and what do they need to overcome them.
6. Regular affirmation of remote employees.
7. Never hold remote employees to different standards: Here, the entire staff is dealt with reliably and impartially.
8. Focusing on similitudes between team members to assemble union.

REFERENCES:

1. McDonald, P. (2015, september). 9 ESSENTIAL TIPS for Managing Remote Workers. 0-2.

2)    MORGAN, J. (2017). 6 Challenges of Remote Team Management. 0-2.