Leadership, remote work
How to improve the performance of your remote workers. Lead your team online
JANUARY 08, 2021
The jump to working from home when before everyone went about their daily business in the office could and has caused a number of distractions and some of those teams have been scattered.
This new situation causes very significant changes when it comes to working:
We eliminate close and physical contact of workers.
It is more complicated to animate a work team.
The personal and sentimental situation of people remains in a hidden plane.
Controlling your tasks and work is not that simple.
There have been many things that have changed our processes in the different jobs, but after researching the market and helping different companies with their digital process, we want to affirm that it is possible to lead an online team effectively, making the group work as well or better than when you are in the same office.
It `s difficult? Of course, because every new process involves taking people out of their «comfort zone» and we have to force ourselves to overcome new challenges or new ways of doing things.
Our Tips for leading remote teams are:
It is a very important factor in online tasks for workers. Depending on the tools that a company chooses, it may or may not be a key point for teams to work more and better.
Office 365 has specialized in this type of work, which is why it has a wide range of tools to facilitate the coordination and communication of the entire company.
And from KoareTech we include another range of tools customized to your needs and business to control and facilitate all the team’s tasks.
Teams: the quintessential communication tool for video calls, chat and many other things, it also works on any mobile phone, tablet or computer, even through a browser.
Teams on android with joint mode.
Planeer: tools to facilitate the organization of tasks.
KoareTech Project Manager: Full control over the life of a project with different types of tasks and phases. It includes version control of all documents, reports, statistics, security by project and phase, communication between departments, monitoring of the project process and more. Control versions of documents. Dependencies and relationship tasks. Management approval system. Quick check of the status of the project at any stage.
Skype: tools to make video calls, integrated in Teams
One Drive: space in the cloud to share documents that can be worked on together.
KoareTech FilesBoard: An easy way to protect and classify documents with 3 levels of folders. Custom levels of access to each folder. Version control. Fully connectable with OneDrive.
Outlook: email manager par excellence with a calendar to mark meetings and delivery dates.
“ And so on to more than 60 tools, both from Office 365 and KoareTech ”
Motivate your team
Although you are working far away, it does not mean that things have to be done individually. It is important to organize meetings, calls, games to continue fostering a good relationship between colleagues. It is ideal that you plan specific meetings to make regular updates, motivate each other, do brainstorming or have a virtual coffee. To have a united and motivated team, you have to strengthen your ties.
How can you organize the most effective meetings?
Plan an agenda and set goals. Turn on the camera, it is important to see yourself and have that feedback that non-verbal language gives us.
Try to get into a quiet room, or turn off the microphone when it’s not your turn.
Communicating is VITAL
What do you need from each person?
How does it have to be done?
How much time do they have to do it?
These are some of the questions that have to be clear to avoid misunderstandings.
You have to ask for things, they DO NOT HAVE TO BE TAKEN FOR DONE.
Focus on results
Going to work online is a vote of confidence in the leaders towards their workers. Apart from having a comprehensive control to see your work processes, it is more effective to focus on achieving the objectives.
Maintain serenity and calm work environments
Leading a team in normal work and social situations is already on many occasions very complicated tasks, now let’s take into account what has been experienced to date and put serenity to the stress of our environments.
If you manage to stay calm, you transmit that professionalism to your work team and generate a better atmosphere every day.
We're a team
The important thing to get good results in any company is to work as a good gear, each person has to be consistent with the importance of their actions and that the global results are a consequence of team actions.
Congratulating achievements, communicating, sharing actions… are some of the functions of a good team.
It is a good time to take care of the team, and make your employees feel comfortable working anywhere and supported by the rest of your team.
Virtual trips, latest feature of Microsoft Teams
Microsoft does not stop in its development to become the most useful tool for remote work, and for this reason it does not stop at practical and simple tools for the worker, but goes further, seeking to improve the remote work experience.
For this reason, the ‘virtual trips’ of Teams appear, offering workers the possibility of setting goals for the day in the morning and reflecting on the day in the afternoon.
The goal of this new feature is to improve the well-being of people who work for companies with remote work by increasing the way people connect beyond work tasks.
It is a good time to take care of the team, and make your employees feel comfortable working anywhere and supported by the rest of your team.