With the working ethics changing rapidly, more and more people prefer to work remotely as opposed to having an office job. As of now, more than 4 million people are employed in remote teams, and even more than that would be willing to change to remote working if it meant a more flexible schedule.
Such a transition could completely change the way the workforce is organized, and make managers review their approach to building relationships with their teams. The traditional eye-to-eye contact plays a significant role in establishing working dynamics and creating strong bonds within a company. So, what shall be done if the physical presence of contractors is not possible?
Below are 5 things to remember when trying to build effective relationships with your remote teams.
1. Communication with your remote teams needs to be consistent and easy
One of the first things that necessarily gets discussed in the articles related to any sort of human relationships, is the importance of communication. Relationships with your remote teams are no exception to the rule. In order to make them effective, you need to ensure that you communicate with your employees enough, and do so successfully.
Nowadays there are no excuses for any lack of communication between the team members, there are many online platforms and tools that you can make use of, here included video remote interpretation as well for multilanguage teams.
There is not a set amount of communication that is considered to be standard and is therefore sufficient. Moreover, the quality of the aforementioned communication plays an important role in establishing the contribution it makes towards building solid relationships and can vary from one form of the task to another. Different types of digital marketing jobs for which the remote employees are needed may have different degrees of involvement from you. Thus, you need to decide on that for yourself, based on the tasks you want to be completed.
However, when organizing communication with your remote teams, you need to remember that there are some significant differences between them and those employees working in the office and take those differences into consideration. Sometimes you can also hold some more important meetings in different office spaces in New York, London, Boston, or other places of your interest, just to change the scenery and to also give your remote team another opportunity to build stronger interpersonal communication.
In a team all members of which are full-time employees, managers often do not realize how much small alterations are implemented on the spot, in the process of continuous discussion at the workplace. With remote contractors, however, this is rarely the case. For this very reason, it is essential to recognize that you need to be constantly in touch and have managers available to remote employees to contact in case of an emergency or simply to discuss the ongoing problem-solving processes. There need to be several communication channels that would allow for better, more easily accessible, and presumably infallible communication at all times. One of the best ways to achieve this is to allocate some forms of direct connection with managerial staff so that there are no intermediaries. Those often make the discussion overcomplicated.
Another important thing that needs to be taken into consideration when building effective relationships, is ensuring that communication with remote teams is timely, consistent, and frequent. In order to create certain bonds with your employees, you need to be present and available for them to turn to for help and clarifications, and not only appear once in a while to check up on the progress. This can be quite a challenge if you have a lot of remote teams and cannot concentrate your undivided attention on one group of employees. However, there is a solution to that problem, which allows for more regular communication.
Set small goals instead of only outlining the large tasks
While it is important to give heads up in regards to the overall project so that remote teams were aware of the final product they are expected to deliver, you should overcome the temptation of delegating the entire task to your remote contractors for them to deal with all the peculiarities of it themselves.
Both the quality of the task completion and your relationships with remote teams will benefit from you breaking down the task to smaller units. By doing so, you will have a chance to set small goals that appear to be more manageable and attainable. Moreover, this allows less room for mistakes from the contractors and subsequently gives more control over the situation to you. At the same time, however, such control will not be forced and unnatural, but will rather be regarded as positive supervision that does not limit the employee’s working freedom.
Besides, if you break down the task and assign it in portions, you will have a chance to provide more detailed instructions and therefore be able to give better feedback on the work done.
Be clear in your requests and provide thorough explanations to tasks
In addition to the aforementioned tip, it is also important that the style of communication will inevitably be somewhat different when getting in touch with remote teams as opposed to in-site employees.
One of the key rules when it comes to communicating with remote contractors is being straightforward and clear in your demands. If you have certain requirements for the task, you need to lay them out clearly. This implies you eliminate any sort of bias from the instructions so that there was minimal room for misinterpretation.
Remember that without having a one-to-one contact with your employers, it is easy for you to end up having misunderstandings related to the task. In order to avoid those and make your relationship effective and your work productive, you need to ensure that your explanations are as clear as possible. Do not leave out any bits, since, without your direct commands, people may assume something that is not necessarily relevant or correct.
Have solid contingency planning set
However, if you fail to provide foolproof instructions to your remote employees (this is more common than you think, even if you are confident in your managerial abilities, due to the human factor), you need to ensure that any mistakes occurring are promptly detected and fixed.
For this to be possible, you need to arrange an easy way of reporting a problem that would send an alert to all the employees involved in the completion of a particular task. Often, it can be more awkward for remote employees to discuss problems occurring due to lack of eye-to-eye contact and other peculiarities of not being physically present at the meeting. It is on you to ensure that you are more lenient towards the bag reports you receive from remote workers. Moreover, you need to be attentive to the details of such reports. Often, managers fail to recognize the information that the remote employees pass on to them, and estimate the severity of the issue incorrectly.
In the contemporary technologically advanced world, one of the best ways to ensure the timely resolution of issues and smooth workflow of the business operations concerning the remote work scenario is through employee monitoring software. We have also been looking into the software solutions that allow you to track employees and see what they are doing, the best we have found so far is Workpuls as this offers an incredible amount of data that is very easy to use.
2. Create strong bonds with your remote teams by providing them with your recognition
Another way of building effective relationships with your remote teams is by giving them enough credits. Lack of recognition is often one of the most widespread problems when it comes to remote teams, and it can be a real deal-breaker. Employees putting in their time and effort into completing tasks for the well-being of your company want to receive some feedback and gratitude for their skills and loyalty to the organization.
With full-time office workers, it is easier to provide appraisal and positive comments to the workers that contribute to the company’s development. With remote contractors, this, however, can be rather challenging. Even if you include some sort of gratification into the monthly reports and reviews of performance, it does not hold the same value as the recognition given timely and specifically.
Moreover, it is important to make that recognition is visible so that other contractors could give it when it is due. This would create a positive loop and motivate people to work harder, which would subsequently lead to increased efficiency of remote teams.
3. Create interpersonal relationships among your remote teams’ employees
Even though teambuilding sounds a bit old-fashioned, cliché, and even somewhat impossible to organize when it comes to remote contractors, bringing people together to give them a sense of belonging is a must when building effective relationships with your remote teams.
You need to let them connect with each other and with you. Perhaps have them take a test to reveal their DiSC profile types and see whose personalities match. This could promote a greater understanding of each other and how teams work together. It will also be a good idea to implement some sort of real-life meetings once in a while, where you could get to know each other better. Besides, you could also organize some virtual activities that would bring your team closer.
4. Trust is an important feature to have when it comes to building effective relationships with your remote teams
One of the essential features to have in your relationship is trust. Especially when it comes to building effective relationships with remote teams. It should already be a part of your relationship if you trust those people to work remotely, and therefore not be under your direct control. However, there are certain factors that come along with it.
A concept that needs to be present in your relationship with remote teams is Hanlon’s razor. It refers to assuming ignorance before malice. Therefore, if you come across some mistake, you need to take all the factors into consideration and treat it as a result of miscommunication and not a direct attempt at bringing harm to your company. This is particularly relevant to those remote teams, members of which work in different time zones. Deadlines and time, in general, can get a bit twisted in situations like that, and need to be tackled with understanding.
5. Promote your organization culture
At last but not at least, when building effective relationships with your remote teams, you need to nurture your company culture. Instead of treating your remote workforce as someone separate from the in-site employees, you need to include them in the company environment and provide them with equal opportunities. You should be providing insights into the processes within your company as a whole as opposed to simply handing over the necessary tools for task completion.
In order to make your remote contractors a true part of your company and therefore build trust, you need to incorporate them into company-wide meetings, give them a voice in the decision-making process, etc.