Remote work has steadily been gaining popularity over the last few decades, mostly due to the freedom and flexibility it provides.
However, the global situation over the last few years has also forced many companies to switch to this work model quite suddenly.
This unexpected shift came with a number of challenges that affected employers and employees alike and made workforces that much more difficult to manage. If you’re dealing with similar issues as well, here are some of the most common challenges of managing remote teams, as well as tips on how to overcome them:
1. Communication is difficult to maintain
Communication and collaboration tend to be the biggest challenges when managing remote teams. As your employees aren’t in the same building or the same room, communication can never be as easy as just turning to a colleague and asking them for their opinion or updates on a project.
Instead, workers are divided by cities, countries, and even continents, and are forced to use solutions like instant messages, emails, and video calls to communicate with one another.
While these solutions might be effective for some companies, others find that a variety of different platforms often leave pieces of information misinterpreted or lost.
If you’re having similar issues, deciding on a single platform can be quite beneficial. Choose a collaboration tool that combines different forms of communication into one platform, thus keeping everything in the same place and making it simpler for entire teams to talk to each other and collaborate.
2. Time zones present a scheduling issue
If remote work for your company means engaging a global workforce, you may end up with employees that are scattered across the world and in different time zones.
Depending on where your team members are located, this means they might be working at different hours of the day, thus being asynchronous on important projects. This presents even more issues when it comes to ensuring team efficiency.
Of course, good communication and collaboration tools could help in this area as well. However, having a good system for scheduling and assigning specific tasks may be even more important.
Whether you use shared online calendars or project-specific software, these solutions will enable you to set strict deadlines and determine the times at which each task should be completed.
In turn, your remote teams can set more flexible schedules according to their needs and ensure their work is completed within the set time limit.
3. Administration tasks are accumulating
Managing remote teams comes with a number of administrative challenges as well. You have to pay different wages, set up different benefits, and use different channels to deliver them.
This becomes even more complicated when remote employees are located in different countries. In those cases, you also have to know the local laws, resolve different tax issues, deal with currency exchange, and overcome other unique challenges.
For that reason, it may be best to hire a global employer of record (EoR). Being an experienced workforce management entity, an EoR is an organization that handles all the administrative and legal aspects of employing an international workforce.
These professionals can take care of onboarding, simplify your payroll, work out tax issues, set up employee benefits, and resolve any other administrative problem you might be facing when managing global remote teams.
4. Productivity and progress are less visible
When you aren’t working with your staff in person, you can’t simply have a five-minute chat to get all the necessary updates.
Video conferencing meetings may not always be effective when you’re managing larger teams, and you might not even have enough time to spend the entire day responding to emails and messages. But goals and deadlines are still looming over your head.
To avoid these issues and ensure efficiency, it might be wise to implement project management software into your daily operations. These software solutions will allow you to organize projects more effectively, monitor employee progress, streamline workflows, enable quick messaging and easy update sharing, and ensure project success.
This is a great solution for meeting project deadlines and overall business objectives, as well as keeping your teams productive throughout the workday.
5. Work-life balance isn’t experienced
Burnout is an increasingly prominent issue among employees, especially remote workers. This is likely due to their inability to switch off after working hours when working from home.
After all, office environments allow employees to unplug and disconnect at the end of the day, creating a clear boundary between home and work life. When they are working remotely, their office can be anywhere at home, tempting them to continue working, and making it more challenging to unplug.
As the employer, you have to prevent burnout in remote teams and allow them to set their own work-life boundaries to avoid an impact on work.
The easiest way to accomplish this is by implementing an employee tracking system that analyses tasks and detects early burnout signs. Well-being programs such as gym memberships and stress management classes could also be of help.
6. Company culture can’t be maintained
Company cultures tend to thrive on in-person interactions. It’s generally easier to engage your employees and get them invested in their work when they feel more connected to your organization.
With remote employees, this process won’t be quite as simple, mostly due to the fact that there isn’t a central office where face-to-face interactions can be enabled and the company culture cultivated. However, it’s still achievable.
For instance, you can keep reinforcing your core values during each meeting, focus on building trust among your employees, or even put worker health and well-being at the forefront.
Similarly, you can make teamwork and good communication a priority, encourage team members to interact with one another outside of the work environment, and plan virtual team-building events to promote and maintain your company culture even when working with remote employees.
Managing remote teams is never an easy task, especially when they’re international and diverse. But as long as you follow the advice above and utilize the right tools, you can boost productivity and efficiency, and ensure success.
