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How To Effectively Manage A Remote Team That Works From Home

emma001Posted for Everyone to comment on, 5 years ago4 min read

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Working in a team is often helpful, be it within the same workplace house or virtually. Most start ups this days operate virtually, with team members working from difficult locations (cities, states and even countries).

Managing a virtual team can be a difficult thing for many, as team members (be it content creators, graphics designers, coders etc) tend time to lose motivation because of lack of monitoring and don't feel part of team.

Here are some practical tips that could help in handling a virtual team

1. Understand your team

The first step to take is to get to know and understand your team members personally and seek for ways to keep them motivated and ticking while they work. Different strategies work for different people, that's why as a team leader you find out through feedbacks what motivates them individually.

Also modern collaboration tools can be used to work seamlessly with each other.

2. Arranging Virtual meetings/meet ups

This is a good way to increase the relationship between and the interaction within a team. Through this other team members get to meet and know each other. Online tools such as Zoom and Skype can be used for video conferencing and calls.


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Pixabay


Also with this tool, team can celebrate it's success in the case of achieving a milestone. Meeting should held weekly for a period of 30min to 1hr on day of the week selected by the team. This is something every Virtual team should try.

3. Having a Team Portal

This should be created as place or medium in which members of a virtual team drop suggestions and feedbacks as it concerns the team growth. Every good suggestion dropped should be deliberated on and applied so the team members feel valued and get motivated to work as a group.

Trello and Slack can also used be used for this purpose. Trello serves as a tool for content management and to do list while Slack for team chat/calls. Apps like Zoho CRM (For email and CRM) and AgoraPulse (For Social media management) can also be used.

4. Discipline in the team members

Rules are important in every team, either working offline or virtually as discipline should always be ensured. The leader should also clearly define and make each team members understand their roles. This can be achieved by when team members adhere by giving timely reports of their work weekly or monthly and critical feedback given back by team leader concerning individual performance.

If performance if any team member is improving, they should be appreciated, if it's decreasing it should be discussed to find out what went wrong and communicated ways to improve such member.

Functioning from home may be overwhelming sometimes, reason why team should their daily tasks and time spent on it to the leader. This help him understand how they spend majority of their time and look for ways to ensure they remain discipline, manage their times well by been more productive. This tip help improve the overall growth and performance of a team.

5. From Team to Big Family

Working in a virtual team could prove tough as members do get to do see them self regularly and tend not to get feeling of the team as a family as compared to a team working daily in a physical office. However, that feeling can be achieved when the leader of the team convey every now and then his affection for the team by show them how valuable they are to the team.

Setting realistic goals, deadlines and giving feedback to the team goes a long way. This gives each member of the team the constant and assuring feeling that are not working alone but as a team no matter they might be.


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Pexels


Conclusion

Working virtually as team from different locations could be tough, it is necessary the communication within the team is strengthened so each team member for connected and motivated to contribute their best to the success of the business. Using tools and tips highlighted above could help ensure the become more productive



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