By: Stan Lee Itzcoatl.
Let’s discuss four key tips that will help you succeed in managing telecommuting teams. Traffic jams, Coronavirus concerns, no babysitter for the day, lack of local talent, noisy work office, etc, etc, etc. Companies are demanding work from home options more than ever, but what is the best way to make it work? Many industries, including the tech industry, have successfully used telecommuting for decades. I’ve telecommuted for many years. I’ve also managed local as well as offshore teams remotely. I’m going to share what I’ve seen work for decades when it comes to managing telecommuting teams.
Frequent Communication for Telecommuting
This tip sounds simple but it can be complex to execute. The key is that you want to treat your remote team members just like the people that walk into the office and sit next to you. This means greeting each other, casually catching up on personal lives and of course discussing the progress of work efforts. You definitely want to catch up every day and there’s no rule for how long each communication should be. It can be an exchange of instant messages. It can also be a phone call or a meeting with others present. What I don’t recommend is micro managing. The best way I found to approach this is to communicate the objectives, empower your team to carry out their tasks and follow up to measure their results. Great communication is central to managing telecommuting teams.
Meaningfully Track Telecommuting Work
As already mentioned, give your remote team members space to accomplish their goals but definitely be active in measuring and tracking their work. One recommendation is to use a weekly meeting to communicate and assign goals. This works at the start of the week and sets a good immediate tone. If your teams execute in agile style meetings then there might not be a need for a weekly meeting. Another tool you can use in combination with your weekly meeting is a bi-weekly or weekly timecard. This means that an employee would turn in a timecard style summary of what they worked on during the week. This is great because it gives you, the manager, a tool to measure actual productivity and it also gives the employee an extra mechanism to keep them focused on objectives. Who’s going to want to turn in a timecard that shows 30 hours dedicated to watching daytime game shows?
Telecommuting Tools for Productivity and Self Sufficiency
Companies usually provide office staff with everything they need to successfully do their job in a self-sufficient way. No manager wants to be a bottle neck and most importantly you want your team members to be superstars. Work from home employees are no different. Give your team the tools they need to first of all communicate. This means things like voice/video conferencing software, chat tools, screen sharing and more. Beyond that, give your employees a centralized knowledge base so that they can be as self-sufficient as possible. This can be in the form of setting up a company or department wiki. A wiki allows you a place to centralize important knowledge that team members can rapidly access and update. A nicely organized wiki helps employees to find the answers they need quickly. It also serves as a place for them to contribute to. Getting the right tools is one of the best tips you can have for managing telecommuting teams.
Establish Telecommuting Rules and Hold Everyone Accountable
Some companies think that telecommuting means the end of formal business rules. They worry that things will become too loose and impact productivity. This can indeed happen if you have no plan and no rules. Develop simple rules that employees can follow from the start. You can publish these rules on the company wiki for easy access. The rules should be in simple bullet format for easy digestion. Most importantly, you should make it clear that everyone is going to be held accountable to the rules. For example, if someone is consistently never available or takes a long time to respond to communications, then that team member needs to be held accountable. It cannot be treated loosely or else the seriousness of working remotely will crumble with all team members. Be clear that folks have to be available during work hours and that they must respond in a reasonable amount of time. Rules will help you maintain order and they also keep employees faithful in your system.
In conclusion, I want to stress that the time for companies to embrace telecommuting is now. Employees looking for jobs consider telecommuting flexibility to be a major benefit. It helps to enhance lives in many ways, but it must be executed with the same seriousness and detail as in-office work. Use our presented tips to help you attain success managing your telecommuting teams. Our article that discusses the creation of offshore teams covers many related topics in this article. Be sure to check it out here.
Stanitz LLC provides a full range of software consulting services including development, QA testing, technical SEO and more. If you need assistance with creating a QA team then contact Stantiz today. We focus on speed and results.
