Background Screening | 7 Pitfalls to Avoid in Managing Remote Teams Pt. 2
Background Screening | “Remote teams are not as flexible as you may assume,” – she explains. “You can’t accept any order knowing you have people ready to work for you from their homes. Remember: you’ve hired them to do a specific job and they still expect to have some free time, so don’t count on their flexibility too much. If you want to keep a remote team efficient, you have to be an efficient delegator.”
5. Hiring great employees who have no idea how to handle tasks from home
You can have the best workers in the world and you know they are suitable for the tasks you have in mind, but that doesn’t mean they will master the job from home. Someone may be a very hard worker in a more traditional office environment, but they may get distracted performing the same tasks from home.
Do they have the conditions to work from home? Can they set up a home office, or do they live in a tiny apartment with no space for a desk? Remote working requires proper conditions, but it’s also a skill that not everyone has.
If you want to make sure you have the right workers for the job, hire people who have worked remotely before or have experience running their own projects. If you already have an office team and you want to shift towards remote work, make sure everyone is able to handle the challenge before making a drastic change in their lives.
6. Failure to use the right communication tools
What’s the most important thing to maintain when you manage and engage remote teams? Let me hear you say it: communication!
Since you can’t count on direct (face to face) communication, the connection within the team may be disturbed. That’s why you have to make up for the gap, and you need to use the right tools for that purpose.
Email is the first thing that comes to mind. Yes, it’s an effective tool for communication with individuals and teams. However, written communication can get a bit dry and boring. You don’t want your workers to feel the daily correspondence as a burden. Thus, you need to add the element of fun into it.
What happens when you want to explain new projects or tasks to your team members? In that case, written text can be misinterpreted or misunderstood, and it doesn’t convey the message in the clearest manner possible. In such situations, consider using digital whiteboards, private chat rooms, or internal social networks incorporated into the organization’s website. Asana, Wrike, and similar project management tools can make the communication within the team very effective.
7. Focusing on talent and forgetting about team-fit
Of course you want to hire talent within the remote team. That’s your main focus, since you want all tasks to be completed by exceptionally talented and capable people. Strong individuals are great achievers, but their attitude can often become a problem when you put them inside an existing team culture. In an office, it’s easier for them to feel the vibe and fit in. In a remote team, however, they may find it difficult to sense the culture and they won’t make an effort to become part of it.
When you hire new members to join a remote team, you have to make sure they are on the same page as everyone else. Ask the candidates about their personal interests, the way they perceive the tasks, and the opinions they have about the company’s challenges. -Recruit Loop
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