Many companies are offering remote work because of the benefits it provides. The employee benefits include a strong work-life balance and increased productivity. The employer benefits include access to large talent pools, high employee morale, strong scalability, and lower costs.
Because your team members work from different locations, you must take a different approach to managing them than if your team worked at the office. These strategies can help.
Implement these best practices for effective virtual team management.
Support Team Culture
Develop a virtual team culture to provide a sense of belonging using these best practices:
- Create a Slack channel for members to discuss non-work-related topics.
- Host virtual games and events to build camaraderie.
- Organize in-person meetups for employees who work in the same area.
Implement Technology
Use technology to manage your virtual team with these best practices:
- Select time-management software to track the time employees spend performing their job duties.
- Choose cloud-based file-storage software for your team to securely share documents and access information.
- Implement communication tools such as videoconferencing, email, and instant messaging to support team communication.
- Use collaboration tools to help your team work together on projects.
- Select project management tools for employees to organize tasks and manage deadlines.
Develop Trust
Build trust among your virtual team using these best practices:
- Introduce new members to encourage relationships.
- Develop shared goals to support collaboration.
- Openly communicate to enhance transparency.
- Focus on employee output rather than the number of hours worked.
Emphasize Accountability
Support accountability within your virtual team with these best practices:
- Work with your team to develop specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, time-bound (SMART) goals.
- Clarify your expectations for employee job duties and responsibilities.
- Explain the key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure employee results.
Provide Motivation
Motivate your virtual team to reach their goals using these best practices:
- Offer professional development opportunities for career growth.
- Provide a gift card, vacation day, bonus, raise, or another incentive to improve performance.
- Give a promotion once the criteria are met.
Improve Employee Performance
Support your virtual team’s performance with these best practices:
- Provide constructive feedback to improve your team’s processes and outputs.
- Coach your employees to more effectively complete their work.
- Recognize and reward your employees for their accomplishments.
Do You Need to Add to Your Virtual Team?
Partner with Corps Team to add members to your virtual team. Contact us today.
