Top 5 Remote Team Management Challenges and How to Overcome Them

Remote working is no longer a luxury, it has become a number 1 choice amongst employees (nearly one-third) all over the world. Surprisingly, the total number of remote working days in 2023 was 28%, an increase from 7% in 2019. Though organizations are slowly adopting the remote work culture to retain good employees, it is becoming highly challenging for managers to connect and coordinate with geographically dispersed team members on a regular basis. You need a robust remote team management framework for creating a wholesome work environment. But, team managers face the heat of multiple challenges with managing remote teams, such as communication issues, lack of trust, lack of supervision, tracking team productivity, etc. In this regard, we’re going to discuss the top five challenges of remote team management and learn how to overcome them with innovative strategies.

Top 5 Challenges of Remote Team Management

Clear Communication

A strong team stands tall on the base of clear communication. However, communication is the leading frustration that remote teams face all over the world. 61% of employees say they face communication issues as their team works in silo in the absence of a common communication tool. Slack messages are not that effective as face-to-face communications, just as emails can be misread. This makes it difficult for managers to manage work priorities across team members and make sure effective project management and delivery on proposed commitments.

How to overcome communication challenges?

First, set a clear communication guideline for your remote workers. It should clearly mention when and how to prioritize different communication channels (e.g., messages, emails, phones, video calls). Make sure their online calendars are up-to-date to receive meeting details on the go.

Tracking Work and Productivity

How can you know if your team members are doing their jobs when you can’t see them?

A wise manager tracks outcomes, not activity, so that team members don’t feel micromanaged. All you have to do is to set clear expectations for tasks and projects and then gauge the progress as the workflows.

However, 64% of managers have opined that they lack appropriate tools to track productivity with ease. In this regard, you can take the help of single shared calendars or virtual collaboration tools to rally employees around a common goal or vision.

Social Isolation

Most of the time, remote work puts employees in a state of loneliness resulting from social isolation. As per a study by Zippa, social isolation is the number #1 problem for 19% of remote workers. They miss the charm of interacting in an in-office setting. The WFH environment offers them limited opportunities for casual, social conversation. As a result, they find it difficult to feel a sense of belonging.

With an ideal remote team management solution, staff can communicate in an online environment with more ease than in the office by simply initiating instant messages within dedicated team groups. It can offer two types of benefits—it will foster relationship-building, and it also provides a space to then segue into work chat.

Organization Culture

According to research, 88% of workers consider company culture as an important measure in remote work.

In general, the management team finds it challenging to foster organizational culture in in-person settings. With remote work, it becomes even more challenging. Unless the organization makes use of an ideal remote team management tool, it's difficult to identify and fix the bottlenecks just in time.

However, it's completely possible for companies to attain a strong remote work culture for employees by setting:

● A robust remote work policy

● Periodic employee training

● Clear remote onboarding protocols

● Rules of Engagement

Rules of Engagement represents a set of agreed-upon organizational practices and procedures. You can add best practices for different scenarios and variables.

That's why they could be the most useful tool to infuse organizational culture and build trust among employees at different hierarchies of an organization.

Face-to-Face Interaction

Unlike WFO settings, remote work culture lack face-to-face interactions. Staff rely on other forms of communication, like email or Skype, where the urgency of the matter can easily be misinterpreted. A small misunderstanding can even suddenly put most dedicated employees through negative emotions while working remotely from home.

Therefore, managers always strive for conducting face-to-face interaction virtually with remote employees at least once a week, if not daily.

One of the best ways to ensure this is to leverage videoconferencing to get visual cues for shared knowledge. With an ideal remote working software, video conferencing can be equivalent to walking up to employees and asking them to connect. This helps managers avoid unproductive meetings.

Scale With Unifai Remote Team Management Solutions

Unifai's remote team management solution is highly popular among managers, teams, and agencies for providing all necessary features under one clean design. Unifai Leader Insights provides useful, contextual and longitudinal 360 feedback in a personal, meaningful way.

Every organization needs customized solutions to address specific remote team management challenges. So, if Unifai Leader Insights seems like a fair choice to add to your remote team management solution, book a demo to learn more.

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