Handling a team is no easy feat, especially when you have to do it remotely. The pandemic that hit in 2020 forced a lot of us to move to a work-from-home model, and it seems as if many companies will stick to that model, as well. Are you a project manager searching for some remote teamwork tips?
Then this blog post is for you. And if you're not, you should still continue reading. Did you know that 74% of employers plan to shift some employees to a remote work model indefinitely?
Most Common Teamwork Challenges
Remote, or not, here are some frequent challenges teams face in their companies and organizations:
Role Uncertainty
When you're a part of a team, you share some of your duties with other team players.
The culture of shared duties can be a novelty to some people who have never been a part of a team before. Those employees can get confused more easily about their roles, and the result can be more than one person taking on the duties meant for a single worker. Another side-effect of this is that some tasks get left out more quickly.
A good project or operations manager needs to be on hand to delegate the duties and keep things running smoothly.
Lack of Purpose
Disengagement is a common culprit of remote workplace challenges. Your employee can quickly lose motivation if they fail to see their role in the bigger purpose.
Each worker needs a clear understanding of their position's purpose, especially when working from home, where the line between free time and work can become unclear.
Do you find your team disengaged? Perhaps they are feeling a lack of clarity on the team goals and how they contribute to the result for their company.
Faulty Communication
Good communication is crucial for any relationship. From family, romance to work, getting your message across the board is of the essence. Trust arrives with good communication, so managers need to build a safe environment filled with trust.
The team members need to feel trust when speaking to their manager, but they should also feel as if they can lean onto other team members. That is a sort of shortcut to optimized company results and outputs.
Communication is essential for lowering tension, as well. A well-spoken project manager will know how to mediate when conflicts arise in the team. They will also learn how to approach the top management and ask for more reasonable deadlines to spare their team from burnout and work overload.
Best Remote Teamwork Tips
Here are some of the most useful remote teamwork tips you can use to bring your teamwork to another level:
Cut Out Uneccesarry Meetings
We joke about these a lot online to handle the pain of too many Zoom meetings that the pandemic era imposed on us. But jokes aside, there are so many needless meetings that could've been just simple emails!
Cut such meetings out from your daily workings as a team by following these tips:
- Plan in advance: Ensure that you have a schedule and focus on the results you want.
- Use time-management: Lay out your task in an orderly fashion to ensure that you are not wasting precious time.
- Review meetings and outcomes: For each meeting, track the results to see if they have helped the matter or caused further delays.
Delegate Effectively
A project manager can easily fall into the trap of doing everything by themselves. Your workers can become disengaged in the process since they lose the big picture and motivation to work.
Knowing how to delegate is a skill learned in time. Done well, it will bring up team performance and allow you to focus more on strategic tasks and dealing with the top management.
Here are some helpful steps to follow:
- Assess your position: What tasks does it have which could be delegated to others to help them grow?
- Match the task to the right employee: Considering their experience, plans, and needs, think about which job would suit which employee.
- Offer support: Organize regular check-ins with your team members to track their progress and help them out.
- Provide feedback: Never forget to give credit where credit's due, and let the individual know their value and purpose.
Offer the Team the Right Tools
You can have the most motivated employee, but they can still deliver subpar components and services without a suitable toolkit.
Technology has advanced so much that working from home has never been easier - when done right. The pandemic forced a lot of project managers to organize teams remotely. Thankfully, workplace platforms at hand make it so much easier for companies to track their performance and KPIs (key performance indicators).
Work organization software like Antelope offers live demos and provides critical data points for managers to see the broad picture of their team's performance.
Conclusion
The pandemic will wane one day, but we will be left with the consequences. And when life hands you a bad deck of cards, what can you do?
Make a beautiful tower of cards, that's why. In other words, yes, our world looked like a mess at this point, and yes, we do not exactly love this remote model of work. But we don't have to settle on this status quo.
We can make our workplace a better place by using the power of tech and good management skills.
