Building a Remote Team That Brings Results: 12 Easy Steps to Success

Aug 25, 2022 10 min reading

Are you experiencing ongoing difficulties managing a remote team? If so, you are in the right place to learn how to manage and create a powerful remote team.

In this blog post, we will discuss expectations and guidelines for employees. We will also touch on the well-being of your hires as a decisive factor and suggest some practical tips to improve your team meetings, communication skills, and general collaboration.

Building a Remote Team: The 12 Steps

#1 Define what remote work means for your company

The remote work revolution is upon us. No longer tied to a single physical location, more and more businesses are embracing the advantages of a remote workforce.

From increased flexibility and productivity to reduced overhead costs, there are many reasons to build a remote team. However, before you make the switch, it’s important to define what remote work means for your company.

What are the expectations and guidelines for employees (both on-site employees and remote employees)? How will you manage communication and collaboration?

By taking the time to answer these questions, you will ensure a smooth transition to a remote working model. And with the right tools and protocols in place, you can reap all the benefits of a remote workforce.

#2 Define the roles and responsibilities of each team member

Setting up responsibilities and building virtual teams of off-site employees can be challenging. Thus, defining roles and responsibilities for remote employees at the outset will eliminate potential difficulties and facilitate project management.

Employees’ roles define their position on a team, while their responsibilities refer to their assignments and duties. Undoubtedly, determining what needs to be done will benefit your entire organization and pay off in the future.

Your team members’ strengths and weaknesses should be identified while defining their positions and responsibilities. Working in a pleasant environment with clear boundaries will increase productivity and improve team performance.

Remember to encourage general feedback and social interaction. Furthermore, if any problems arise, provide assistance to resolve them.

#3 Set communication guidelines and expectations

In a virtual environment, maintaining transparent, attractive, and fluid communication and employing emotional intelligence will keep everyone involved and help build a solid, stable company culture.

When building a remote team:

ensure that the information is transmitted accurately and establish a method of communication, such as virtual meetings

control company matters during working hours and schedule additional remote meetings during this time
use virtual team-building tools for digital communication
try an innovative video conferencing platform as a workflow solution
run virtual team-building activities in your spare time, such as pre-planned virtual scavenger hunts
come up with a list of online games that will allow your remote employees to integrate and introduce several team-building events
create a group where you and your teammates can comment on random topics, discuss weekly trivia, send memes and get to know colleagues to avoid feelings of isolation

#4 Establish a process for tracking and reporting results

Every business organization relies on reports. In addition to tracking progress, companies use them to make strategic decisions. Establishing a consistent reporting schedule and monitoring work progress is important when running a remote team and for achieving your goals.

By providing specific information about what needs to be done, project progress reports save your team’s time. Communication touchpoints can help avoid the difficulties of this process, and your business will also benefit from video conferencing as a social interaction tool.

#5 Celebrate successes together and learn from failures

It is undeniable that working with clients can result in positive or negative outcomes for your business, which is why you should learn to cope with both failures and successes during project management.

Building a strong culture and motivating employees requires celebrating team success, which they and supervisors should be encouraged to do. Being praised increases engagement, productivity, and feeling like part of a team. Moreover, it boosts employees’ happiness and gives them strength to face future challenges. Team-building events, such online games evenings, are a great way to celebrate success with your team. You can also leverage live streaming and organize virtual escape rooms, online games, or creative challenges that encourage teamwork, communication—consider participating in a charitable team building event as well. Engaging activities like these help teams bond outside work contexts.

Team-building events, such online games evenings, are a great way to celebrate success with your team. You can also leverage live streaming and organize virtual escape rooms, online games, or creative challenges that encourage teamwork, communication, just make sure to use an HLS player for a seamless and high-quality viewing experience. It can be strategic to divide your team during virtual team-building activities and allow the participants to have fun. Engage virtual meeting participants with five to ten-minute icebreakers if you have larger teams.

It is important to acknowledge team failures too. Most of us perceive failure as completely negative and a necessary evil, but the biggest failures can actually teach us the most valuable lessons.

An employee’s failures affect the company as a whole, so ongoing problems should be resolved as soon as possible. As a result of virtual team-building challenges and events, failures can be handled much better in the future.

Social interaction and integration of remote or hybrid teams will definitely be boosted by adding more virtual events to celebrate successes and learn from failures.

#6 Encourage creativity and risk-taking

There are many ways to boost creativity in your team and encourage employees to take on tasks that involve risk. As always, you need to be supportive, and your virtual team needs to know that they can count on you without their actions being met with disapproval.

Set clear expectations that prioritize the most fundamental tasks as well as shared goals, procedures, and standards for your employees. Establish a friendly, yet competitive routine.

The essence of effective leadership is to embrace trust, tolerance, and self-awareness, cultivate straightforward and visible communication skills, and encourage creative thinking.

#7 Promote work-life balance

Is there ever a time when you feel you don’t have enough hours in the day to achieve all your goals? You may be experiencing a work-life balance issue if that is the case.

Work-life balance is essential for achieving the best results in the workplace. Without one, employees will cease to be productive, and the quality of their work will suffer.

Implementing policies that promote work-life balance in your company will enhance your company’s bottom line. Empowering your employees with flexible working hours connected to manageable to-do lists may prevent them from burning out and having time anxiety issues during crunch times.

#8 Encourage employees to take time off

Any company that wants to succeed needs to introduce innovative solutions and ideas that aren’t used by its competitors. It is more likely that such an organization will stay on the market and attract new clients in the future.

Especially when workers are faced with unreliable technologies that complicate their work, stress can be a major factor at work. Your business will therefore flourish if you encourage employees to take time off, especially for creative work and inventing new solutions.

Start motivating your employees by introducing several simple roles into your company culture to maintain psychological safety, such as:

providing extra days off when there are no national holidays in a given month
taking time off and openly discuss your trips and plans during team chats or virtual meetings
setting up at least one virtual meeting a week to maintain real-time interactions
planning several virtual events every month, such as virtual team-building games
assuring your employees that they can fully count on their colleagues to take over their duties during their absence (again, psychological safety)
periodically checking in on your coworkers and discussing the importance of holidays for personal growth

#9 Establish a routine for team check-ins

Regular virtual meetings between employees and managers are called check-ins. They are designed to cover a broad range of integral topics about the organization or for discussing employee issues.

Frequent check-ins enable both employees and their managers to work on any areas that may need to be improved, as well as devise a plan for future activities. Despite their short duration, it is crucial that participants get the most out of check-ins.

Be consistent and work out a remote meetings plan that best suits your business. If necessary, schedule a video conferencing session every single day to convey strategic ideas to your team.

New hires would probably appreciate regular check-ups and the possibility of discussing matters that concern their duties. Learn more about creating a friendly environment for new hires.

#10 Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it

Working online can be tedious. Don’t let your employees end up dead on their feets after whole days spent in front of the screen because they are stuck on a task.

Employees lose motivation when they need to go back to the drawing board. Teach your team to talk openly about needs and face difficulties, and be assertive when you need to ask them for help.

It is imperative that your team can rely on you, and vice versa. Sometimes it is enough to change one task, move on, and the work will get back on track.

#11 Trust your team to get the job done

Leadership requires building trust in your teams, regardless of whether they are hybrid, remote, or in-office.

Running a reliable team facilitates communication flow in a workplace and reveals any tensions. Moreover, using effective programs to monitor your team’s virtual activities will help you build trust faster.

Obviously, you need to get your work done and meet the deadlines. However, in a pleasant atmosphere without constantly controlling your employees, tasks will be completed faster and the team’s results will be more satisfying.

#12 Facilitate collaboration through online tools and platforms

It is essential to choose reliable technology when working remotely on common goals, since it is easier to communicate and share work results via online tools. They help to ensure effective work organization and make it easy to assign tasks to employees.

Real-time tracking of project progress is only possible thanks to efficiently functioning platforms, so it is best to choose a reliable technology that will enable you to conduct remote meetings, data management, and tracking virtual activities.

If you would like to read more about how to choose an online tool to facilitate your online office management, here is a list of requirements that it should fulfill.

How can Sloneek help your remote team?

Virtual team-building tools will inevitably become more prevalent in the future as it becomes necessary to facilitate remote human resources management. The future of HR will be based on reliable technology, professional apps, and tools designed specifically for this purpose.

In the digital era, you should never forget about maintaining the balance between private and professional life, which may be blurred due to the work transfer from the office to our homes.

With our HR communication tool, we can help your remote team avoid facing common management issues and boost the efficiency of your team at the same time.

With our virtual workspace, tracking absence, attendance, and time is a piece of cake. Advanced reporting won’t be a challenge anymore, and it’s also worth mentioning that administration is no longer a problem with our HR tool.

Thanks to Sloneek, you can store everything in one place safely. Moreover, the choice of functions you want to use is up to you, on our two plans prepared by experts.

Sloneek will give you a perfect overview of your employees and enhance your business administration whenever you need it. As one of the most efficient workflow solutions, your company will flourish with our digital workspace experience.