The Future is Now: Managing a Remote Workforce

Enabling employees to work remotely is no longer a perk, it is a necessity driven by the pandemic. Companies that in the past had promoted shared workspace and open cubes quickly had to adjust and, within a short time frame, enable their entire employee base to work from home. While the technology side of moving a workforce to remote has been the initial focus, that will soon turn to a new question for managers, just how do I lead employees that I rarely see?

Being an individual contributor who worked remotely for many years before managing a remote team, I have a deep understanding of the challenges that face our employees and I have been able to use that experience to help build and manage successful remote teams.

The first, and most important, step to managing a remote team is no different from managing a team that sits in an office, hire the right people. With hiring for remote positions, there are unique challenges that you will face in the hiring process. In just a few short meetings you will need to determine whether a candidate can self-manage and accomplish their duties with minimal oversight. I spend a significant amount of the interview time with candidates asking questions about their experience working remotely and how they would manage their time. I look to identify how they would work from home, do they have dedicated space to avoid distractions, how will they handle not having the social aspect of a work environment. If they have never worked remotely before it is critically important during the hiring process to be direct with your candidates and outline the challenges they may face moving to this type of work arrangement.

Now that you have the remote team built the hard part begins, how to do you lead them?  There is one key concept to leading a remote team, and that is trust. You need to trust that you hired the right people and you need to trust that your people will do their job. Trust can be built and shown in a variety of ways, but it starts with setting clear expectations of what you and the company expect from them and how it will be measured. If you are someone who believes that leading a team means tracking their every minute, then managing a remote team is not for you. What I have found is that people who work from home will get self-conscious about being away from their desks and end up working longer hours. You need to instill the confidence in your team that it is not only ok to step away from their computers but expected. Ask your team to think about the amount of time they spent away from their desk when they worked in an office talking to coworkers or going out to lunch. It is important they still get this type of socialization and have the comfort that their manager supports being away from the home office. Encourage your team to avoid the notification addiction where every bing and beep has people reaching for their phones. When they need a break it's ok to shut off work email notifications and badges so they don't get tempted to check emails as that unread count goes higher and higher. It all comes down to trusting your employees to manage their own workday.

Another component to managing a remote team is to give consistent goals across the team but allow inconsistency in how they meet those goals. There is a common saying about this type of management which is to manage production not time.  I have members of my team that might start working at 7 am and some that work at 7 pm. I have members of the team that might take an hour in the day to hit the home gym, but I know they are working later into the evening after the kids go to bed. The key is to set the goal and manage to the result, not the process of how they got there. 

Lastly, one of the challenges to leading a remote team is to ensure they don’t feel remote from the company. We try to get our teams together at least twice a year in-person to build relationships. I encourage the use of video during meetings whenever possible to keep that personal connection but also be cognizant that some people aren't comfortable utilizing video so don't push too hard. Look to your more senior employees to provide mentorship and guidance in making sure they work as a team and not a group of individuals working on their own. There are many tools available to help people feel connected to their team, their manager, and to the company as a whole to ensure that they can correlate the work they are doing with the mission of the company. 

The future of having an all-remote workforce came a lot sooner than any of us was planning so expect struggles and have empathy for your team as they grow into their new normal. Knowing how to effectively manage a remote team will be an essential skill in the business environment that we are all entering. By hiring the right people, building a trusting environment, and keeping everyone connected to the goals of the company, you will have the framework for a successful remote team.