Even though remote working existed before the COVID-19 pandemic, it made work-from-home arrangements the new normal over the past two years. In the beginning, many companies had to adjust the work setting overnight to guarantee their employees were safe from virus transmission and their business would stay afloat.
Now that everyone is more used to remote working, the economy is gradually bouncing back with the easing of the COVID-19 restriction. The government has allowed office premises to have up to 50% of employees return to working in the office, but their schedules are not fixed, in one working setting alone.
For example, employees from team A will be in the office from Monday to Wednesday, while employees from Team B will be in the office on Thursday and Friday. The working arrangement schedule for each team may interchange with one another randomly every month and will highly depend on the agreement of the company’s administration.
The end goal here is to guarantee that half of the office’s capacity is used, which means not all employees are working in the office since the rest are at home. That is the flexible working schedule that 77% of Singaporean employees expect to have after the pandemic.
The problem, however, is that remote working does not fit well with all industries. It only works for those industries that offer telecommuting, such as:
- Administrative
- Customise service
- Information technology
- Education
- Healthcare
- Sales and marketing
If you have plans to continue the remote setting for your other remote team management besides the digital marketing department, here are the best practises that can help you successfully manage them
5 Best Practices For Remote Team Management
1. Streamline Communication
The biggest drawback of work-from-home arrangements is a lack of communication. Not only can it cause delays, but it can also cause misunderstandings between you and your team.
To avoid such situations, you should streamline your communication by investing in video and audio conferencing tools like Zoom, Google Hangout, Skype for Business, or Slack, which will help your team interact, connect, and communicate with one another.
Here are some tips on how to streamline your communication.
- Create a group channel by department
- Send regular updates to each group channel
- Encourage to active update their status in the video audio conferencing tool
- Set and invite meetings via Google Calendar
- Share video-call invite link in a group channel
- Send a message before the meeting begins
2. Set Up A Workflow
Everything becomes a hundred times more crucial when it comes to work-from-home arrangements since you cannot monitor employees in person and see if they are working on their assigned tasks. To guarantee everyone in your remote team management is on the same page, you should set up a workflow.
A workflow is a task guideline that allows anyone to see who are the people assigned to each step of a task. Without this, you might miss completing the required tasks in a given timeframe. For example, in a digital marketing team, if they want to publish a campaign for a holiday, a workflow will guide each member of the team through what they need to do.
Here is an example of a workflow for a campaign done by a digital marketing team.
- Step 1: Digital marketing manager – will provide the topic for an SEO campaign
- Step 2: SEO specialist – will provide keywords to use
- Step 3: Writer – will make the written content
- Step 4: Layout designer – will make necessary images
- Step 5: Digital marketing manager – will check the written content, including the images
- Step 6: Blog uploader – will publish the content for an SEO campaign after getting approval from the digital marketing manager
To guarantee your employees are following the given workflow, you can use the following tools for automation:
In addition to informing them via video and audio conferencing tools, you could also use a cloud-based file sharing platform such as Google Drive. With this, not only can you sync all of your files, but you can also track and keep everyone in your digital marketing team organised.
3. Track Employees’ Tasks By Department
One of the complex tasks of managing remote teams is to track your employees’ tasks across different departments.
According to Murphy’s Law, everything that can go wrong will go wrong, which is why you need to monitor your employees from various departments thoroughly. Instead of chatting with them one by one, reaching out to their department leader will make the monitoring process a lot easier and less time-consuming.
Since each department leader will look over the performance of everyone in their department, they can quickly notice which one is done or not with the tasks assigned to them in the set-up workflow. You only need to make sure you are reaching out to the correct department leader and let them know the name of the employees that you would like to know what tasks have been done and are still pending.
4. Invest In Cybersecurity
With the work-from-home arrangement, employees should be more responsible for keeping company data confidential.
Apart from using a strong and complex password for company emails, encourage your employees to keep their cybersecurity softwares updated at all times. Doing so will prevent their computers from becoming vulnerable to hackers, and they can keep company data protected.
To further secure the safety of your company and the remote team management, you have to make sure they also follow the cybersecurity tips below.
- Companies should invest in anti-virus software for their staff
- Avoid oversharing screen
- Keep an eye on phishing scams sent via email
- Limit sharing personal information on social media
5. Celebrate Success!
There is no I in TEAM, and celebrating success to everyone, not just with the remote team management, can help create a motivating work environment and increase camaraderie.
When your company achieves a milestone, thanks to your hardworking staff and never-ending support from your clients, you should also celebrate your success with them.
For example, if one of your employees recently got promoted, send an email to everyone so they can congratulate their teammate for their promotion.
Another way of celebrating success is to post milestone achievements on social media. Your employees will not only feel proud about the company they are working for, but you can also attract more potential clients with your recent accomplishment.
Shown below is an example of sharing a milestone achievement on social media.
Conclusion
Success does not happen overnight. That is why you should not let yourself down if you are not successfully implementing all of these best practices for the first time with your remote team management.
Remember, every goal requires a lot of time, effort, and patience before you can reach it. You and your remote team management should do things step by step so your remote setting will go smoothly.
For more tips about remote team management for digital marketing, reach out to our award-winning digital marketing agency. Contact OOm 6391-0930 at or leave a message on our website.
