Remote Team Management: A Guide for Your Success

Managing teams remotely or virtually is a huge challenge many organizations are facing. Consider these statistics:

• 75% of virtual teams worldwide agree that their productivity at work has increased with remote collaboration.
• 62% of employees globally agree that they might resign from organizations which do not offer remote work.
• 64% of organizations agree on switching to remote working permanently because of COVID-19.
• 80% of global corporations have shifted to remote or hybrid team collaboration in COVID-19 early part.

Secure communication, effective collaboration, and a mindset shift to allow more independent work are all aspects of the challenge facing companies moving to a virtual team environment.

Let’s have a look at reasons to switch to remote teams.

What is Remote/Virtual Management?

Remote or virtual management refers to managing projects, teams and organizational activities virtually and remotely. It aims to create and foster collaboration, evolution and innovation in the future of work. 

Based on research by IWG, there are more than 

• 2/3rd of professionals all around the world telecommute once a week. 
• There are 53% of them who work remotely at least for half of the week. 
• Another Gallup study reports that employees who telecommute in the same capacity are increasing day by day. 
• There are only just 5% of the American employees who work entirely from home. 
• A Buffer survey carried out in 2019 reports that 40% of the remote employees consider flexibility as the most important benefit of working remotely as it improves team cohesion and helps in forming remote teams which are productive and useful.

Researchers from Stanford discovered virtual team members outperformed traditional teams by 13% over 2 years. Here are the reasons:

• Working from home boosts concentration.
• Flexible schedules allow work when it suits individuals.
• Less commute time means more available working hours.

Virtual Management Statistics

Virtual teams are encouraged by larger companies as they are able to save substantially. Companies in the U.S report that they save 35% of their money with remote working. 

A recent study found that 71 percent of remote workers have reported being happy in their work compared to only 55 percent in traditional settings. 

It also found that over half of the virtual team members will look for other job options or ask for a pay increase if they are not allowed to work remotely.

 The table below shows some benefits of working remotely:

To promote a successful work environment, building a virtual team is important as virtual leaders need to take significant steps to ensure trust among teams and provide them with the needed resources to facilitate collaboration and communication among the team members. 

• A McKinsey 2021 survey report found that 2-5 times growth has been reported in e-commerce which is pushing for more digitization through remote work.
• There are 20 to 25% of the jobs in many advanced economies which can be performed remotely in three plus days per week. 
• There are 70% of the computer based jobs which can be performed easily and remotely without losing effectiveness.

This shows that with more digitization, remote working can lead to better management of teams.

Why Shift to a Remote/Virtual Team?

Let’s talk about the bottom line. Are remote teams more cost-effective and more profitable? 

We think they are, and here’s why:

Save Time in Managing Office Space

With remote teams, managers have the margin to save a lot of time (equals an average of 49.6 minutes per day) which is otherwise wasted in managing several things including office space, bills and other facilities required for office premises. Overall, virtual teams allow better management of money and energy for the managers.

Hire Employees Across the Globe

As remote teams are not required to be present physically, managers and HR employers have the option to hire service team members from all across the globe. This practice can help in creating excellent teams of talented and strong members.

Ease of Work Life Balance

Remote employees have the capacity to balance their work and personal lives better. Flexible scheduling, lower commutes, and more time with their families are all reasons why remote work helps people with work life balance.

Findings show 38% of remote workers saw lack of commuting as the major benefit as 43% believe that they are able to spend time with family, resting (36%), exercising (34%) and working (35%). 

Better Employee Engagement and Productivity Level

Employee engagement and productivity go up in a remote team environment. 52% of employees believe to be more productive and 74% believe that their company lives by its values. There are several reasons for this:

• Employees feel they connect more intentionally with their colleagues.
• Scheduling fewer meetings leads to increased productivity.
• Each person can choose their response level to match their personality, job requirements, and level of activity.

How Can Managers Connect with Remote Teams?

64% of companies believe that a remote team setup will remain a permanent component of their business operations. 

Currently 25% of the global workforce are relying on 100 percent virtual solutions for team building.

For remote teams management, make use of the best communication technologies available. For instance, video, email, messaging and chat etc. are some of the technologies that could better help in managing remote teams. 

Remote team leaders need to make sure that they treat time zones fairly in order to have effective communication. Don’t schedule a call at 8am in New York if your home office is in California. No one wants a Zoom call at 3 in the morning.

Some helpful tools for communication with virtual teams include:

• Messagenius
• Microsoft Teams
• Zoom
• Slack

Remote team effectiveness is enhanced by video calls – up to a point. There is value in seeing people’s faces. However, requiring video calls too often can begin to feel intrusive to people working in their own homes.

Make use of the company’s online communication portals in order to create a “virtual water cooler.” This gives team members a place to chat with their colleagues. Information conversations should be promoted, which can also enhance knowledge sharing among employees.

How to Maximize Remote or Virtual Team Performance

A Gallup survey shows that employees feel isolated at home, and it can decrease employee productivity by 21 percent.

To make teams work remotely, managers should use trust, communication, collaboration and effective tools to enhance team building.

Virtual teams management can be a tedious job if the leaders do not have the right knowledge about managing these teams well. Here are some tips to maximize remote team performance.

Assist Your Team with Management Software

Equip your team with project management software which they can use to move through the projects in an easy, clear and organized way. Team leaders should train the team members about using built-in tools for successful management of their tasks and schedules.

Assist Your Team with Task Management

Virtual teams need to learn about managing individual tasks. Tools which automate tasks are encouraged and help the team to save time. Leaders should look for features that could allow them to schedule recurring tasks and duplicate the existing ones. Making use of custom task templates could help in preserving critical steps and details, so the team members do not have to waste time doing recurring jobs.

Communicate Everything to Avoid Team Conflict

Members of a remote team can be subjected to team conflict. Virtual collaboration via regular communication among action teams is most important because it helps them feel connected and facilitate strong connection. Effective virtual teams make use of in-task communication, group channels, private messages and other communication methods in order to effectively communicate with each other.

Messagenius: A Secure Tool for Collaborating with Remote and Virtual Team Members

Messagenius is designed for enterprise grade organizations. What does that mean? It means that Messagenius scales with your organization. 

• If you’re managing 120 staff members across three or four locations, Messagenius will work for you. 
• If you’re the IT or Data administrator for a large enterprise with several thousand employees, Messagenius will work for you.
• If you’re a multi-site or multinational company with thousands of employees, Messagenius will work for you.

Messagenius works for larger organizations by providing management tools to enable proper user access control, group chat admin, remote wipe of data, black box chats that cannot be erased, broadcast messaging to the entire organization or specific groups, and more.

Learn more on how Messagenius allows corporations to manage remote teams with no compromise on productivity.