If you’re new to managing virtual employees or looking for ways to make your remote team function more seamlessly, finding strategies that support remote team managers can make a huge difference to your success.
FlexJobs and its sister site, Remote.co, hosted an insightful panel discussion of ways to support remote managers at our second annual TRaD Works Forum in Washington, DC. In exploring how remote managers can effectively lead telecommuting, remote, and distributed (TRaD) workers, panel members shared tips and strategies to help HR professionals and remote team managers who oversee virtual workers.
Titled “Supporting Managers to be Effective Team Leaders,” the panel was led by Jeanne Meister, author and founding partner of Future Workplace, and included three thought leaders with extensive experience working with remote teams:
- Amy Freshman, senior director, global workplace enablement at ADP
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Nicole McCabe, senior director for global diversity and inclusion at SAP
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John O’Duinn, work flexibility expert and author of “Distributed: Leading Global Teams”
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Here are 7 ideas to support TRaD and remote team managers:
1. Create a platform to evaluate eligibility for remote work.
It may be helpful to establish a vehicle that provides an objective way to measure whether working remotely is a good fit for team members, decided on a case-by-case basis. An impartial “measuring stick” may make decisions about who gets to work from home more fair and equitable.
For example, ADP is creating a “remote work eligibility tool” to help managers and team members assess whether working from home is a suitable option for the individual employee, Freshman said. The goal is not necessarily an “all or nothing” decision—in other words, easing the employee into a remote role for just one or two days a week, at least at the start. “This whole ‘yes’ or ‘no’ world we live in culturally is not the reality” when it comes to decisions about who’s suitable to work remotely,” Freshman said.
2. Provide support to aid the transition to remote work.
Even if it’s been determined that a remote role is a good fit for a team member, the shift may not be smooth from the outset. “It’s not an easy transition for a lot of people,” Meister said. “You have to be disciplined and understand you have to have blocks of time” in some cases, for work as well as personal tasks.
Understanding the team member’s personality profile can be a useful exercise for remote team managers, and for their employees. While an introvert may thrive at home without face-to-face interaction, an extrovert may crave the energy that can come from direct engagement with colleagues. Just because an employee falls into one category or another “doesn’t mean they don’t have the skills for your company culture and that they’re not contributing in a positive way,” said McCabe of SAP.
3. Set up virtual training and e-learning programs.
Educating remote team managers and their employees about what virtual work entails is a great approach and can boost a remote team’s efficiency, improve productivity, and foster camaraderie.
ADP offers an e-learning tool kit for managers and a corresponding kit for associates, Freshman said. “We want to make sure we’re setting the right expectations and giving the right learnings to associates on working in a virtual environment, and then obviously [doing the same with] the corresponding leader side” of the virtual manager-employee relationship. The educational process is ongoing for all remote team members.
4. Ensure that your technology and communication tools support remote workers.
To encourage successful outcomes and foster good relationships, remote team managers should work hard to provide employees with a toolkit of communication strategies that support their work goals. O’Duinn suggested that remote team managers should:
- Consider making all calls “head-and-shoulders” video calls;
- Make efficient use of email, especially if your team works across multiple time zones;
- Curate chat platforms to streamline communications and avoid working at cross purposes;
- Establish a “single source of truth” channel of communications that serves as the authoritative, most up-to-date “voice” on the status of projects and shared tasks.
5. Encourage health and wellness.
Employees do their best work, and feel better about themselves and their employers, when they’re healthy and fit. Even with greater control over their schedules, some remote workers face a pervasive problem: weight gain akin to the “freshman 15” that some people faced in college (a 15-pound weight gain in their freshman year).
As a remote worker, Meister said,“you need to take care of yourself and you need to take care of your body.” For example, she said, “make an appointment to take a walk and keep track of it.” Some employers have offered tracking devices to help at-home workers stay fit. Work to understand why wellness is important to your remote workers, and consider incentives like gym discounts and online company fitness forums to keep your remote team motivated to stay fit.
6. Understand that flexibility is not just about millennials.
A popular misconception is that millennials and working parents are the main beneficiaries and drivers of the remote work trend. But remote team managers should recognize that “everyone wants to have that flexibility, depending on what’s going on in their life,” said McCabe of SAP.
To be sure, millennials continue to have a big impact. “Millennials don’t feel like they have to put up with [a traditional work schedule]—everyone else has been indoctrinated,” O’Duinn said. Millennials “are asking the questions that a lot of us have been brainwashed into not asking.”
Freshman noted that remote workers across multiple generations are embracing the “concept of freedom—freedom to choose where, when, and how work gets done.” The reasons can vary from caring for children or aging parents, or simply the desire to take control over work-life needs that may change over time.
7. Establish trust both ways—with employees and managers alike.
Among the biggest pitfalls for remote team managers are micromanaging employees who work from home and failing to establish virtual team trust. “You don’t get trust unless you give trust,” McCabe noted.
At SAP, she said, company leaders are given a “trust score” to help them assess the degree to which their team members trust their leadership. Managers who receive relatively low trust scores are given holistic tools, coaching, and strategies to help them boost their “trustworthiness” as viewed by their remote employees.
To learn more about this year’s TRaD Works Forum, check out the agenda and list of speakers. And sign up to stay updated on future TRaD Works events!
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