Ways to manage remote employees

In today’s global economy there are skilled people around the world that can help you build your company.  With the competitiveness in hiring talented people in tech epic-centres, it becomes all the more enticing to hire people in other cities, states and countries to join your team. Adding these remote employees to your team present unique challenges to management that you may be overlooking. Improving them will improve morale, productivity, and team cohesion.

Managing people remotely can feel like a totally different challenge than managing people you work side by side with. Things that work in an office don’t always translate exactly to remote employees.Often times, the biggest challenges are that things you naturally do in an office don’t come naturally with your remote staff. Use these tips to be more conscious of the unique approaches you should take to managing remote employees.

When managing remote employees, it’s easy to just talk about what needs to get done and jump off your call, end your chat, and get back to executing.  And in some cases, that’s exactly what you should do; if you’re on a tight deadline, fighting a fire, or just having a quick stand-up meeting that makes sense.  However, if that’s all you do, you’re really missing out on a critical part of management.

You must build rapport with every member of your team.Rapport is what will help you work through problems each team member has, trust they can come to you with things important to them, and give you the benefit of the doubt when you make a mistake or an unpopular decision.Rapport does not come from doing and talking about work. Rapport comes from getting to know them as a complete person.

Research shows more than half of human communication is non verbal. When you don’t get to see someone in the office every day, having any type of visual clue to what someone is thinking is essential. Whether you’re gauging their reaction to a change in plans, or just trying to judge their overall mood that day, video tells you way more than an audio-only call or chat will ever reveal.With so many free and inexpensive solutions for video chat (like Skype, Google hangouts, and Zoom), there’s no reason not to switch to video whenever you can.

One of the fastest ways to build resentment on your team is regularly cancelling one on ones. They’ll probably agree if you ask, but that’s more about a power dynamic between manager and report than they really didn’t want to talk. There is always more to talk about even with your reports you sit next to. Remote employees miss out on a lot of things going on in your office. They also miss out on the kinds of information that would naturally spread across an office related to other parts of the company and brief announcements.

Sachin Uppal is the chief marketing officer at Play Games 24*7 PVT LTD which is the largest producer of online and mobile games in India. Sachin Uppal also heads the marketing initiatives of Rummy Circle and Ultimate games which are a part of Play Games 24*7.