With your employees stuck at their homes in this pandemic, the possibility of setting up a meeting in the boardroom with your team to discuss an important update or having a one-to-one session with the team lead is no longer possible. Different work environments paired up with uncertain times can make managing a remote team even more difficult.
For that reason, Brucira brings to you a checklist for remote management in times of crisis that will help you have a motivated and dedicated team.
1. Establish some ground rules for remote work
Just like regular work, remote work should have a set of guidelines and rules. Be it not calling up after work hours or using Slack for team communication, everything from how professionals should behave to standardizing the tools and systems to be used in daily routines should be decided. This ensures that the transition to remote work becomes smooth and your employees know exactly what they need to do and avoid.
2. Encourage team communication
In times of crisis, team communication becomes even more important. In remote work, it can easily feel as if you’re working in silos instead of as a team. To keep that team spirit alive, make use of technology and conduct team meetings on weekends where everyone can discuss suggestions and the progress of the entire week as well as the plan for the upcoming week. To avoid unnecessary meetings, always have an agenda in place so that everyone can come prepared and time is not wasted.
To have that element of socializing and bonding, you can also conduct virtual happy hours where the entire team can hang out, chat and laugh. This ensures that your employees don’t feel isolated and cut off from everyonewhich is a major concern when it comes to remote work.
3. Have clear expectations
Is your employee expected to work the regular hours? Is your team supposed to meet the earlier decided deadline? What things are on priority, now that your team is facing a crisis? Will progress meetings take place regularly or once in a week? These are some of the questions that need to be answered. Everyone on the team must know what they need to work on and by when they should be finishing a certain task. This helps them plan their work schedules and time off work accordingly. It also lessens the avenue for misunderstandings and confusions that generally arise when the entire team is working in different locations and probably in different time zones as well if you have an international team.
4. Incorporate regular progress monitoring
When it comes to working in a team, most of the tasks have dependencies. For example, once the website has been developed, the designers will start working on the UI and UX part of it. Setting up regular progress meetings at the end of the day helps everyone on the team know what is being worked upon and if there are any obstacles that need to be tackled.
5. Use the right tools to stay in touch
Technology has made it possible to work smoothly even in times like these. Here are some tools your remote team can use for different purposes:
- For collaboration: Slack is one of the popular mediums for communicating with your team while stuck on WFH and otherwise. Other than that, tools like ProofHub, Chanty can also be explored.
- For file sharing & cloud storage: Google drive is one of the most trusted tools that helps your team members find the files they need without having to call someone and ask them to send the file at 12 in the night. Skitch by Evernote and Xtensio are the other options.
- Project management: Asana, SmartTask, Trello can be used to handle all your project management needs while working remotely.
- Task management: Our free-to-use task management tool Brutask can help your team prioritize their tasks and timebox them.
6. Offer support and motivation
Offering avenues for communication, sharing work-related updates and involving your team in day-to-day decisions are brilliant ways to keep your team engaged in a crisis. But permitting downtime, flexible work hours for those who need it and offering support in terms of mental health professionals to those who are suffering can go a long way in building a workspace that is not only productive but feels welcoming and supporting as well.
Follow us for more insight on workplaces, remote work and productivity: https://blog.brucira.com/
Check out Brutask, a simple task management app that can be used by your remote team to keep track of daily to-do lists and avail valuable features like timeboxing, private tasks and task prioritization: https://brutask.com/
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