How To Set Up Your Own Remote Team

Remote working is all the rage since the pandemic, and it’s quite easy to see why. After all, there are a lot of upsides and not a great many downsides, so it’s something that most of us are quite keen on making good use of. If you are trying to make use of remote working in your business, and you want to set up a remote working team. To that end, there are quite a few considerations you will probably want to know and think about.

In this post, I am going to show you some of the best ways to ensure that you are setting up your team effectively and with a view to great productivity. If you can do the following, you’ll find that this is hugely effective for your business and for your employees too.

When Setting Up A Remote Team Be Upfront From The Start

You have to make sure that everyone involved knows what they can expect from remote working, and indeed that they know they will be remote working, from the very start of the process of putting the team together. Otherwise, they will run into the possibility of ending up disappointed, which can happen all too easily. So you should make sure you mention this and discuss it in detail when you bring someone new on board.

Part of that is making sure that they are encouraged to ask any questions they might have. You should give them plenty of opportunity to do this. The better informed your team is, the better it is for everyone, so this is definitely something you should be aware of here.

All in all, being upfront is going to mean that everyone is happier with the arrangement and there are fewer nasty surprises.

Understand The Main Challenges That Comes With Having A Remote Team

There are always going to be challenges in any kind of working setup, and that’s certainly true for the remote working model. However, anticipating those challenges and understanding them well will give you the ability to work through them, thus enabling you to integrate them much more readily into your team and your process. So it might be worth us now looking through what some of the main challenges to remote working are.

For employers, one issue is communication. You obviously need to be able to communicate well with the people in your team, and that’s something that you are going to need to solve at the start – as well as throughout. You’ll have to make use of whatever tools you can find to help with this, and put in place some guidelines so that staff know they need to communicate well too.

One issue in all this is that you and your team miss out on body language cues, which actually turn out to be incredibly important in communicating, even in professional work meetings. You’ll just have to accept that this is a sacrifice you are making in order to make use of remote working, and hopefully it will mean that people are more specific in what they think when they are talking.

Have Purpose & Clarity

This is related to communication, but it’s also its own thing. Your people need to have a strong sense of purpose, and a lot of clarity around what they do and why, if they are going to effectively work as a remote team. So you’ll have to find ways to encourage this as best as you can, and it’s possible that this attempt will throw up all sorts of challenges that you’ll then have to fix as well as possible.

However, it’s relatively easy to keep on top of this, especially if you are an adept digital communicator. With time you’ll find that you will be able to explain to people what their purpose is so that they can be much clearer on the whole.

Connection

Most people want to feel connected to the people they work with. A strong connection is something that is actually possible remotely, but there’s no doubt it’s easier in person. So even if you are a remote-only team, you might want to think about hosting the occasional meetup in person, perhaps a social event outside of work hours, where everyone can meet each other and connect in person as human beings. It’s amazing what this can do for your teams and the individuals within them, so you should certainly try to make sure you are doing this as well as you can.

If there is a chance for connection, it’s going to mean that remote team issues are worked through so much more effectively and quickly, so it’s definitely something you’ll want to focus on here as best as you can.

Safety Concerns For Your Remote Team

Just as there are safety issues when you work in the same place, there are also safety issues for remote teams – and their being remote doesn’t mean that you can wash your hands of your employees being safe. Much of the old wisdom applies –  creating risk assessments that people can readily understand and follow, employing a hands-on CPR training program, and so on. Anything you can do to keep your people safe during remote working, you should make it a priority.

If you’re able to keep people safe, it’s best for them and you. And it shows just how much you care about them – which is important if you are trying to prove you are a good employer.

Hiring The Right People For Your Remote Team

One thing about having a remote team is that you’ll need to make sure you are hiring the right people. Some people are much more likely to enjoy this mode of working and to make good use of it, so you should perhaps be a little selective in how you approach your recruitment and in who you ultimately decide to hire. That is one of the best ways to ensure you build a great remote team.

You should also do all you can to make the onboarding process as smooth as possible, so that the subsequent experience everyone has is as positive as possible. This all helps with having a cohesive remote team.

Having Fewer Meetings

One early mistake businesses often make is thinking that they need to counteract the lack of a shared working environment by having more meetings. However, most people find that this actually ends up getting in the way, and you are probably better off keeping your meetings to a minimum. Try to keep them only for when there is a real pressing need. You don’t need to have daily meetings for no good reason – doing so will only likely alienate a good proportion of your team.

Supporting Your People

Remember that you still need to support people, and that doing so is going to be a really useful way to keep your remote team working as a unit. For that, you’ll have to set up the necessary technological tools and ensure there is a strong support structure in place. If there is, it makes it considerably simpler and easier to support those people, and your team is going to be much more effective all in all.

Those are just some of the things to be aware of if you want to set up and support a remote working team. As long as you do those and you keep up with it, your remote team should be effective and incisive, and you’ll find that you are much more likely to get a lot out of them.