The pandemic has escalated the need for remote working. There were 44% of people even before the pandemic, who worked from home for at least 2 days of the week. But not everyone is made up for it and the people who are having the hardest time to work from home is the managers and leaders of the teams. They have a lot of responsibilities including but not limited to surveillance, direction, goal orientation, motivation and encouragement, recruitment and hiring, providing feedback and suggestions, and offering constructive criticism. While all of these can already be difficult when the members are together, it becomes even more so due to the implications of remote working.
So, here are the strategies that the managers and leaders could use in order to ensure that there is steady improvement in work.
Surveying and tracking work of the employees is necessary but doing too much of anything is hazardous and so is this. If you keep calling the employees for updates on their work and track their individual progress very minutely, they might feel that you don’t trust them to do the work correctly and on time. Apart from that, it’s a huge waste of your time, especially if you have a big team.
INSTEAD, you should track their daily or weekly records but keep a constant check on the progress of the employees as a team. As a leader, you not only need to check if individual members are doing their work but also have to keep an eye on the success of these members as a whole. By keeping weekly checks, you need to ensure that the members of the team are equally contributing to the collective work done. If something seems fishy, you can always check into that.
When the members of the teamwork hard, they expect something in return (apart from the salary). They expect that their work is recognized and rightfully acknowledged. The members of the team are going to feel demotivated because they would feel like their contributions to the company aren’t valued, affecting their performance later. Everyone needs to know that the work they have done is of importance.
TO ENSURE THAT, have a meritocratic system where hard and exceptional work is rewarded. The employees would understand that they are valuable to the company and this would motivate them to strive harder. Additionally, it would also encourage other members of the team to work harder and perform better. Apart from that, a meritocratic system keeps a little healthy competition alive that will help in improving the performance of all the members.
One of the things that are extremely crucial for remote working to be possible is technology. Communication would be impossible without technology. And you would already be knowing how paramount communication is. In today’s world, quality and speed are both essential because time is extremely fragile and precious. To ensure that your company stays ahead in the competition, you need to have the means for the same.
FOR THAT, you should ensure that everyone has the tools and equipment required for working from home, along with a really good wi-fi connection, because everyone knows how frustrating and off-putting it can be if the internet is not working or working very slowly. But apart from that, you need to LEVERAGE technology. You have to use it not just as a necessity and have to make it a tool. Using platforms and systems that allow you to enhance your work in an ideal way.
It’s no secret that if the team’s members are not good together, the team is going to fail. Sport is a great example of that but the failure of teams despite amazing members is all around us. They fail because there isn’t team bonding that is required for the team to work. To ensure that one of these isn’t your team, there are several things that you can do.
FIRSTLY, you could have regular active meetings where all the members of the team are present. An unofficial chat-box would help in the employees opening up and forming deeper bonds. Additionally, you could have virtual tea breaks or virtual water coolers between the meetings that would allow for communications about non-work-related things. Moreover, one of the best solutions, when communication seems weak, is virtual team building activities.
Also Read: Most Effective Secret Guide To Master Remote Communication
For projects to be successful, one of the most important things is great collaboration sessions. Sharing of ideas, opinions, constructive criticism, and improvisation of ideas is necessary to have a promising plan of action. Without successful collaboration, the project is a lost cause as the team will lack direction, conviction, and focus.
TO AVOID THAT from happening, you could take multiple steps. The goals of the project need to be clearly mentioned in detail (preferably through video conferences as they tend to clarify the tone of the message and the message itself) and the vision of the team members need to be aligned with that of the company. There need to be priorities set in line in order to have a clearer plan of action. Hold several meetings during the collaborative process in order to ensure that the members have enough time to come up with and develop great ideas.
There are a very limited number of things that will help you improve your team in all the ways that it needs to be enhanced. Creativity, communication, collaboration, alignment, out of the box thinking, critical and analytical thinking, leadership, problem-solving, time management, empathy, decision making, teamwork, work-life balance, visualization, prioritization, responsibility, and ownership are critical for any team to be successful.
VIRTUAL TEAM BUILDING ACTIVITIES is the one-stop solution to any kind of problem you are facing with your team. The several activities aiming for different goals will help you not only get the team closer but it will also improve its performance and have a huge positive impact on team productivity. These activities will help the members of your team get a better footing at work and help them form strong foundations of all the necessary skills. They will also help reduce the mental health effects that have been caused by the pandemic.
These are the strategies we have compiled for successful leadership and management. These strategies will ease the work a bit by helping you with better team management. It is a difficult time out there but if you follow these strategies, it’s inevitable that there will be some positive impact on the teamwork
