Managing employees remotely can be a challenging task. One has to ensure that the teams are happy as well as productive. Research shows that remote teams are more efficient than in-house ones and prove be a highly cost effective alternative. Remote teams bring with them expertise and result orientation without the business hassle of full time employment and fixed employee costs and employment benefits.
Here are the right strategies for keeping remote teams highly productive:
Communicating Regularly
The biggest hurdle, remote teams face is lack of communication with client teams. This creates bottlenecks in the development process. It must be ensured that all of the queries faced by any remote worker are resolved in a timely manner. This will foster quality development effort in a timely manner. A single point of contact must be deployed so that such communication is a constant and the development process goes on in a smooth way.
Time Tracking
One of the key ways in which the productivity levels of remote teams can be managed effectively is to track the time that is being spent by them on a daily basis. This helps in keeping a tab on their current level of productivity and ensuring that they are maintaining the defined standards. A process should be defined, for ensuring that the daily time-sheet reports along with completed tasks are shared with the client.
Also Read: Upwork Vs Guru Vs Freelancer Vs Outsourcing Companies
Create A Culture Of Collaboration
A collaborative work culture ensures that the team members are working with each other in a team, to use each other’s strengths for improving the overall work productivity. Use of the right set of collaborative tools like Skype and Google drive are helpful in in improving remote workforce productivity. One can inculcate a culture of collaboration and mutual help to ensure better productivity on the project.
Team Building
Building a team that gets you the desired business results, entails that they should be treated as in-house teams of the company. They should be told about the work culture, best practices and processes of the company they are working for, so that they can take ownership of the project. This would give them a sense of motivation to perform better. Sharing the vision, mission and goals of the company with remote teams is also helpful. Getting the team involved in important events of the company is also important.
Rewards and Recognitions
Your virtual team too, is looking for the right sort of rewards and recognition, to perform better. Sending out appreciation mails and cash rewards for deserving virtual employees can be really helpful in improving their productivity.
Setting Expectations
Defining expectations, in terms of the desired level of productivity is also equally important. This is helpful in setting benchmarks of performance. Being straightforward with your expectations and pre defining KPI’s helps in ensuring that the teams are always on track with the project.
This ensure efficiency in tasks along with better client relationships.
Also Read: How To Choose The Right Engagement Model While Outsourcing
Hire The Best Fit Teams
Choosing the best fit teams for your project is very important for ensuring that they are productive enough. Understand the skill sets that you are looking for. Hire your remote employees the are most skilled in the qualities you are looking for. A highly specialised team will surely bring better results for the business.
Here are some key benefits of hiring virtual Agile software teams from ValueCoders.
- Best fit teams for a complete range of technologies
- Flexible hiring models
- Monthly contracts and quick on-boarding
