Plenty of teams went remote in reaction to the pandemic, as well as numerous liked it enough to proceed functioning from another location ever since. There are still lots of obstacles to take on while your group adapts to the remote job. If you have actually had a few hiccups, you’re not the only one. Thankfully, you can get over all of those difficulties and also fully reap the benefits of remote work.
In this blog post, we’ll review the 5 most usual obstacles surrounding remote work. After that, we’ll inform you just how to tackle them.
1. Interaction
Hubstaff is a workforce management system that gives proof of job, time tracking, as well as pay-roll monitoring to both in-office and remote teams. According to its 2021 Job Administration Record, a lack of communication is the biggest challenge to handling remote work.
Remote groups have less opportunities to connect. When they do interact, they generally utilize multiple tools, such as Zoom, Skype, and also Slack.
Because of their reliance on multiple communication tools, their communication is typically dispersed as well as chaotic. This can lead to misconceptions and lost time because of lacking or siloed details.
Communication troubles can be much more obvious for groups that function adaptable schedules. Supervisors frequently struggle to keep everybody on the same web page when staff member begin and also finish their changes at various times.
How to resolve it:
Beginning by setting assumptions for group communication. Let staff member understand what sort of behavior is expected when communicating with the rest of the team, consisting of:
- Just how promptly they need to react to messages
- Whether they must be offered for interaction during particular times of the day
- Exactly how to deal with interaction with employee that work in various time zones
Furthermore, urge staff member to overcommunicate. This will assist to prevent misconceptions and also uncertainty, along with protect against staff member from needing to remodel job.
Hubstaff maintains their completely remote, worldwide group in continuous interaction with a set of straightforward policies called an Interaction Statement of belief. It’s a written paper that establishes clear policies around exactly how as well as when to discuss points with teammates.
The Communication Statement of belief functions because it’s understandable. Every person on the group can use it as a quick referral to review the policies, and also supervisors utilize it to advise their straight reports what is expected of them.
When you carry out new rules with your group, management should be prepared to reinforce those policies often. People find out by repeating, besides.
2. Scheduling
Teams that rely greatly on shift work may have problem with the change to a remote job design. Supervisors may not observe that somebody isn’t logged in on time till they see the issues caused by that missing out on employee, like a huge telephone call wait time or a manufacturing bottleneck.
Even if your group is 100% dependable, organizing concerns like uneven insurance coverage can be more challenging to find when every person functions from house.
A great deal of remote teams are spread out throughout several time zones. In those sorts of teams, there could be team members that end their changes before other individuals on the group also start theirs. This can make complex the process of organizing meetings and make it harder for the team to discover a typical time to satisfy and team up.
Various other organizing issues may look like this:
- People are all of a sudden logging a lot more or a whole lot less hrs than you anticipate every week.
- You’re having difficulty monitoring when individuals are on the internet as well as when they’re away.
- You set routines, however, your employee does not follow them.
If any of this noise is familiar, right here’s what to do about it.
How to address it:
Begin by identifying just how much overlap you actually need for your group to function. Managers have a tendency to overemphasize real-time communication when an asynchronous strategy is typically more productive.
Adaptability is among the greatest strengths of remote job, but it takes some adjustment to your leadership design to get it right.
Default to asynchronous communication by utilizing devices such as Slack. Just convene if they’re absolutely required.
A lot of teams have too many meetings, anyhow. Prior to scheduling your next one, consider whether the concern you intend to review needs a conference. Is it something that could be settled with an email or Slack message? If it is, there’s actually no demand for you to arrange a meeting.
On the other hand, if you do decide that a conference is required, see to it just to welcome those people that require to be there. There’s no requirement for the whole team to go to a conference if the topic just concerns 3 or four people.
Various other scheduling issues come from an absence of presence. Use software program to alert you when your staff member start and finish changes. A fantastic software application tool can also tell you when team members are idle for longer than you anticipate during their job hrs, and also it can instantly develop timesheets and also procedure payroll based upon logged data.
3. Work administration
It’s very easy to see when somebody is bewildered or underutilized when you’re working in the exact same workplace as they are. When individuals function remotely, it can be harder to comprehend just how employee are doing and also if they’re able to manage their workload.
This can come to be a larger problem if your employee aren’t proactive about reviewing their work and also connecting the risk of missing target dates.
A balanced work indicates that everyone on the group is contributing, and also no one has way too much or inadequate job to do. As basic as it sounds, this type of balance isn’t automated. It takes consistent monitoring to ensure you’re distributing tasks relatively and also utilizing your sources sensibly.
Just like interaction breakdowns, a workload discrepancy can dramatically affect your group’s efficiency.
Workload concerns can also create additional stress and anxiety in your team. When somebody seems like they’re bring a lot even more weight than their teammates, they may experience fatigue or feel like they’re being capitalized on.
Repairing this issue has two parts: spotting the concern, then balancing the work.
How to address it:
Time tracking and also project administration tools like Hubstaff and Hubstaff Tasks can help you stay on top of your remote team’s workload much more easily. Keep an eye on the number of tasks assigned to each person, the work that remains in the pipe, and the amount of time it considers each team member to finish a job.
These tools will certainly assist you recognize what team members are doing throughout work hours and how much time they require to get through their order of business. It’s likewise much easier to rebalance work when you make use of modern technology to help.
In a great task administration tool, you can change the employee appointed to a job, and it’s simple for them to catch up since the history is done in one place. Utilize your time tracking information to aid you plan ahead and also ensure that everyone has a lot of room to handle brand-new work.
In addition, don’t shy away from collaborating with consultants. There will certainly be times when your remote team will not be able to manage all the work that requires to be done themselves, whether that’s as a result of poor planning or unforeseen scenarios.
In these circumstances, make use of Fiverr to find professionals to whom you can contract out jobs as well as tasks.
Occasionally, you’ll just have more work than you have time to complete. That’s why setting priorities is so vital. Clearly communicate the priority of each task and project so that your remote team members can tackle the most important things first.
4. Building trust
Developing trust within your company takes time, focus, and a lot of work, even if you work in the same office as your teammates.
With fewer opportunities for social interactions between team members, it can be harder to build trust in a remote team.
However, it’s crucial to build trust with your distributed team. Without it, you’ll struggle to build culture and keep your people engaged.
People that work in high-trust teams experience less stress and have more energy at work. They’re also more productive and take fewer sick days.
How to address it:
Organize virtual team-building activities where team members can relax, have fun, and interact with each other in a casual setting. Some examples include virtual happy hour, movie nights, and trivia quizzes.
Hubstaff has seen great success with organizing virtual team retreats. These are online events that last anywhere from one to three days, during which team members participate in a number of fun activities together.
At the company’s last virtual retreat, team members taught each other how to cook tasty meals, competed in online multiplayer games, and even had a Murder Mystery party.
These social interactions are important to build real relationships. But they’re just the start.
Trust comes from reliability. You have to prove that you’re trustworthy, and that means that you do what you say you will, you follow through when people ask for help, and you act in your team’s best interest all the time.
If there’s already some damage to the trust in your team, start by creating a way for people to communicate with you anonymously. Hubstaff uses Officevibe for this.
Then, act on the feedback you receive quickly and decisively. Your team needs to see that you care about their wellbeing and success, and you may have to put extra effort into this while you repair previous damage.
5. Maintaining work-life balance
When people work from home, the line between work time and free time can become blurred. This can result in overworked team members and a lack of work-life balance.
While it might not seem like a big problem if your team puts in more hours, this habit increases the risk of burnout because it makes your team feel like they can never unplug and get away from work.
During the pandemic, one common complaint during high-stress remote transitions was that it felt more like living at work than working from home.
Those that check their email during off-hours, stop to get a couple of things done after dinner, or work late into the night, are more at risk of becoming workaholics. Work addiction is a serious problem and can cause both physical and mental health issues. It can also have a negative impact on team members’ productivity and job satisfaction.
If you notice that you get a lot of messages outside of normal business hours or you come in to find that some people spent the evening at their desk instead of enjoying their personal time, you should consider how to improve your company’s work-life balance.
How to address it:
Start by encouraging team members to take time off. A lot of vacation time ends up being unused, so companies could definitely be doing more to encourage employees to use up their vacation days.
One way to get your team to take time off is to set a deadline for time-off requests. This should force team members to book some time off as soon as possible. You can also consider limiting or forbidding vacation time rollover.
Another way to help team members have a more healthy work-life balance is to offer flexible work hours. This will allow your team to plan their day in a way that works better for them. It will also enable them to work during those times when they’re the most productive.
Most importantly, set the example yourself.
Don’t send emails during non-work hours. Instead, schedule them to send on Monday morning or whenever that person is scheduled to return to work.
Take time off and talk about the fun things you did with your vacation. Encourage people to take mental health days and be honest when you need one for yourself.
Remember, you can work hard and still have a fulfilling life outside of work. That’s where the balance comes in. Find your own balance and help your team find theirs.
Solve your remote team’s challenges
Remote work has its set of challenges, but there are ways these can be addressed. Hubstaff and Fiverr are two platforms you can use to solve a number of your remote team’s challenges
Take advantage of Hubstaff time tracking, productivity measurement, and payroll management features to manage your remote team more easily. Then, use Fiverr to hire remote experts that will help your team stay on top of their workload and meet deadlines consistently.
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