How to Improve Productivity When Building a Remote Team

How to Improve Productivity When Building a Remote Team

With time, everything changes, and it’s the same with the modern workforce. As there are a plethora of benefits of building remote teams, it has created a hype in the industry. The industry has traced exponential growth in the number of companies providing remote jobs.

Moreover, experts also believe having a remote team can be more productive and cost-effective for new startups as well as mature organisations.

But is remote jobs worth the hype?

Is it beneficial for every kind of business?

Also, is the productivity level the same in remote jobs like traditional jobs?

Let’s check out answers for all such questions.

First of all, what is the benefit of working remotely?

Say No to “Commute”

According to a recent survey, the average one-way commuting time the US is around 26.1 minutes. The biggest perk of building remote teams is its ability to balance your schedule by eliminating the wastage of time while commuting to work.

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This extra time allows you to boost your productivity level, spend more time with family, or even upgrade your skills.

Better Work-Life Balance

Another significant benefit of having a remote job is it is a great way to maintain a work-life balance. Most of the remote jobs come with flexible schedules, means you can start and end your day as you choose, as long as you do work on time.

This melding of your professional life with your personal life can be instrumental in achieving a work-life balance.

Saving Bucks

According to a survey, people working from home half time can save between $2,000 to $6,500 in a year.

After all, you’d not need to spend on stuff like parking fees, outside lunches, childcare or professional outfits.

Flexible Timing

Time is an essential factor determines the quality of any work. But, sometimes working under a defined schedule can lead to lower quality of the output.

You need to work in a specific schedule in typical office culture whereas as a remote team most of the time, you’ll get the benefit of working as per your comfort. So, start building remote teams right now.

Increases Productivity

As per a report by FlexJobs, 66% of professionals think they would be more productive while working remotely than in a traditional way.

When you work from home or any other self-chosen place, you get less distracted because of various distracting things like office politics, unnecessary meetings, etc. You get to work at a place where you feel comfortable. and hence you produce more.

Now you know what are the benefits of having a remote job, do you also see if it’s fruitful for the employees and organisations as well?

As per a recent article by Forbes, a whopping 50% of Americans will soon be remote.

Yet, providing remote job isn’t popular because people are still unsure about the level of productivity remote jobs can offer. And this has become a matter of concern; how to improve the productivity level when building remote teams?

building remote team

Image: Unsplash

How to Improve the Productivity of a Remote Team?

Have specific goals

Be it anything; the first step is setting up the goals. Goals allow you as well as your team to have a clear vision and set milestones.

Provide both your in-house and remote teams with specific goals to achieve in a particular deadline.

Keeping this simple and easy step in front of your team will allow them to streamline their work process and hence enhance productivity.

Foster the relationship between you and team

For getting the best results, it’s crucial to have a good relationship between you and your teams (both in-house and remote). It is because their attitude is going to affect both workflow and productivity level.

Get a chat room on apps like HipChat or Slack. Encourage your team to keep communicating with each other, both formally and informally.

Keep them updated with what’s going on in your company and also engage them with new projects.

If you keep doing this, the remote team will also feel like being a part of your company like your in-house team.

This single tactic can skyrocket your remote team’s productivity. So, if you’re building remote teams, work on this thing.

Clarify each one’s goal in building remote teams

When you have set goals for your business, you need to clarify the role of each team member for boosting their productivity level.

Create a layout of works to specific team members need to do, be it the in-house member of the remote team member. Use some tools to assign the tasks along with the given time limit.

This simple step can ease up the work for the entire team as everyone will know what they’re supposed to do. And hence it will boost the productivity of each team member.

Respect the time zones

If you’re working with remote employees, then chances are they are from different countries and of course different time zones.

Setting up deadlines is necessary, but setting up deadlines as per the time zones is even more.

While it’s common to get carried away with your time zone and forget your teammates might be from different time zones, you need to be smart here.

You should set deadlines as per your teammates so they can give their best. Provide them with flexible working hours to boost their productivity level.

In the traditional companies, teams work together to accomplish any tasks, but here they aren’t together so giving them the choice of working as per their routine can help them a lot.

However, when there’s some meeting or a video conference, all the people are supposed to be available at the set time.

Keep tracking work done

Having a remote team with flexible work schedule can result in lazy team members.

Now if you pay as per the working hours then you need a system to monitor the actual work done or else it can drain a good amount even for the non-worked hours.

In a traditional setup, you can keep an eye on your employees and whether they are working or not, but in the case of remote teams, it’s near to impossible.

The best solution is to have software can distinguish what your team is doing and track the progress consequently.

Communication should be there, always!

Communication is an important thing to consider for enhancing productivity in both traditional and virtual work environments.

The most crucial part of collaboration is communication, and you need to simplify the communication process.

With an in-house team, you can go to the team members and ask any questions, but in case of a remote team, you need to available to at least one communication medium.

So you need to provide them with various communication tools they can utilize to communicate with other team members and of course you.

However, like you respect their time zones, they should also be respecting yours. Simplify the process of communication and allow your teams to communicate as much as possible.

Track the progress

To know your productivity level, you need to track your profits.

If you’re are making the desired profits, as per the set goals your productivity level is up to the make. If you aren’t, then there must be some issue with your team.

You need to be active to guarantee your team’s productivity. When you execute a plan, you need to see how it works and also track the results.

In this way, you’ll be able to understand the issue and resolve it as soon as possible.

Use the best tracking tools out there to measure the process as well as the results.

In Summary

Many firms believe in hiring remote workers for various tasks, the majority still prefers having an in-house team.

This is because they believe in-house teams are way more productive than their counterparts.

Although this isn’t the entire fact. Yes, remote teams can be less productive until you aren’t taking measures to make them more productive.

Use the above-mentioned tips to enhance the productivity of your remote team.

Once you start taking these steps, you’ll start to understand if done in the right way remote teams can be more effective than any in-house teams. All you need to do is get started and try your best.

 

About the Author

Harikrishna Kundariya is a marketer, developer, IoT, ChatBot & Blockchain savvy, designer, co-founder, Director of eSparkBiz Technologies, A Mobile App Development Company. His 8+ experience enables him to provide digital solutions to new start-ups based on IoT and ChatBot.