With remote working at an all-time high due to Covid-19 and potential employment law changes for employees to be able to work from home more, you will need to ensure you are successfully managing your teams – there is a lot of effort that goes into a remote team and producing great results.

We wanted to share with you some of the features that make successful remote working teams, especially remote IT teams.

Knowledge Is Key – Do You Know Your Team?

By investing time into your business and staff it gives you the upper hand in knowing who your team are and their personalities. This is key because no one is the same and so, different people have different working styles and requirements.

There will be those that require little direction and can accomplish their tasks on their own and may not require or appreciate being micro-managed. Others may find that working remotely, especially from home, maybe a little over-whelming and will need guidance from you. You may find that by offering flexibility with time it will appeal to some staff more than others – not everyone wants to do 9am – 5pm so is there a way you can work around this and offer a little more flexibility?

Your team leader/manager will need to know and appreciate all the different working styles of each individual in order to ensure they are managed to deliver effectively.

Great Leadership

We have touched on this a little in the section above, all teams need strong leaders, and this is especially true for remote working teams. For objectives to be achieved, leaders need to identify common goals, the potential issues or conflicts in the route to achieving these goals and the role of each team member to achieve these goals.

When managing remote IT teams, or any team for that matter, it is imperative to understand your team and have a personal connection with them – this builds a trusting relationship and allows for your team to work cohesively as a unit. A good team leader will ensurer the team doesn’t just have ‘work related’ interaction – it’s important to make time to have a bit of chit chat and fun!

Be Open To Feedback

To be effective as a remote working team you need to collaborate – by doing this each member has their ideas and opinions shared with the rest of the team and the team leader. You will often find that during a ‘remote meeting’ quieter members of the team don’t really engage or say very much. This is why it is up to the team leader to make sure everyone has a voice.

Many businesses use video-conferencing for remote meetings to allow for everyone to communicate properly. It is especially useful for observing facial expressions and body language of team members, which can be important communication tools.

Don’t always expect feedback, sometimes people won’t say anything as they find it difficult to communicate, it is the team leaders job to encourage these colleagues to speak up by asking open-ended questions to make sure they are firstly ok but secondly, understand exactly what they need to be doing as part of the team or project.

Video Conferencing

Is a great tool for communicating with your remote working teams. It’s a great way to improve communication within the team, celebrate achievements and build team spirit. By video conferencing you also help alleviate any sense of isolation that can creep in when working from home – this way, you get to see all your colleagues – and smiles are infectious which will boost team morale.

Successful businesses will choose video conferencing over text or voice-based platforms for teams to talk to each other.

Use multiple communication platforms.

Aside from video conferencing having multiple communication platforms to use will help with project delivery and communication.

There are plenty of available options out there for you to choose from:

  • Slack – A great solution for text communication and collaboration.
  • Zoom – Designed for video conferencing,
  • Microsoft Teams – An all-in-one tool which combines video conferencing, document sharing and collaboration
  • Trello – allows teams to manage tasks and organise projects.
  • Skype – an be used for text as well as voice communication

Finally, to have a successful remote working team it is vital that each team member works fluidly with the others – they need to communicate effectively and manage their strengths and weaknesses in order to deliver great results! Your team leader will need the tools to ensure they can effectively give their team everything they need to make this happen.