If you’re one of the entrepreneurs who added remote workers to their team of on-site workers, you might experience what we call the ‘remote glitch’. The somehow good news is that you’re not the only one going through this, the very good news is that there are ways to fix it.
So, what is the remote glitch?
It’s basically a cultural divide. Your on-site employees always worked in an office. For them, work is something that happens in a building that is owned or rented by their boss. So it’s not uncommon to hear your on-site employees saying things like “I’ll talk about this with Joe when he’ll get back to the office” or “I don’t know if they did any work on the project, they’re never here”. Of course, your remote employees do the work they are given, even if they’re not in the same office with your on-site team members, but projects don’t advance as fast as they should because people tend to ignore their colleagues that work from home. It’s not personal. For many people, the fact that someone is not in the same office with them means that they’re either sick or enjoying their vacation.
This is how to fix it and prevent it from happening again!
Help people get to know each other so they would be comfortable communicating when they don’t work in the same office space. This should start with your onboarding process. Bring your remote employees to your headquarters or to the office where most of on-site their team members work. Many software companies understand that building the initial connection is important, so they bring in their new remote employees for 3 weeks to get to know the rest of the team.
If you can’t afford that, there’s another way to fix the glitch: push people to get past the phone call barrier. It’s true: many people hate picking up the phone and calling someone. They’ll rather wait for two days for someone to answer their email or drop by the office to get an answer they needed. Luckily, if they are pushed (or encouraged) to make many phone calls to their colleagues they will get used to doing that and they will start calling people and make projects run smoother, getting work done faster.
Keeping everybody in the loop
Over-communication is the key. Yes, over-sharing can actually help people work better together. As a manager, you should over-communicate to your remote team members what is happening around the office, even what type of cake Lisa made for her birthday and how funny Charlie’s new glasses are. This will help remote workers feel like they are part of the team and that they are indeed connected to all the people working on-site.
The over-communicating remote worker is the best type of remote worker. You want people to tell you what they are doing, what are they working on today, what they accomplished yesterday, what challenges they’re facing, etc.
Over-communicating can also represent a defensive mechanism. People working in distributed and remote teams fear that others think they are slacking off.
Take the time to build those initial personal connections and your remote and on-site employees will become in no-time a strong and highly efficient team!
