Advancements in technology enable modern workers to become more mobile. Offices are no longer limited to physical spaces but now fit inside our bags and pockets. With a few taps of our fingers, we share documents and connect with the rest of our distributed team.

It’s exciting to see organisations of all kinds let their staff work from home or elsewhere. Some companies allow certain groups or individuals work remotely but others have a fully virtual workforce. Whether your team is completely distributed or not, there are pros and cons to this arrangement.

Challenges of working with virtual professionals

From higher employee retention to significant cost savings, there’s plenty to gain from hiring Filipino remote workers. There are also plenty of qualified candidates for you to choose from, considering that over 50% of Filipinos have been remote for years now.

However, you mustn’t look at just the benefits when you’re aiming for effective virtual team management in a global environment. Be prepared for the common obstacles that come with having a distributed team so you maximise the returns on your investment.

Virtual assistants feeling isolated

Working from home seems fun at first but the novelty wears off soon enough. When they have no co-workers to talk to and see the same sights before and after their shift, they begin to feel cut off from their team and the rest of the world thereby making them feel demotivated and discouraged.

Virtual assistants being out of place

Company culture is difficult to build when everyone is working virtually. There’s also no guarantee that your new hire VA in the Philippines shares the same interests as their colleagues. It’s crucial that they fit in because they spend a majority of their time with their team.

Virtual assistants failing to communicate

Remote workers don’t have to luxury to pop into their co-workers office for a quick chat about presentations or projects. They’re unable to physically check if their manager is around. Given the mute functions on most communication tools these days, it’s easy to overlook checking messages too.

Virtual assistants being out of sync

When you’re based in the US or UK and you hire remote staff in the Philippines, you usually hold meetings at inconvenient hours since it’s hard to find a time that works for all. Work calendars or schedules get confusing too. For instance, a deadline in Pacific Time doesn’t automatically translate into Manila Time.

Virtual assistants running into barriers

Depending on your industry, chances are that you’ll hire a freelancer in the Philippines or some other country with a vastly different culture from yours. These differences in languages, dialects, and principles impact operations and increase the risk of miscommunications leading to conflicts.

Tips for leading a virtual team across multiple time zones

Despite the many challenges that come with remote work, there are ways to achieve effective virtual team leadership across time zones. When you hire a Filipino freelancer or virtual assistant, make sure you keep the following tips in mind:

Use time zone management tools

Gone are the days when you need to memorise the differences between Pacific, Central, Mountain, and other time zones. You might be good at estimating the hour but it’s better to be accurate through tools like:

• Google Calendar – let’s you set your current time zone and save other time zones you work with
• Slack – shows you the local time of a specific team member when you click on their username
• Every Time Zone – helps you to find the exact time difference between locations at one glance

Establish clear time zone boundaries

When you hire a Filipino VA, they may feel compelled to attend every meeting that you hold even if it’s outside their working hours. The inconvenience only makes them unhappy so you need a dialogue going to ensure everyone’s boundaries are being respected.

Go for asynchronous communication

This means working without direct contact with each other, such as through online chat, video messaging, and emails. It also means that you don’t expect them to reply within the same hour that you sent your message. In this way, your team isn’t pressured to respond immediately.

Opt for flexible working schedules

Flexibility at work has been proven to reduce burnout, psychological distress, perceived stress, and family-to-work conflicts. This is because you’re giving your employees a chance to work when they’re at peak performance or inspiration, be it morning, afternoon, night or a combination of these.

Embrace virtual systems and operations

Since you decided to hire a virtual assistant in the Philippines, it makes sense for your processes to be fully virtual as well. Don’t expect them to print and scan documents when they may use purely soft copies for their tasks, for example. Skip the need for voice or video confirmations when emails will do too.

Be clear about your expectations

While it’s fine to keep communications asynchronous, it’s essential to set expectations such as when your employees have to reply to a message at the latest. You might also want to plan regular progress reports from them to ensure all is proceeding as scheduled.

Organise online socialising events

Your team may be unable to meet with each other in person but they may still form bonds virtually. Try hosting weekly meetups where your staff talk about their hobbies or play games together. If you have the budget for it, have them meet physically once a year as well.

Hire a Filipino virtual assistant

If you used to have qualms about hiring Filipino remote workers in the past because of the obstacles you might face, it must be refreshing for you to read that there are ways to overcome those challenges as we’ve discussed above. This is the perfect time for you to hire remote staff in the Philippines then.

We at Remote Workmate are connected to a wide pool of talents in the Philippines and elsewhere. We work with both American and Australian clients and have successfully found them workers that have no trouble adjusting to the differing time zones.

Should you wish to hire a Filipino VA yourself, simply click this button right here.