Remote work is on the rise. According to a 2017 story by The Week, there are over 5,000 virtual assistants (or VAs) listed on Upwork, 74,000 on Guru, 26,000 on Freelancer, and 5,000 on PeoplePerHour.
In 2018, IWG found that 70% of employees are working remotely at least one day a week, and 53% do it for half a week or more.
Beefing up your teams with virtual assistants will surely boost its output, but it will provide unique leadership challenges as well. Here are a few tips to help you better manage, motivate and retain your remote employees.
Tip #1: Build rapport with your remote team
Communication is one of the major challenges in remote work. The moments that occur naturally in an office (e.g. water cooler talk, sharing cake) which help develop relationships among work teams don’t normally happen in remote teams.
And yet, rapport is vital in leadership. Among other benefits, it:
- Motivates workers.
- Makes people more receptive to feedback.
- Gains employees’ loyalty.
- Helps foster a positive work environment.
When dealing with remote team members, it’s easy to just talk about what you need to delegate then end the call – and it’s necessary when you’re in a rush – but you miss out on opportunities to gain and maximise its benefits for your team.
Instead, develop rapport with every member of your offshore assistant remote team. You could:
- Engage in small talk (e.g. ask about their hobbies) during breaks.
- Try to know more about them, their family and their personal goals.
- When listening to others, don’t respond with your own story. Instead, ask them to expound on what they’re saying (e.g. how, when and why).
Taking the time to connect at a deeper level with your employees will make them like working for you even more.
Tip #2: Engage them one-on-one regularly
Because you don’t get opportunities in an actual office to develop rapport, you’ll have to make up for it by engaging your virtual assistants individually on a regular basis. During this time, you can:
- Give them helpful one-on-one coaching.
- Talk about their career goals.
- Ask them for ideas on how to improve your processes, the company, etc.
- Bounce your ideas off them.
- Find out how they’re doing on a personal level.
If you have a group of 5 members or fewer, aim to give each about an hour per week. For larger teams, adjust the time frame accordingly. Note that if your group has over 15 members, get someone to help you with the one-on-one time.
For teams with members across different time zones, make sure your schedules overlap and organise your one-one-one sessions during these times.
Tip #3: Use video whenever possible
As a large part of communication is non-verbal, you’re missing out a lot if you interact with your remote team only via email, instant messenger or voice call. These platforms won’t outright show you important little details like body language, mood and immediate reactions.
The solution? Call your team through video whenever you can. There are many video conferencing platforms to choose from. The most popular include:
Whatever software you ultimately choose, make sure its features fit your team’s needs (e.g. number of participants, meeting length, cloud storage size, whiteboarding).
Tip #4: Track your team’s output
It’s necessary to monitor your remote team’s productivity using time-tracking software and other similar programs. At the very least, the various measures should include:
- Attendance
- Hours worked
- Output
Doing this keeps your team (including you) on-task and accountable for their work. Plus, it helps prevent remote employees from getting distracted through non-work-related visits to social media and other online attractions.
For time tracking, you can use apps like Worksnaps, Time Doctor or Hubstaff. If you wish to measure your remote sales team’s performance, try out suitable analytics software like SalesHandy, Mixmax or Yesware.
Tip #5: Have an open chat room for each sub-team
If you have sub-teams that make up a part of your larger team (e.g. marketing, recruitment, SEO), create an open chat for each. This approach is especially helpful if you have members across different time zones: people can leave messages for the sub-team they’re part of; and when others go online, they can respond.
Having an open chat room for each sub-team enables each member to:
- Still feel connected even if the others are several time zones away.
- Coordinate tasks.
- Discuss sub-team issues.
However, don’t limit your sub-teams to work-related matters. Open a company-wide chat for miscellaneous topics like sporting events and popular TV shows. These chats give your company a virtual water cooler space where workers can develop rapport among themselves.
Tip #6: Choose the suitable communication channel
Not all communication channels are appropriate for every exchange of information. For example:
- If you need a quick, real-time response, use your instant messenger.
- If you need to discuss key issues or simply want to see how people react, go for video chat.
- If you want to coordinate tasks, stick to your company’s project management platform (e.g. Trello, Asana, GitHub, Jira).
To get the best results, use the medium that best suits what you need to convey at that moment.
Tip #7: Utilize screen sharing
Sometimes, video calls aren’t enough, particularly when you need your team to see exactly what you’re doing – like when you’re carrying out a procedure. Otherwise, you’ll have to document what’s happening in every phase of the process and add a screenshot to illustrate each.
To get around this limitation, use screen sharing tools which would allow you to:
- Give other users control of your computer. Examples of tools with this function include TeamViewer and Slack.
- Show what’s displayed on your desktop to others. Examples of programs with this feature include Skype (business or regular) and Google Meet.
Bear in mind that each type has different uses. For example, if anyone on the team needs IT support, you’ll need a remote access tool. If you need to give a presentation for orienting new hires, use a tool that lets you display your desktop.
Tip #8: Recognise jobs well done
Employee recognition matters, even to remote teams. It makes your employees happy and engaged, which in turn helps your company minimise staff turnover and reduce personnel costs.
But because remote teams function differently from regular on-site teams, your approach to employee recognition needs to be a little different. Here are a few ideas you can start with:
- Set up a virtual bulletin board where employees can share videos and photos of fun activities, announcements, commendations and other similar items.
- Regularly give out awards to acknowledge individual or team accomplishments.
- During your remote workers’ special days, don’t forget to mail them an appropriate greeting card (e.g. birthday or anniversary cards).
Such gestures work because they satisfy several psychological needs of your employees.
Tip #9: Pair up remote workers
Make it a habit to pair up your remote workers. While the practice is frequently cited best practice for software development, it works in other areas as well. Having two employees collaborate works because:
- Having more than one perspective provides a wider view of the problem.
- It lets your workers share knowledge among themselves.
- They can divide the work among themselves, speeding up the process.
Tip #10: Encourage your team to overcommunicate
Notice a common thread among the methods discussed here? They all depend on regular and frequent communication. Since your team is located in different parts of the globe, you don’t see each other as you work, and this presents various limitations.
Fortunately, you can overcome them by overcommunicating (i.e. repeating the same message at least once), especially to emphasise key information. Remember:
- It’s better to tell someone a message they already know than to not tell them a message they needed to hear.
- Just because one (or some) of your team members already know the message, it doesn’t necessarily mean everyone else does.
- Sometimes, people are embarrassed to admit they don’t understand a message, so repeating it will certainly help.
