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Leading a Remote Team Can Be Successful if Done Right 

Today’s most cutting-edge companies have conflicting visions of employee productivity. Whilst Google pulls out all the stops to keep their employees happy with free meals, a gym and shuttles to and from work, other companies have taken the approach that the best perk you can offer an employee is to avoid having to come into an office at all. Working remotely is becoming more and more popular, and whilst both models make sense, working remotely is probably the better option for a business if you’re a start-up that can’t afford to splash the cash on expensive benefits for your staff. Choosing the distributed route will keep your costs down, give your employees flexibility and allow you access to the best workers in the country or even the world, regardless of geography. We’ve put together some advice for managing a remote team.

Set Clear Communication Standards

Depending on the type of work it is that your remote team do, a daily meeting or even a few daily meetings may be required in order to ensure team cohesiveness and efficiency. An effective way to ensure good communication is to record meetings, so that anyone who is confused about what has transpired can use the record as reference. Setting good communication standards is critical for leading a remote team, as communication is key when it comes to effective management. Even when travelling business communication needs to be streamlined.

Optimise the Right Tools for Communication

Experts will tell you that the best way to ensure that a remote worker is fully engaged when communicating is to contact them via video call. Otherwise, many employees will call in only to multitask or zone out when they are on the call, making for less engagement and ineffective communication. There are a wide range of digital communication channels to choose from ranging from e-mailing to social networking and chatrooms. Require that your workers have a number of different communication tools to choose from.

Pay Attention to Team Activity

If you break your work into teams like most offices, you will need to make sure that each individual team member is communicating properly and effectively with other members in their team. For example, if there is a certain project manager who is not communicating effectively with the product development team, this will result in some or even all members of the team working ineffectively. For each of your respective teams, choose a team leader that is a highly effective communicator and who will be responsible for ensuring that all team members are working on the correct things at the correct time.

Pick Workers Wisely

Because of the inherent latitude in remote work, it is vital that you choose people of good character and who are self-starters to do the job. Make sure that you interview each prospective employee thoroughly, and check any references. Don’t ignore any bad feelings about a prospective worker if you sense that something is wrong or feel that an interviewee has an attitude or bad communication skills.

By following these tips you should be able to lead a successful remote team.

Author Bio: Boris Dzhingarov graduated UNWE with major marketing. He writes for several sites online such as Tech.co, Semrush.com, Tweakyourbiz.com, Socialnomics.net. Boris is the founder of MonetaryLibrary and Dzhingarov.com. You can connect with him at Google + , Twitter, Linkedin.

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