When you hire remote staff for your business it can be unnerving. While you can enjoy the lower overhead and increased flexibility, there are also challenges that can come with that territory. To prepare for these challenges there are some strategies we can utilize.
1. Establish clear goals and expectations around your team and the deliverables.
You need to know exactly how often you and your team will communicate and what mediums you will use for communication. You need to talk about the performance metrics and project expectations. There are no such things as too many details, in my opinion.
2. Leverage technology for remote collaboration.
There are so many tools are our disposable now. Some of them free to use and some require some monetary investment. Below is not an exhaustive list, but here is a list of a few tools you could use:
Video conferencing tools:
· Zoom
· Google Meet
· Microsoft Teams
· Skype
Messaging and chat apps:
· Slack
· Microsoft Teams
· Discord
· Google chat
· Telegram
File Sharing tools:
· Google drive
· Dropbox
· Microsoft Onedrive
Document collaboration tools:
· Notion
· Google docs
· Quip
· Zoho docs
Online meeting schedulers:
· Calendly
· Doodle
· When2meet
Time tracking and productivity tools:
· Toggl
· Harvest
· Clockify
· Hubstaff
Disclaimer: Remember it’s more important to find someone who is resourceful versus someone who knows all the tech that you know.
3. Build trust in your remote working environment.
To operate a healthy and successful team, you must deliberately build trust. And you can build trust with anyone in any environment if you have consistent and open communication. So, after you have talked about your project, take 2 minutes to talk to your team about informal topics, you can write a few things down before the meeting if this doesn’t come naturally to you.
Now go ahead, enjoy your flexibility with your remote team!
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