4 best practices for managing your teleworking teams
Managers play an essential role in motivating their teams, communicating guidelines, assigning tasks, orchestrating and coordinating everyone's work. They ensure that objectives are met and facilitate the work of their staff by ensuring that their needs are met.
Since the outbreak of the pandemic and the first containment measures, teleworking has become the norm in many companies. Faced with this new way of working, managers find themselves in a situation for which they were not prepared: that of managing their teams from a distance.
Find out about the challenges of teleworking management and follow our four tips for managing your team effectively despite the distance.
What are the challenges of teleworking management?
As well as guaranteeing the safety of employees in times of covid, teleworking is appreciated for the many advantages it offers both companies and employees (various savings for some, time-saving and quiet working for others, etc.).
However, teleworking is a sudden and radical change, especially for teams that have been used to working together for a long time. As for the manager, he or she has to deal with new issues, develop new skills and adopt a new mindset, different techniques and tools, because remote management has nothing to do with traditional management.
For managers, teleworking presents new challenges:
- Building trust with your team when you can't see them.
- They have to find the right balance to maintain a healthy relationship with their team and avoid becoming micromanagers.
- Preventing social isolation : the manager must maintain team cohesion and a sense of belonging despite the distance.
- Keeping employees motivated and committed : some employees can lose their motivation when they are alone at home.
- Avoid burnout among over-involved employees : some employees may find it difficult to manage their time and strike a balance between their professional and personal lives.
Follow our advice to master the art of managing from a distance.
4 tips for good teleworking management
Here are four good practices you can adopt to become an attentive and effective manager despite the distance separating you from your team.
1. Establish a climate of trust
The distance can make you suspicious and doubt the productivity of your colleagues. However, you must absolutely avoid turning into a micromanager who wants to control everything, and monitors his team's every move.
The management of absent employees is undeniably one of the most sensitive aspects of teleworking. To succeed, you need to establish your authority by showing your team that you trust them. Quite often, you will find that placing your trust in your staff will encourage them to be more responsible, autonomous and to take more initiative.
For this to work, you need to define from the outset the rules to be respected, the behaviour that will and will not be tolerated (for example, starting work before 10 a.m., not sending messages after 7 p.m., etc.). Finally, check in with your staff regularly (at least once a day), preferably by video conference, to keep track of the progress of tasks and show them that you're there if they need you.
2. Communicate constantly
Communication is of paramount importance when working remotely. You need to communicate about the company's strategy and results, the objectives to be achieved, the current situation and future measures. You need to maintain regular communication with your staff, and encourage them to communicate with each other to maintain team cohesion.
As a manager, you need to be available and ready to listen to your team members. By being attentive to their needs and the difficulties they encounter, you can offer them effective solutions to resolve problems as quickly as possible, and thus ensure that they remain productive.
Ask your staff for a daily report on the progress of their tasks, and make sure you meet each member of your team individually and virtually to review their work and their state of mind.
3. Use the right tools
Good management of your teleworking teams also involves the introduction and use of appropriate tools. Today, there is a wide range of software and applications that make it easier to communicate, share files and organise the work of remote teams.
Choose teleworking software such as Wimi to organise your teamwork; instant messaging and videoconferencing to communicate; a document storage and sharing application to centralise all your files and exchange them easily; and any other useful tool specific to your business sector.
For added simplicity, you can create a digital workplace that brings together all your tools, documents and data in a single place that is easily accessible to all your employees, at any time and wherever they may be.
4. Cultivating team spirit
The role of the manager is essential in maintaining cohesion within the team, all the more so when employees are teleworking. Gone are the days of coffee machine breaks or team lunches to bond and exchange ideas with colleagues. From now on, it's up to the manager to act as the link between himself and his team members, to encourage social interaction between employees in order to cultivate team spirit and maintain a sense of belonging.
There's no shortage of ideas for doing this: organising virtual lunches or coffee breaks, initiating non-work-related conversations on instant messaging, communicating regularly by videoconference and meeting face-to-face from time to time.
Conclusion
Managing teleworking teams effectively can be a real challenge for managers. By taking into account the issues involved in remote management and following the good practices mentioned in this article, they will be able to overcome this challenge and keep their staff motivated and productive despite the distance.
Article translated from French