How do you manage your team remotely? Mistakes to avoid and good practice to apply

Remote management: is it the same as traditional management? While certain principles are common, managing from a distance comes with its own set of issues, pitfalls to avoid and challenges to overcome.

Distance reshuffles the deck, and while international companies with teams scattered across different countries are well aware of this, many companies have discovered it as a result of the massive use of teleworking since the pandemic.

What are the challenges of remote management and what mistakes should be avoided? How do you manage remotely? We take a closer look in this article.

The challenges of remote management for the company

Challenge no. 1: managing your teams

How do you manage a team without being in the same workplace?

The manager needs to :

• distribute the workload
• monitor the progress of tasks
• set objectives
• set priorities, etc.

What's more, how can you assess everyone's performance when you can't see them?

In addition to the tools, it is vital to put in place methods for continuing to manage your team effectively.

To keep in touch and monitor progress, a quick daily team review is a good start, as well as a more in-depth weekly review with the department managers.

Challenge no. 2: getting to grips with the tools

Working remotely necessarily means implementing digital tools to ensure the continuity of activities, wherever employees or managers may be.

They are becoming essential for :

• communicate
• take part in meetings
• access information,
• work in collaborative mode
• managing day-to-day tasks, etc.

Choosing the right tools and putting them in place is all well and good, but ensuring that they are fully adopted digitally, i.e. mastered by the teams, is imperative. A poor grasp of software can have a negative impact on productivity and performance.

💡The adoption of tools by your teams is therefore an important point to monitor, and you should not hesitate to put in place support measures to optimise it.

Issue no. 3: maintaining team spirit

It's a real challenge to maintain or create links between people who rarely or never meet each other.

We're talking about :

• the relationship between team members
• and the manager's relationship with the team.

Team spirit arises quite naturally in the company's offices, as a result of the many interactions in the open space, in meetings, over lunch or at the coffee machine. How do you create or maintain it when these interactions are reduced and teambuildings are no longer possible?

Finding another way to maintain the link and keep the team alive is one of the tasks of management. This is all the more important because a good team spirit promotes :

• productivity
• motivation
• and employee well-being.

Remote management: 5 fatal mistakes to avoid

There are a number of pitfalls when it comes to managing from a distance. To help you avoid them, here are the 5 most common fatal errors to avoid.

Later in the article, we'll be revealing our best practices for good remote management.

Mistake no. 1: being tempted to control everything

Because of the relationship of subordination that binds it to its employees, the company has the right to control their time and their work.

With the massive shift to teleworking during the pandemic, the question of remote control and surveillance has come up a lot. The proof is in this figure:

Since the pandemic, intentions to purchase remote employee monitoring software have increased 530-fold in 6 weeks.

Score d’intention d’Aberdeen, 2020 par ISG research

At the same time, the health and economic crisis is having an impact on managers, with :

• increased pressure on them to deliver results,
• forced recourse to remote working, which implies a lack of control.

In this particular context, we have seen the emergence of excessive micromanagement behaviours, with a need to control everything, sometimes more than in a face-to-face environment.

➡️ Why is this a mistake?

• your teams may feel " spied on" or even spied on, and this can create a bad relationship,
• the teleworking context makes micromanagement even more intrusive, which can trample on the boundaries of professional life,
• Increased surveillance is time-consuming,
• the return on investment is not attractive.

💡 Management needs to be rethought to adapt to teleworking or remote working.

Mistake no. 2: failing to adapt your management to each individual

Just because you don't want to keep a close eye on your employees doesn't mean you shouldn't adapt your management style to each individual, particularly in the current climate.

➡️ Why is this a mistake?

The widespread use of teleworking implies that it is not systematically desired. It's a way of working that doesn't suit all employee profiles.

Some people need a framework that separates their professional and personal lives. Others don't know how to manage their time and may be distracted by things to do at home.

Marianne Auriac, coach en management interrogée par Cadremploi.

The manager's role is to ensure that everyone is working under optimum conditions, by taking stock of each situation and then proposing the most appropriate solutions.

Examples of solutions include

• setting short-term or long-term objectives,
• offering training to those who feel they need it,
• provide more regular check-ups if the person feels the need, or on the contrary, allow more freedom in terms of organisation,
• adapting timetables by incorporating more flexibility if the person has personal imperatives (sport, picking up their children from school), etc.

💡 The idea is to create an ideal teleworking arrangement that is tailored to each individual.

Mistake no. 3: lack of organisation

Embarking on a remote working arrangement without getting organised at managerial level can be risky for the smooth running of the company.

➡️ Why is this a mistake?

Remote working leaves no room for improvisation or approximation. It requires a certain amount of organisational rigour which, if not applied, can slow down the company's activity because of :

• ill-defined roles
• unclear priorities
• complicated or obsolete processes,
• inability to access documents or information,
• difficulty reaching certain contacts, etc.

Mistake no. 4: neglecting communication

Do you trust your colleagues and do they trust you back? That's a very good thing! But that doesn't mean you shouldn't communicate regularly.

➡️ Why is this a mistake?

At a distance, exchanges and interactions are very limited, so the manager's role takes on an essential dimension in order to :

• avoid misunderstandings and interpretations,
• ensure an equal level of information for each individual,
• pass on essential company information (new recruits, departures, major changes, news, etc.),
• maintain a sense of belonging, etc.

💡Please note: communication must flow in the other direction too. Don't make the mistake of banking everything on top-down communication, and remain open to listening to your employees.

Mistake no. 5: Underestimating the importance of well-being

According to the Labour Code, "the employer shall take the necessary measures to ensure the safety and protect the physical and mental health of workers".

It is therefore the company's responsibility to look after the well-being of its workforce, even when they are working outside company premises.

➡️ Why is this a mistake?

Over and above the company's responsibility, neglecting the well-being of its employees means missing out on an overall improvement in performance. According to a 2018 Harvard/MIT study, being happy at work makes employees:

• 31% more productive,
• 2 times less sick
• 6 times less absent
• 9 times more loyal
• and 55% more creative.

When teleworking, keeping a close eye on well-being even becomes a necessity to avoid the risks of :

• dropping out
• overwork, as employees tend to work longer when they are at home,
• ill-being due to feelings of isolation, etc.

How do you manage remotely? 6 best practices

Train yourself in remote management

If this type of management is new to you and your organisation, and you're finding it difficult to manage remotely, why not ask your managers for training in remote management?

This will enable you to learn and master the basics, so that you can apply it successfully on a daily basis!

Make trust a pillar of your management

Trust is the cornerstone of any remote relationship. Beyond the simple realisation that you can't control everything, trust encourages employees to take responsibility. And autonomy is a particularly important value in teleworking conditions.

So why not start by setting an example? For example, by :

• being honest in all circumstances
• being transparent about the situations you encounter
• passing on the information you have
• communicating to the subject the things that work, and those that don't.

👉 Accept the idea that you can't control everything, and that this is harmful to your organisation. Grant your trust, and let your teams be flexible with their schedules and organise themselves as they wish, while remaining available to help them achieve their goals.

Establish a results-oriented culture

Controlling the presence of your staff remotely is very time-consuming, ultimately inefficient, and can also undermine the climate of trust you want to establish.

Working remotely is an opportunity for the company to move towards a culture of results rather than a culture of presence, if this is not already the case. This means evaluating your employees on the basis of the work they do, rather than the time they spend there.

To do this, it's important to be well organised. Start by :

• setting SMART objectives, ideally in conjunction with your teams, so that you can assess them as closely as possible to the reality on the ground (e.g. increasing website traffic by 5% a month by writing 5 articles a week for the blog),
• define the most efficient work processes that everyone can apply to improve efficiency,
• Gather feedback from your teams as part of a continuous improvement process.

Maintain team spirit

Remote working means that there is virtually no interaction between colleagues or with management. There are still meetings, but they're not the kind of social occasions you'd expect.

And yet, the feeling of belonging to a team is a driver of growth for a company, and increases commitment and motivation. So we need to avoid everyone feeling isolated, and make sure that we recreate everyday moments of company life virtually. This is not an easy thing to do from a distance, and often requires extra time and effort.

The aim is not to impose all these moments, but to provide spaces for getting together where everyone feels welcome and wants to take part.

💡 Here are a few ideas:

• organising a team lunch by videoconference,
• virtual coffee breaks to recreate these moments around the machine,
• plan a short daily team meeting of around 15 minutes, along the lines of a daily scrum,
• make instant communication software available to recreate informal exchanges between colleagues.

Encourage work-life balance

The balance between work and personal life tends to be compromised when an employee teleworks.

The freedom of organisation can make it difficult to set this limit, and employees are naturally tempted to extend their day, as they no longer have to commute.

The role of the manager can therefore be to help reinforce this balance by :

• raising awareness of the right to disconnect;
• helping those who wish to do so to plan their week at , with a disconnection time to encourage them to finish the day;
• inviting employees to put away their work equipment at the end of the day, particularly if they do not have a dedicated room at home;
• setting an example by disconnecting at a reasonable time;
• not contacting employees outside working hours.

Choose the right tools

Digital tools are essential for maintaining activity, but also the link between individuals in the company.

🛠 Here's an example of a toolbox:

• videoconferencing software for meetings, HR or performance reviews, but also for customer appointments ;
• document management software for centralising and sharing documents with your teams;
• instant messaging software for informal, spontaneous communications, or when you need to quickly resolve a situation;
• project management software to monitor the progress of projects, team tasks and the achievement of objectives.

👉 And to ensure effective digital adoption, don't forget to take the necessary care with training and monitoring everyone as they learn.

Remote management: the new norm?

The recent spread of teleworking has forced companies to adapt to remote management, often without being properly prepared.

This paradigm shift has often revealed dysfunctions in the company, including at managerial level.

The companies that were able to deal with the crisis most calmly were those that already knew how to operate remotely, and those that didn't hesitate to question their model in order to move things forward.

What about you? Are you used to managing from a distance? What lessons have you learned? Share them with us in the comments section!