The popularity of this trend has increased by 44% over the past five years, and by 91% over the past ten years. Companies continue to advocate in favor of remote work, as they see more of their workers showing the need for more time out of the office.

As a result, today, you can hardly find a company that doesn’t allow its employees to work from home at least one day a week or once a month. Moreover, companies hire teams of remote workers on an ongoing basis for their outsourcing needs.

More on Remote Teams

The tendency to hire whole teams of remote workers has appeared within the past two-three years. Today, three in ten companies that once started with one remote team, now have gone completely virtual and are actively looking for world class talent for upcoming remote job opportunities.

It’s interesting how this tendency managed to overrun the traditional understanding of a workplace. What once was perceived to be unacceptable today is completely normal, thanks to the rapid development of technology and, of course, the Internet.

However, with many benefits, also come a lot of challenges, primarily when it comes to managing remote workers.

What Are the Biggest Challenges of Managing Remote Teams?

Team leads, who have to manage remote workers, name the following issues they often have to face in their work:

• Communication

It’s interesting how the technology can be both a facilitator of the remote work trend and be one of the obstacles to its successful implementation. A sudden problem with the Internet connection interrupting the interaction between the members of the remote team is one of the examples.

Another issue is fostering open communication. “The success of communication between team leads and remote workers is in the equal input of all team members,” says Jennifer Parks, a team lead at IsAccurate. If the team uses traditional communication methods like emails that don’t allow sharing the feedback quickly, it can harm the quality of work.

• Corporate Culture

Traditionally, corporate culture is perceived as something within the bubble of the office. Consequently, it is hard to imagine how remote teams fit in the corporate culture while being constantly out of the office.

Remote team leads, as a result, often have a problem adjusting remote workers to the rules and regulations that exist within the corporate culture. This is important because corporate culture plays an integral part in forming the consistency of a company’s success.

• Scheduling and Productivity

Another issue that the remote team leads often have to deal with is tracking and evaluating the performance of remote workers. Often, team leads have several freelancers working on the same project, and they need to contribute to it equally. But since freelancers work remotely all the time, it’s hard to evaluate the size and value of their contribution.

Remote team leads also name scheduling and time management as one of the topical issues of managing freelancers. Many companies have remote workers from all over the world, and when it comes to scheduling the meeting with the remote team, it may be tricky to get them all together. They are still freelancers and work on their own schedule.

How to Tackle the Most Common Issues of Managing Remote Workers?

Now, let’s get to the actionable tips, how team leads can tackle all the issues mentioned above and effectively manage remote workers.

1. Organize Weekly Video Communication

Remote team leads can choose different ways of communicating with remote workers — from phone calls to emails and messaging platforms.

However, there is nothing that works as well as video conferencing, which can help you tackle the first issue mentioned above — poor communication.

Video conferencing, according to the study by LifeSize, is the most effective way of communicating with a remote team. Here’s what the respondents of this study had to say about video conferencing:

• 98% of the respondents say that video conferencing helps build stronger relationships among the workers within and outside the company
• 98% of respondents also say that video conferencing helped them improve productivity, as it improved the quality of communication between in-house and remote workers.
• 90% of respondents say that video calls are better if they want to get their point across and make sure the recipient understands it
• 89% of freelancers say they support video conferencing because it makes them feel more connected

Apart from that, team leads can observe the reactions of all team members to understand whether they are on board, or, if not, get their feedback right away.

Team leads don’t necessarily need a lot of equipment and a separate conference room to do video calls with the remote workers. A computer and a good Internet connection is enough to start a video conversation.

2. Make Scheduling More Accessible

Video conferencing is a good idea for more effective communication, but the issue of scheduling still remains important and can impact the quality of communication, as a result.

To make it less daunting to access every member of your remote team, don’t plan your next meetings during your video conference. “It’s also a bad idea to always schedule your meetings by sending group emails,” says Helen Cue, a remote team lead at SupremeDissertations. There is a chance that not all team members will see the message in time.

Instead, let your remote workers have access to the shared team calendar, where all of them can receive up-to-date information regarding meetings, trace the activity of other team members, and schedule meetings.

Team leads who use project management software can also create such an interactive calendar there:

In such calendars, apart from creating events, you can also set milestones for different projects, which will be visible for all remote team members.

3. Make Your Corporate Culture More Inclusive for Remote Workers

The third issue that many team leads struggle with is making remote teams an integral part of the overall corporate culture.

We already mentioned that the process of company acculturation for remote workers is very peculiar. Since they are constantly out of office, they are left out of many events that happen inside of the company.

So, what can you do, as a remote team lead, to build this culture?

• Communicate values. When hiring a new remote team member and during random group conversations — make sure that you reiterate the main values that guide your company to success.
• Remind them of their impact. It’s natural that remote workers may sometimes feel left out of the corporate culture. Don’t let their achievements go unnoticed by reminding them of their role in the success of the company.
• Let them contribute more. Make your remote team a part of your digital marketing campaign. Make posts about them on social media and let them contribute to the company’s online image.

Here are some more pieces of actionable advice on how to bring remote team workers closer to corporate culture.

• Water cooler chat rooms

We are all familiar with random brief in-office conversations by the water cooler. But who told you that you couldn’t create the online versions of such conversations?

A group chat can be a version of the water cooler chat room, where you can brainstorm ideas for your next project with your remote team, or just discuss the last episode of The Crown.

• Corporate education

If your in-office team gathers for a corporate education event, whether to learn about new technology or to discuss new company policies, why shouldn’t your remote team be present as well?

As a remote team lead, make sure that all remote workers have equal access to corporate education, just like all your in-office colleagues. The knowledge that they get from such events can be crucial for the success of the projects that you’re working on together.

• General company meetings

Companies often do annual meetings, where all employees need to be present to report on the successes that the company achieved over the year.

It will be fair if remote team members also get a chance to voice their opinion and share insights into working on their projects. After all, if these projects succeed, the company owes this success to the efforts of your remote team.

Which Tools Can Help Team Leads Manage Remote Workers?

Companies owe the possibility of hiring remote workers to innovations in technology. Today, there are plenty of tools that can help the team leads manage remote workers effortlessly and avoid team management issues that we mentioned at the beginning of the article.

Let’s take a look at some of the essential tools for remote team management.

1. Google Hangouts

Since we talked a lot about the importance of video conferencing in remote team management, we’ll start the list of the essential tools for a remote team lead — Google Hangouts.

As one of the parts in Google toolkit, Google Hangouts is managed via Google Calendar, where you can create a meeting for all (or some) of your remote workers to participate in.

Its biggest advantage is that it is completely free to use, while still providing you with all the tools necessary for video conferencing that all paid tools have.

2. Project Management Software

At the beginning of the article, we briefly talked about the issue of tracking and evaluating the performance of your remote workers.

That’s why an essential part of every team lead’s toolkit is project management software. It allows you to track the performance on every project, leave comments, assign milestones, and much more.

ProofHub a project management tool, for instance, has multiple features, from creating discussion topics and events to setting up projects and deadlines:

You can also evaluate the performance of every member of your remote team by getting a report on their activity and contribution to the project.

3. Virtual ChatRooms

For those water cooler chat rooms, you can use virtual chat rooms that have a feature of creating an online group designed specifically for that purpose.

There are plenty of paid virtual chat rooms, but if you’re looking for a free option, you can use Google Hangouts to create a group conversation with your remote team:

Such virtual chat rooms help you send quick messages and share updates without having to call remote team members or emailing them.

4. Assessment Test

Research says that assessment tests are essential in building a cohesive team. Not to mention they are an undeniably helpful tool for incorporating the company culture to each and every member.

Fingerprint for Success is one such tool dedicated to improving team dynamics and communication by allowing team members to get to know each other more.

5. Productivity Tracking Software

When your employees work remotely, monitoring their activities is crucial to know whether they are actually working or just wasting time.

That is why you need a remote employee monitoring software which allows you to monitor and measure your remote employee’s computer activity in real-time.

EmpMonitor, excellent remote teams, and productivity monitoring software have rich features, from remote monitoring, Productive, Non-productive hours, and idle time tracking, screenshot recorder, website filtering, and blocking, social network blocking, keystrokes logging, and much more.

You can even monitor your employees’ web browsing history, top apps, and websites used, and whitelist the IP. In case you need detailed reports, EmpMonitor will provide you with intuitive charts and graphs.

Bonus* EmpMonitor is offering a 15 days free trial to its users.

6. Social Inbox
If you’re managing your social media profiles as a team, it’s crucial that you use the right software.

Sotrender, a social media analytics tool and social inbox, can help you do just that. You’ll stay up to date with your team’s moderation activities on Facebook and prevent crises on your page with automatically assigned sentiment analysis.

7. Social Media Content Collaboration
If it happens to produce social media content, Planable is your team’s go-to tool these days. Remote work demands clarity so people see the same content, at the same time, in one single place. And this simple tool can help you do that.

Easily onboard your team and stakeholders and say goodbye to spreadsheets, neverending email threads, and, most importantly, misunderstandings. Your team can literally be on the same page even when apart.

Manage Your Remote Team Effortlessly

There are many obstacles to establishing rapport with remote workers, from cultural differences to technical issues.

Nevertheless, you can easily overcome these issues with the help of tips and tools that we shared with you in our article.

And if you’re still contemplating the necessity of hiring a remote team — you need to hurry up. This trend is not going anywhere, as more and more companies decide to outsource work to freelancers.

So, get on board of this trend as fast as possible and start benefiting from possibilities that freelancers can give you.

Author Bio: Dorian Martin is a marketing specialist, a blogger and writer at TrustMyPaper. He writes articles about managing startups, launching successful digital marketing campaigns, and working with freelancers.

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Read More:

1. Why Remote Work Is Growing (And How To Be A Part Of It)
2. Everything we want you to know about working remotely beforehand
3. How to Succeed Leading a Team of Remote Teams