Happiness and satisfaction, be it personally or professionally, are the goals of every employee motivation.

When employees are happy, they deliver on their duties and responsibilities irrespective of how difficult the tasks are. They find ways to do it with a smile. This is because their job doesn’t interfere with their personal lives.

A distributed team is a group of individuals who work across time, space and organizational boundaries with links strengthened by webs of communication technology.

Companies with distributed team members have the luxury of accessing skilled personnel from all parts of the world at a reasonable price.

These companies leverage the joy of increased employee loyalty and lower overhead cost of renting office space, managing furniture and paying bills to offer flexibility to their employees.

According to a survey conducted by FlexJobs and Global Workplace Analytics, 85% of businesses confirm that productivity has increased due to greater flexibility. Ninety percent of employees say that the flexible work arrangement and schedules greatly boost their morale while 77% add that working remotely may lead to lower operating costs.

Amerisleep also reported that 57% of remote workers are more likely to be more satisfied with their jobs than an average American.

As an employer, you now understand the need for having distributed team members.

Not only does it build a cross geographic talents base but also improves your employees’ work-life balance, makes them work in different time zones across the world, and effectively manages your office costs.

In some cases, companies find it difficult to manage a distributed team. This is usually due to a lot of factors.

In this post, I want to share with you five effective strategies to manage a distributed team better.

Let’s begin.

1. Begin Training from the Onboarding Stage

The earlier you get your distributed team members acquainted with your work process the better. The style of your training and the way you integrate your new hire into your company’s culture will determine how best they will perform.

Unlike the conventional workplace that has a personal touch to training and/or shadowing experienced team members, the distributed workplace must ensure new hires are trained in the best way possible for them to perform well.

Make sure your onboarding process is well structured.

You can do this by mapping out exactly when to train your new hire of their expected duties, knowing when to introduce them to software that helps them manage their tasks effectively, and also let them know when they shouldn’t hesitate to ask questions.

It’s also a good practice to assign a mentor to your new hire. This will help them foster a relationship with a colleague who can help them transition smoothly into the organizational structure.

To train and onboard your new hires, here are some tips to start with:

• Create a knowledge base system where your new hires can find every information related to your services or products. This rich information, that contains comprehensive contributions from other team members, will quickly prepare them for excellent service delivery.
• Allow your new hires to educate themselves about your policies, procedures, brand, values and organizational culture.
• Encourage them to share their suggestions on how to better the training materials.
• Meet them online, be it on Zoom or Skype. Make sure that you have a face to the names of your new hires. This improves the relationship and helps build employee loyalty.

2. Hold Structured Weekly and Monthly Meetings

It’s difficult to keep up when your team is distributed across regions. Your employees will be limited in getting the needed support from their experienced team members.

This is always nerve-wracking particularly when they need the information almost immediately.

Another way to lead your remote team members is to hold structured meetings every week or month. Factor in your overall company’s mission or what you’re set to conclude in that meeting then have a detailed agenda of achieving it. A meeting without structure will lead to a waste of time, so avoid it.

Though some team members may have difficulty in connecting with the meeting on time, clear out the first 10 minutes for that, then get to the main point immediately.

People joining the meeting halfway is a bad idea. You have to get this right to achieve your set goals for the meeting. Here are some steps to follow:

• Plan and communicate the meeting ahead. This is essential so that you do not end up choosing the date and time that most employees won’t be able to attend.
• Don’t just give out instructions during the meeting, create engagement; encourage your distributed team members to contribute to the discourse and make sure everyone has a specific time to speak.
• Use the right technology. Considering the number of participants and the goal of the meeting, you might want to utilize tools that allow video conferencing, web conferencing or group call.

3. Employ the Right Communication and Collaboration Tools

You can’t have a seamlessly distributed team without proper communication and collaboration.

Though related, communication is the exchange of information while collaboration entails working with someone to create or update a document.

For instance, you and two other team members need to create an educational content marketing strategy for one of your clients. Developing and sending it back and forth via email could be time-consuming.

As much as email is an excellent communication tool, it has huge limitations in terms of collaboration. You’ll be left with an unending trail of emails.

Using tools like Flowdock, GoToMeeting, Slack, Monday.com, ProofHub, and Google Drive will save you and your team members the frustration of repeated mistakes while creating a document. And it will help you better manage your distributed team members.

4. Communicate a Clear and Realistic Expectation

You can’t effectively manage a distributed team if you fail to communicate your expectations with them.

If it were to be a conventional workplace where people interact physically, you would assume that your team members will read your gestures or body language. However, that’s not possible when you interact remotely.

You need to communicate clear and realistic expectations to your distributed team members so that you can perfectly eliminate confusion and the ambiguity that may arise as a result of assumptions.

When you communicate this verbally and in writing, you will make your employees become more successful and efficient in achieving their goals.

Also, doing this will help your employees display a positive attitude to work. This will make them work with honesty and integrity and also represent your organization responsibly.

You should be strategic in communicating your expectations to your distributed team members. Here are some tips to consider when doing this:

• Make your expectations clear and attainable
• Provide opportunities to ask questions
• Discuss the tools necessary for them to accomplish their tasks
• Explain the purpose of each task
• Be transparent in your communication
• Set aside time for regular one-on-one conversations
• Ensure you document your communication strategy

5. Focus on Results

If you’re managing a distributed team and your team members aren’t delivering accurate and timely results, then it won’t be worth it.

The hours spent tracking what each team member is doing doesn’t count much. What really matters is the result.

Some employers regularly view team activity, track employee internet usage, supervise employees remotely and monitor when employees are at their desks.

The smarter ones only request the end of day report summary, task checklists and trackers to ascertain if their employees have done the job.

These employers understand that productivity is relative to employees’ state of mind and that if they can deliver on their task at the end of the day, then the job is done.

That said, some employers micromanage their remote employees because they believe that they may outsource their tasks to freelancers. While this is possible, you should clearly state that you frown against that in your terms and conditions so that your distributed team is aware.

Micromanagement derails active and ready-to-work employees — ensure that you maintain a certain level of trust and you randomly check in on your team from time to time. This will help them perform efficiently and productively.

Conclusion

Crossing virtual borders to source talented workers help you build the best team at a lower cost.

In the long run, you’ll reap increased productivity, stronger employee retention and improved work-life balance for you and your distributed team.

In this post, I’ve shared with you strategies you can use to manage your distributed team and improve your business deliverables.

First, you should begin training your team from the onboarding stage since it’ll be difficult to learn and shadow others. Also create a knowledge base for them to learn. That way, you’ll only have to spend a little time attending to their specific questions.

Second, you should hold structured weekly or monthly meetings so you can create a more personal relationship with them.

Not only that, you should employ the right collaboration and communication tools to ensure that everyone stays on the same page during information sharing and performing their tasks on time.

Finally, ensure that you always focus on the end result. That way, your employees will follow suit to deliver accurate and timely results that help your business grow.

Author Bio: Owen McGab Enaohwo is the CEO and Co-Founder of SweetProcess; an easy-to-use and intuitive business process management software founded in 2013 that makes it possible for company executives and their employees to collaborate together to quickly document standard operating procedures, processes, and policies.