Remote working has swiftly become a common component of the business landscape. Embracing the practice by building remote teams can be beneficial to your company, too. When done well, you can find it reduces overheads, enhances company culture, and boosts worker satisfaction.
Nevertheless, these benefits don’t arise without intentional actions from your company. Without focused measures in place, remote operations can very quickly become unproductive and stagnant. You need to put time and investment into shaping your remote teams for success.
Let’s look at some practical ways to inspire productivity and creativity in remote teams.
Choose Your Team Mindfully
The first step in inspiring productivity and creativity in your remote teams is ensuring you have the right employees. This involves onboarding not just people with the technical skills for the position but also those well-suited to your company’s virtual working environment.
There are certainly some established approaches to recruiting remote workers that can be effective. Cluster hiring focuses on remote recruitment in specific locations. As a result, you can have a distributed workforce while providing opportunities for them to work cohesively in coworking spaces. It’s also important to be clear on what skills and cultural elements remote staff should have, as this can guide targeting, interviewing, and hiring the most impactful members.
It can also be wise to reserve leadership roles for those who have experience in managing remote teams. After all, they must be able to guide their team members in establishing productive activities and maintaining group camaraderie. Their efforts will be integral to your company’s ability to have innovative and efficient remote workforces.
Prioritize Solid Communication and Scheduling
Productivity and creativity aren’t simply traits that are the responsibility of your remote employees alone. Rather, your company’s approach to remote operations can support and bolster these aspects. Among the most important elements to arrange among teams are communication and organization.
Start by helping your remote workers to build well-organized and healthy remote working schedules. These should include establishing routines that aren’t just shaped to business needs but also consider the employee’s preferred working practices. Managers should also encourage workers to schedule regular breaks and even time for short walks that mitigate midday slumps.
Alongside effective scheduling, your business should also facilitate solid communication with both leadership and colleagues. This helps ensure everybody is meaningfully connected throughout projects and that any issues can be handled before they cause disruption. Workers’ open discussions can also result in innovative solutions to problems. Utilize multiple channels, such as video calls, chat rooms, and project management platforms.
Implement Effective Support
Remote working can often be lonely and challenging. Negative experiences as a result of this can significantly disrupt productivity and creativity in teams. It is, therefore, vital for remote companies to provide effective support systems.
Leadership should be considerate of their remote team members’ mental wellness. Wherever possible, ensure that the workflow management practices that prevent burnout are in place. This can include automating repeatable processes to reduce stress and discourage unnecessary multitasking. It can also be wise to offer access to telemedical therapy services so workers can address rising mental health challenges before they have a destructive impact.
You can also find that simply encouraging colleagues to support one another on a daily basis is conducive to productivity, creativity, and worker satisfaction. This shouldn’t just be limited to work-related subjects. Create casual chat channels as part of your communications infrastructure. It can also be positive to arrange social video chats and have snacks delivered to team members. This builds closer connections and enhances the company culture in ways that bolster the efficacy and innovation of workers’ actions.
Conclusion
Remote teams can be productive and creative, but your operations must be designed to encourage these traits. This should start with hiring processes that allow you to engage effective remote workers. Your company should also arrange scheduling and communications practices that help get the best out of your employees. Remember that solid support systems related to mental health and colleague relationships tend to strengthen your teams. There are enormous benefits to be had from remote workers, it’s worth investing in getting your approach right.
