Quickly disappearing are the days of companies where all employees are based in one office.  In our globally shrinking competitive landscape, drivers for this change include: speed to service, less travel cost with clients being spread out, and improved customer service.   This creates challenges in company expectations of remote employees, and in effectively managing a remote workforce. Managing remote employees can prove rewarding, liberating and fulfilling . . . or you can feel like an empty nest parent whose kids don’t stay in touch.  You can’t manage a team of remotely dispersed employees with all of the same techniques, which used in the past, for supervising a group based in the same office.  There are some specific skills and techniques you need to use as a manager to make sure you have a strong team that doesn’t feel disconnected by the miles. Get the right skills to manage remote employees MCT’s online Remote Employee Management course teaches you the techniques you can employee to make sure you have a strong team, including: Keeping Remote Employees on Track – Remote employees are more apt to stray off course, by focusing on what they think is important, rather than what you think is important.  Its not that they are being malicious; they can just become easily disconnected with the overall objectives of the team and company when they are teleworking.  In this module, you will learn how to keep them on the right path, by setting clear visions and expectations, so there is no confusion about how they can be a successful part of the team. Increase and Don’t Delay Communication – With a virtual team, how can you make sure that they are getting the information they need without information overload? How do you insure that you are using the correct communication tools?  What is the appropriate way to communicate with a virtual team?  In this module, we will cover the different communication tools and channels to use, how to make your meetings run efficiently, and how to ensure you are engaged in accurate communication with your team, ensuring that they are getting the info they need to work just as if all in one office. Building Team Strength and Developing Trust – If not managed correctly, remote and teleworking teams are really not teams.  Instead they become a bunch of individuals working alone in silos that happen to report to the same manager.   However, that doesn’t have to be the case.  If managed correctly, remote teams can be strong, closer, and work better together than those based in the same office.  In this module you will learn how to create dynamic and interactive teams that have a closely woven team community, and strong trust, with mutual respect.  You will also learn how you can insure that your communication with them is clear and credible. Creating Accountability – One of the biggest company fears about a teleworking teams is that they will not be working when you can’t see them.  Unfortunately, this fear can lead to a micro-management style that gets you the opposite results of what you want.  So how can you hold your team accountable without becoming an micro-manager?  This module shows you how to empower your employees to manage themselves and how to create an accountability tracking system so YOU don’t have to be that system. Coaching Remote Employees – How can you effectively coach and develop your team of virtual employees when they are not based in the same office with you? Motivating Remote Employees – A team of dispersed working employees need a self-charged motivation technique.  How do you keep them excited and engaged in their work and with the team?  This module will show you techniques to create that self-charged motivation.  Also you will learn how to get your team as excited about work as they are about playing. Take the online course, or have us come to your location for a private group training for your management team.

When you are managing a team of remote employees, it can be more challenging to keep them motivated, engaged and focused.  You need to know they are self-driven to do their best, even when you can’t be there to see them.  It’s a known fact that, employees who like their job and enjoy going to work, are more dedicated and self motivated.  One way you can ensure that your employees enjoy their job is to make their work more like play.  That doesn’t mean you should send your employees off to go ski the slopes or play a softball game, instead of working for the day.  But there are some key concepts we can apply, from how we play, that can make work more enjoyable for our employees. What is it that makes work just that – other than the obvious – that we get paid to do it?  If you play the guitar for fun, what makes that different from a professional guitar player in a band?  If you like to play tennis with friends, would you feel the same way about it if you had to do it every day for a living?  These key differences are things we can look to integrate into the work lives of our employees, to create enjoyment and self-motivation in their job. When you play, you have choices on when, where and who to play with. We get to make the choices on how long we want to play, who we are going to play with and the location we want to play at.  Give your employees the ability to make these choices themselves.  Allow them to pick teammates to work on a project with.  Let them select locations and times for meetings or projects when possible.  Give them the flexibility to plan their day, week and priorities in what they want to accomplish and when. Playing is relaxing. It allows you to unwind, there is no pressure from others, and you can be yourself.   Be careful not to micro-manage your employees.  If you suffocate them, they will never take it upon themselves to work without your supervision.  If you ever have employees say “I didn’t do xyz because you didn’t tell me to do it,” that’s a good indicator that your employees are over supervised.  If you over supervise them, they will only do things when you specifically tell them to do it and how since this is the pattern that has been set for them.  They will not take any initiative outside of what you tell them. Avoiding a micro-managing style entails managing to the goal rather than the task.  Do you really care if your employee starts at 8AM each day, if they reach the highest numbers in the team?  By allowing them the freedom to make decisions and tasks within pre-set goals you have given them, you allow them to be themselves and work in a way where they can produce the best results.  Give them the bumper guards you want them to use to stay within the bowling lane, and the vision of the 12 pins, but let them decide if they are going to use the curve shot or fast ball to knock down all the pins. Play involves social interaction with peers. We like to play with friends because we get to spend social time with them, share experiences, and create new ones.  This is an especially important concept with remote employees since they can often feel isolated.  Find opportunities for them to work together, collaborate, and generate ideas.  Set aside time during group interactions to allow for “virtual water cooler chat” where employees can share information that may not be work related.  You can help this along by using icebreakers or other team building “fun” activities to kick off meetings or phone calls.  Encouraging your employees to find things in common, and reasons to bond.  It will make them a stronger team and their work more enjoyable.  Research has found that if an employee has a good friend at work, it greatly decreases their likely hood of leaving the company, and increases their motivation. Playing allows you to be creative. Many types of play allow you to be creative such as drawing or trying a new golf swing.  You can provide your employees with creative opportunities by allowing them to come up with creative solutions to issues as a group or individual.  Elect a committee of employees to find new ways to tackle competitors for the group.  Have a team come up with a new process.  Allowing them to stretch their minds will keep them driven and engaged. No one is telling you what to do when you are playing. When you are playing, no one tells you what to do – and if they did, you could decide not to play.  Ask your employees to do things rather than tell them.  You will get the same response, but the fact that you asked them shows a form of respect, and in turn, they will be more receptive to doing it. You have the ability to use your talents when you play. We play at things that we think we have some skill and talent in. It’s one of the reasons we enjoy it.  Find opportunities to utilize your employees’ talents and recognize them.  Have them create best practices to share with the team in areas where they excel.  Nominate employees to be Subject Matter Experts on various topics.  Give them opportunities to attend and participate in seminars and trainings where they can grow their talents. Playing gives us the thrill of winning and accomplishment. We play because we like to win and feel a sense of accomplishment. Whether it’s winning a game or accomplishing a puzzle, these make us feel good.  Find every opportunity to celebrate with your employees.  Highlight successes during any group meeting or call.  Give them positive feedback whenever you see them succeed. By incorporating these aspects of play

Company-wide cohesion is not created with a forced work environment, but rather with good management.  In today’s global workforce, the majority of US companies now have some portion of their workforce that works remotely from their main office.  Companies now need to do more with less, and having employees based near clients cuts down travel costs and provides quicker service.  As well, employees have been proven to be more productive when they can work from a home office, cutting down on commute time and disruptions.  This has created a shift in the old assumptions, that all work must be completed in the same office location. However, some have a hard time releasing those assumptions, limiting their corporation’s ability to stay competitive.  It’s like the refusal to use an automobile, at the turn of the last century, because of a belief that a horse drawn carriage was more effective.   Yes, a horse drawn carriage has some charm to it and was effective for a long time, but eventually they were run over by the automobile and they are no longer a competitive transportation method. You can’t care for an automobile the same way you do for a horse team and the same is true with a telecommuting team.  For a remote workforce model to work, it has to be managed correctly.  If it is not, it can impact communication and collaboration, as well as encourage non-focused employees.  But if it is managed correctly, you will have a much more effective and competitive business model. There are 7 strategies to successfully managing remote/teleworking teams, that differs from regular employee management. Increased Communication – Communication with teleworking employees must be increased. The perception, as expressed by Yahoo, is that you will communicate less with virtual working employees – which will cause the decrease in collaboration and idea sharing that they experienced.  Managers need to make a conscious effort to communicate more with teleworking employees, as well as facilitate increased communication between team members, to foster the same level of idea sharing and collaboration.  Communication should never be delayed because you can’t walk down the hall to chat with someone.  Pick up the phone, send an email or use IM to foster that same chat.  It does take some initial assistance to get employees into this routine, but once that is created, it will happen naturally. Create a Team Community – Managers need to make a more concerted effort to create a team community when their teams work remotely. They need to find opportunities for team members to work together, celebrate together, and spend time talking about non-work related things.  This helps them get to know each other as individuals, so they can work more effectively together, and feel like a part of an important group. Manage to Goals and Outcomes, Not Tasks – Give employees the responsibility to manage themselves by providing the vision and guidance when needed, rather than explicit instructions that are task focused. Think of a team’s goals as a bowling alley.  You want to clearly outline what the goal is – knock down all 10 pins in 2 or less shots by rolling the ball.  And you also want to define the boundaries for them to work within – like setting up the bumper guards in the lane.  However, after that, you want to leave it to them to decide how to get the ball down the lane to accomplish the goal.  Do they roll it fast or slow, do they use curve balls or straight shots, do they bank it off of the bumper guards several times – these decisions should be left in their hands. Enable Team Micro-Monitoring for Accountability – One of the biggest fears when managing a team of remote employees is that they won’t be working and getting the job done when you can’t see them. Unfortunately, this fear can lead to micro-managing employees, which can lead to the direct results you are trying to avoid.  Instead of micro-managing employees, have them micro-monitor themselves.  Have them hold themselves accountable to their goals and have them report their success, or lack of, to you each week.  By clearly setting goals and providing a weekly status report to you, they will hold themselves accountable for their goal attainment.  No one wants to come to their manager and tell them they did a bad job.   Everyone wants to be able to take pride in their achievements.  Having them keep and report their weekly goal attainment status keeps them self-motivated to reach those goals. Ongoing Socratic Coaching – Teleworking employees need to learn how to make the correct decisions in the absence of their manager. The best way to prepare them for this is through Socratic coaching.  This coaching method is designed to coach through self-discovery by asking the employee open ended questions to teach a thinking process that enables them to make better decisions in future. Motivate Rather than Move Employees – What many call motivation is often really movement. It is the carrot and stick approach.  If an employee does something, they receive a reward, or if they don’t, it’s a punishment.  This method must be continuously re-charged, which can quickly fail when employees are not always in the same office.  Instead, it’s important to motivate remote working employees by developing their pride and self-esteem in what they do.   This is self-charged and will deliver longer lasting motivation.  Develop employees pride through giving them ownership of their job through decision making and idea sharing.  Also find ways to give them praise and a sense of accomplishment. Create Trust – Trust is critical for teleworking employees to work well as a team and as individuals. Without daily face-to-face contact, trust is more vulnerable to break-down.  It takes forever to build trust, but can be destroyed in a minute.  Remote employees in particular need to know that their manager respects and trusts them to carry out every day work functions, with little or no supervision.  They also

When the term Micro-Manager is mentioned, it incites painful ideas of a manager that is smothering, controlling and demotivating.  But the conundrum for most managers of field teams or distributed workforces is how to ensure that the job is getting done without over managing.  Because a team of employees, spread across multiple locations, is not as easy to monitor with drop-in daily observations, like a centrally located team, many managers can overcompensate by trying to over control those things that they cannot see.  Manager’s want their teams to reach all set goals, but without smothering them. The key to ensuring management’s happiness with a team’s performance levels as well as the team’s happiness with their ability to spread their wings, is a combination of clearly outlining goals, creating responsibility, and generating individual accountability. Setting the vision & creating expectations A good vision creates inspiration and motivation for a team which creates the catalyst to drive a team’s performance.  When setting a vision, keep it at top level goals, not the specific tasks it takes to reach them (this is covered next).  Because a remote team is more at risk for feeling disconnected from the company, they can tend to focus more time and energy on things that they perceive to be important but that might not really be of the most importance to the team or company.  So setting a vision, and keeping a remote team focused on it, is critical to the team and company’s success. Once the vision is set and communicated, expectations need to be created to define how the remote team will reach that vision.  Every employee wants to do a good job, but they need to know what that looks like to obtain it.  Creating the expectations, lets each employee know what they need to do to be successful, and what the end picture will look like. Creating Responsibility If you give someone the responsibility, they will more likely than not live up to it.  However, if you don’t trust them with the responsibility, then they will never have a chance to reach it.  Take a simple scenario observed at a corporate meeting where all sales people across the country met semi-annually to discuss the new product line and strategy.  At this meeting, for the first 2 days, after every 10 minute break, the regional managers would go out to find their employees and alert them that the break was over and they needed to get back into the meeting room.  As a result, over 75% of the sales reps never returned on time to the meeting and waited for their manager to alert them to return.  They were conditioned that the manager would let them know, so they didn’t need to take the responsibility to look at their watches to see when 10 minutes was up.   This approach removed the responsibility from the sales reps and placed it on the regional managers. On the 3rd and 4th days, the regional managers took a different approach; they didn’t alert anyone when breaks were over and just started the meeting on time – even if everyone was not in the room.  Those that arrived late (after the allotted 10 minutes for the break) had to disrupt the meeting to get to their seat.  Those that arrived late more than once over the 2 days, were pulled aside on the next break for a discussion with the manager on the importance of being on time.  By the end of the 4th day and the last (5th day) of the meeting, not one employee returned late to the meeting after break times.  With the regional managers shifting the responsibility to the sales reps, it freed up their (the managers) time and made the sales reps responsible for their own actions.  The key to this was setting the expectation and holding them accountable if they didn’t reach it. This is a good example of a micro vs non-micro management approach.  Releasing yourself from these micro management tasks frees up your time to focus on more important things.   Increasing team member responsibility creates less management needs. Accountability – Micro-monitoring vs micro-managing Setting clear goals is like a virtual manager that keeps everyone focused without having to constantly look over their shoulder.  However if you set these goals but don’t implement some sort of accountability and tracking system, YOU will ultimately have to be that system.  This means a very time consuming, management intensive process of nagging employees, to inquire on how they are doing toward their goals, and micro-managing to ensure goals are met.  The more you can empower your employees to track their own progress (with a simple delivery method to you), the better results you will get: They will manage themselves They will be more self motivated to reach their goals You will empower them to be responsible for themselves which will demonstrate your respect and trust for them You can free up your time to work with them on more productive items such as their talent development Shared accountability creates a feeling of partnership with each team member.  It also enables people to learn from both their successes and mistakes.  So rather than micro-managing a team, a manager can enable them to micro-monitor their own individual performance. To do this successfully, managers need to implement a tool that helps employees track their own progress.  This tool should also be something that they can deliver to you with minimal effort.  It should not be too time consuming and should be easy to decipher for both you and your employee.  An Excel spreadsheet or Word table are good vehicles, or possibly an automated intranet system if that is available to the company.  These should be completed and submitted weekly and monthly to keep everyone on track.  Here are some things to consider when deciding what goals you would like them to track: Specific – Clearly outline the details of each goal so they know what to strive for.