Four important tips to manage your remote teams effectively

Entrepreneurs and startups nowadays are benefiting from remote talent – it’s just one of the obvious lessons that we’ve learned in a pandemic. Scaling a virtual team is easier and more cost-effective than growing in-house employees (both are valuable, of course) but not everyone is utilizing them.

The benefits are straightforward, you have access to a diverse range of people, high-quality talent, and you can get them on board at a much faster rate. Leveraging remote teams allows you to produce the volume of output that you need without necessarily paying the expensive local market price tag. 

It doesn’t have to be impersonal either. With culture being at the forefront of how people are choosing the companies they work for, you can use this as a filtering method to find people who have the same values as your company. They’re not only a remote-based team, but they’re a legitimate extension of your company. 

Four important tips to manage your remote teams effectively

We at Penbrothers have learned a lot from our time in helping clients build their remote teams. Armed with this experience, we’d like to share the four most important tips for startups looking to scale with remote teams.

Adapt management style to the virtual environment 

Managing a remote team requires flexibility in your leadership approach. There’s no making up for the lack of person-to-person contact with your team and we’ve found providing an environment where your team can be flexible and grow works best.

Instead of micromanaging, develop a mindset of trust and confidence and let your team deliver the results! 

Reward and measure performance (not attendance)

Performance metrics are keys to success and focusing on deliverables over attendance is much more productive. With your remote team, it’s impossible to track every single team member and monitor what they’re doing.

However, the output is something you can measure. Set your team’s KPIs/OKRs and give your staff the freedom to manage their own time in their own way. 

Utilize the power of shifting schedules

We think it’s safe to say that the “9-5” workday doesn’t exist when your teammates are in a different timezone – this can be an advantage. When you work with your team on different schedules, you can actually get more done. It will force teams to really get into detail about what needs to be done — leading to better prioritization of tasks and productivity. 

Document processes for faster growth

Speaking from experience, teams really do work best when they know what to do and this is especially the case when your team is remote. Processes provide that backbone or structure that people use as a guide. Create manuals and handbooks that document exactly how you want things done.

Also, make it simple and easy to understand! This will expedite your startup’s growth by making it easier to add new teammates without confusion or miscommunication. 

If your startup is serious in scaling and expansion, you may want to consider developing a team of remote talent to really help you get to the next level. Penbrothers is offering a free demo that can let you search for your ideal candidate on our platform – all in a few clicks and no credit cards necessary!

Try out our HUB Demo here.