Ways To Strengthen Your Remote Team

Distance, for the modern professional, is no obstacle to great work. The Millennial age has hard-wired us into our jobs wherever we are – the back of a taxi, waiting at the school gates, the after-dinner slouch on the sofa at home. We’re always connected, even when we’re on the move.

Project managers have adapted to this metamorphosis, commanding swathes of talented people who don’t need to be tied to a physical location. However, it’s still crucial to inspire your workforce; perhaps more so than a traditional, site-based team.

Remote staff deserve to feel like they’re all ‘in it’ together, and here’s how you can encourage them:

Don’t forget to call

Emails are a go-to form of communication, but they’re not without drawbacks. The demands of a day can result in brief, ambiguous emails, with a terse sign off from yours truly. It’s an impersonal communique, one that can make your guiding hand seem like an inbox notification and nothing more.

Pick up the phone, and give them 10 minutes of your time every once in a while. Don’t get right around to business – ask them about their kids, partner, social dalliances...

When talk turns to serious matters, they’ll be able to open up to you, because you’re a good and honest listener. If any problems arise with an assignment, you’ll appear so much more approachable, allowing you to nip their issue in the bud.

Recognise good work and reward it

Employee Of The Month schemes and team targets are popular for a reason. People like to compete against one another, pure and simple. It shakes the cobwebs out of their work, lifting them into the sphere of a recognised individual who’s actually making a difference.

Although there may not be an office chart for the highest achievers, it’s possible to reward those who pull their weight on a project, and do a little extra to help it succeed. Use online reward systems, like Perkbox or Amazon vouchers, to incentivise your team. And make sure everyone knows who’s nailed that coveted top spot each month.

Simplify their project management

Anxiety breeds disaffection. If your freelancers or contractors are struggling with their project management tools, they can lose sight of their goal. Working remotely can make a person feel isolated and in-too-deep if something goes wrong. They’ll want to know what a client has approved, exactly, and the timeframes they have to do it in.

Skwish, the free task management platform, is perfectly hewed to a calm work schedule. It informs team members of upcoming tasks, collects your shared comments in one place and maps out any vital, project-related information for all to see. So your contributors will be clued up on an assignment, with everything in front of them.

Knowledge really is power; the worries of a workforce will drip away once they get a handle on your aims, with plenty of support to draw on. By fusing these suggestions into your management technique, the whole team will come together, knocking client demands out of the park.

Take a look at Skwish’s features for streamlined, remote project management, and make that inspirational form of change that people respond to…