How to motivate a remote team
/Remote work is now the norm. This is one thing that the COVID has pushed us to and has proven that it works. Companies that never did remote work (including us at Kaz) are now fully functional and thriving with remote work. And remote work is here to stay as a work model - it’s very likely that every company in the world (including us) would keep some form of remote work in their process. Everything has a downside - and for remote work it’s the lack of the rest the team near you that starts having an effect. Over longer period of time motivation for work becomes a big stumbling block. And for manager and team leads it’s not an easy problem to solve. But we’ve found that it’s not an impossible problem either.
“77% of remote employees say they’re more productive when working from home”
You don't have to be next to someone's desk in order to feel the energy of a team that can work together and accomplish goals. As a manager, you can motivate and inspire your remote team just as well as you would if they were all sitting in your office.
Here are our top tips for motivating your team remotely.
1. Set clear expectations for your team
We are used to taking visual ques from all our interactions, these ques form much of our understanding in any conversation. A remote team misses a lot of these visual ques in an interaction over a zoom call or worse over an audio only call. So it's vitally important that common understanding of expectations is reached. We tell all our customers to set aside a slot at the end of every meeting to just go over the main points of the meeting and check that the both sides agree on what the expectations are.
2. Be transparent about what is happening
When your remote team feels out of the loop, they are less likely to want to engage. People are motivated by being informed about what is going on around them, so tell them! If they miss something, feel free to say "let me go over that thing" or "you should hear about a new development that is happening". This is especially true for software teams, as software development is typically a very collaborative effort and if the remote team feels that they are left out of decisions, changes in requirements etc. it will create a loss of motivation and just make the overall process of software development difficult.
3. Communicate regularly
The remote work experience will be a lot better if there are regular communication channels between the remote team and the office. Some ways to keep them in the loop is by having weekly meetings that are open to all members of the remote team, sending out emails with important updates on new features or scheduled changes, etc. Asking them regularly how they are doing, where they are on particular tasks or deliveries.
There are many other ways you can motivate your remote team. Some of them are time off or bonuses, but at the end it is about working with people who enjoy what they do - And if they are happy to work for you, you will get an effort that goes beyond the job requirements.
For small companies this might seem like a lot of overhead, but it is vitally important for the longer term.
“2020 has seen a 9% increase in Google search interest related to “team-building””
