How to manage remote employees effectively

Your team members want to work remotely. But are you equipped to manage workers across multiple locations?

Remote work isn’t going away, so if you aren't an experienced manager of remote teams, take this opportunity to sharpen your skills and become the remote manager your team deserves.

Let’s dive in and look at some of the best strategies and tips that'll help you become a successful remote manager.

See also: A brief introduction to remote work for transitioning businesses

3 common challenges for managing teams remotely

Making the transition to remote work can feel difficult because it requires a change in routine. It’s also harder to engage with people who aren’t in the same office as you. Everything from communication to team cohesion can fall apart if you aren’t careful.

Here are some common challenges to keep in mind when managing remote workers:

1. Communication 

When it comes to remote work, communication is crucial. 

While software and computerized apps can streamline communication, it can still be challenging to gauge tone and non-verbal cues through text-based communication. 

Here are some strategies to overcome this issue: 

• Encourage the use of video conferencing or phone calls for important conversations rather than direct messaging. 

• Try to use adjectives and friendly language to create a warm remote work environment where employees feel comfortable sharing their opinions. 

• Provide all necessary information, including deadlines, documentation, and task outlines, in one central location to avoid misunderstandings.

2. Monitoring productivity 

Ensuring remote employees are meeting their work goals can be difficult. 

Remote employees have more freedom and flexibility to plan their workdays than in-office workers. 

As such, remote managers need to be able to establish clear expectations and goals for each employee without micromanaging. 

How can you overcome this hurdle? Take a look:

• Use productivity-tracking software tools to oversee how much work is being done by each employee throughout the day and where their time is being spent. 

• Create an open communication system where employees are encouraged to give honest feedback about how well they’re able to work remotely.  

• Avoiding constantly surveilling your employees’ activities, as this can signal distrust. 

3. Maintaining team cohesion 

Building and sustaining team cohesion can be challenging when a manager is unable to interact with their team face-to-face. 

Check out these tips for creating a cohesive, remote team: 

• Set up virtual team-building activities to encourage social interaction, such as virtual book clubs or online gaming events. 

• Prioritize collaboration on work activities by occasionally assigning the same task to two to three team members and encouraging them to work on it together. 

• Organize regular online catch-ups to give remote employees a chance to meet with their colleagues in a more casual way. 

It can take time to adjust to the changes transitioning to remote work brings and find a new rhythm that works for both you and your employees. 

The good news is that as long as you have a solid plan in place and communicate clearly with your remote team, productivity and profits are unlikely to take a hit.

What skills do you need to manage remotely? 

Remote managers need a unique set of skills to meet the demands of leading a team of remote employees. You’ll need to be technologically proficient, adaptable to changing needs, and an expert at time management. 

Let’s look at these in more detail. 

Technological proficiency

To successfully manage remote employees, it’s important to be proficient with technology and have a solid understanding of the tools and software your team uses. 

If you find this is a struggle for you or your skills need some brushing up, there are several ways to improve your technical knowledge. For instance, you can: 

• Take an online course or tutorial. 

• Use software like Remote to integrate your entire HR tech stack, sync employee data across all your systems, and connect the tools your team needs so you only need to use one platform. 

Adaptability 

Remote managers need to be highly adaptable since the environment and challenges they face are constantly evolving. 

This means being able to easily pivot strategies and approaches to your managerial style to address your team’s needs and concerns as soon as they arise. 

Here’s how to do this: 

• Stay up-to-date with the latest trends and developments in remote work to help you adjust your strategy based on common mistakes and others’ successes. 

• Don’t remain stagnant. Instead, be willing to experiment with new approaches to see if they’ll help your team grow. 

Time management 

Remote managers need to manage their own time effectively and help their team members stay on track. 

This can be especially challenging when working with employees who may be in different time zones. 

Here are some helpful strategies to help you improve your time management skills:  

• Establish regular check-ins and feedback sessions to address concerns about workload and deadlines. 

• Use software like Remote to help you manage workers in different time zones and ensure they meet their deadlines.

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12 tips for managing teams remotely like a pro

“Being a great manager and being a great remote manager are nearly identical. You don’t need to smell people to manage them.” - Remote CEO, Job van der Voort

Good management in a remote setting requires the same fundamentals that drive success in an office setting. There are some specific differences, especially related to the challenge of building connections and culture within a remote team.

Here is a list of actionable tactics straight from Job's own experience. You can implement this advice to improve your remote team management.

1. Focus 1:1 calls on connection, not work 

“Have regular 1:1 calls with all your reports. The point of these calls is to check in with the person, not the work. What that means in practice is that you don’t spend that time reviewing work — you can do that async.”

Regularly check in with your employees, but don’t do so to only gauge their progress on projects. Yes, work is important. But you can also use these calls as a chance to build relationships and connections with remote employees. Think of them as an opportunity to ensure your team members feel supported and show them that you care about who they are as individuals. 

Ask the following questions: 

• How is their life outside of work? 

• What did they do/have planned for the weekend? 

• Do they have what they need to do their work well? 

• Are they happy with the work they’re doing? 

• What would make their lives easier?

“You spend the 1:1 time coaching, unblocking, helping them grow, providing feedback, discussing plans and doubts, etc. Feedback first, then strategic, then tactical. Many managers make the mistake of doing this the other direction.”

One study shared that 69.5% of employees would be happier if they had deeper connections with their colleagues. The same study also found a relationship between workplace connections and strong company cultures. 

Asking these questions shows that you’re interested in their day-to-day lives and that you want to improve them. This helps you build a solid relationship with your remote employees, increasing their happiness and building a positive remote environment as a result. 

2. Design meetings with efficiency in mind 

A study from Atlassian found that meetings are ineffective 72% of the time.

What does this mean for managing teams remotely?

It means that team meetings should only occur when absolutely necessary. 

You can make remote meetings more efficient by: 

• Reducing their length and frequency

• Always having an agenda (but keeping it light) 

• Having a strict start and end time 

It’s important to remember that face-to-face interactions should be reserved for building relationships. If the entire point of a meeting item is to alert someone to a task or explain the goal of a project, create a document instead. 

3. Communicate in public instead of in private 

A good manager leads by example. If you’re constantly direct-messaging your team, they’ll do the same. 

This can be counterproductive when trying to build a strong sense of community among your team members and can worsen the feelings of isolation that remote employees often experience. 

“Work and communicate in public for everything but personal matters…this makes you so much more accessible, visible and sets a great example that reinforces asynchronous standards.”  

Some advantages of communicating in public include the following: 

• It ensures that information is accessible to everyone. 

• It saves employees time when searching for key information. 

• It cuts down on long response times.

Personal feedback is the obvious exception to this rule. It’s a best practice to avoid critiquing team members in public channels, keeping feedback private instead.

4. Delegate the work, not documentation  

All team members (including managers) need to participate in creating documentation. 

“Don’t delegate minor documentation tasks if you’re directly involved. No one is too big to write documentation. No matter your seniority or rank, you should be documenting.”

Documentation belongs to everyone, so make changes where necessary instead of asking someone else to. If you’re not the owner of a document and unsure whether you can edit it, make a comment suggesting a change.

5. Monitor workload diligently 

“Working remotely makes it much easier to overwork, and not everyone will naturally bring this up or even make it visible, you have to ask.” 

In the office, it’s often easy to tell if an employee is taking on too much work. For instance, they might spend late nights at the office or eat lunch at their desk as they continue to work.

As remote managers only communicate via video chat, instant messaging, and email, tracking their workloads can be difficult.  

Here’s what you can do to combat this issue: 

• Regularly check in with your employees about their workloads and working hours, and ask them if they feel overwhelmed by their work. 

• Pay attention to team members who are constantly working overtime, and work with them to determine how you can lessen their workloads.

• Use Remote to track employee time to keep tabs on their workload and their productivity in real time.

• Learn how to manage stress for remote workers, then operationalize processes and programs that support managers to take better care of their team's mental health.

6. Encourage employees to take breaks and time off 

Remote employees might not take breaks when they need them, which can seriously impact their productivity levels. 

A recent study found that  “…work-related activities during a scheduled break increases fatigue.” 

“When you find that people are overtired, overworked or just need a break — give them that break. Take their work/worries away and let them take off. Don’t postpone this, do it right away. Rest is essential.”

Strategies to use include the following: 

• If an employee seems tired, take a task off their agenda for the day. 

• Schedule “tech-free” lunch and coffee breaks. 

Here at Remote, we offer unlimited time off. We also enforce a minimum number of days that workers have to have a break per year to ensure our team members get the rest they need.

7. Be approachable and responsive 

“A good manager is available to their team. That means they can make time for everyone.”

In the office, just coming to work makes you available. With distributed teams, you may have to do more.

You need to schedule interactions and be available on the fly.

You need to show you’re available by communicating through your established channels, and you need to respond to private questions when your team reaches out via DM.

High-performing teams feel heard and respected. Don’t let them think you consider them a burden or annoying. Don’t ignore their communications.

That said, don’t break your own time off to answer work questions outside of an actual emergency. 

Your team takes their cues from you. 

Respond to work emails and Slack messages on your days off, and they’ll feel like they have to as well. Give them the tools and support they need to be autonomous to make work easier for both of you.  

You can also use Remote to set and share your work schedule:

That way, remote employees know when they can contact you. You don’t have to worry about being disturbed when you’re busy or off the clock. 

8. Limit the number of direct reports 

You might be thinking, “I don’t have time to do this with everyone!” 

It’s true that you can only do so much. But it’s a problem with a solution: limit the number of direct reports you have.

“You should not have many reports. More than eight is really hard to manage well. Exceptions to this are very experienced people, but everyone needs a coach or someone to help them get unstuck.”

If you have too many direct reports, look into promoting one of your team members to manage a sub-team under you or bring in some outside help. 

Budgetary constraints can make this difficult, but if you don’t limit your direct reports, you’ll quickly become overwhelmed.

“If you have more than about eight reports, split the team up and either add hierarchy or some other structure that makes it so everyone has a manager that has time for them.

9. Encourage team building and socialization  

Remote teams don’t have the luxury of hanging out with each other every day. They don’t have a shared hometown or many common experiences. 

Instead, you need to facilitate these connections.

“Connect individually at a deeper level, i.e. don’t neglect to bond emotionally with the people you work with. This will make it more fun and easier to work together — especially when times are tough.”

Connect with all individuals, not just those you have the most in common with. 

You should be interviewing diverse pools of candidates for every open role and hiring accordingly. 

When you have a diverse team from around the world, it’s fun to discover the unexpected things you have in common while building relationships that would have been impossible in a traditional office setting.

10. Keep feedback regular and actionable

As a manager, providing feedback is essential. The more specific your feedback, the better the results will be.

“Make feedback highly actionable by linking and documenting.”

Here’s the best way to do this: 

• Empower your team to correct their mistakes by providing links to information and training lessons. 

• Record notes from your feedback session so your employees are clear on what they need to do moving forward. 

• Share feedback with Remote to ensure employees can easily access your thoughts and opinions in a central location. 

• Be as specific as possible with your feedback. Avoid ambiguous statements like “Keep up the good work.”

11. Set clear and specific expectations

Setting clear and specific expectations for your remote employees is important because it outlines what they need to do to succeed. For example, if you’re managing a team of remote customer service representatives, your expectations might be to respond to all customer inquiries within 24 hours. 

Here are some tips for setting expectations for remote employees: 

• Clearly define the different roles and responsibilities within your team to avoid confusion. 

• Discuss expectations with employees to ensure total clarity and understanding. 

• Set employee goals that align with the company’s values and expectations. 

With employees in countries all over the world, Remote has plenty of experience in successfully onboarding remote workers. Find out how to use our global HR platform to successfully manage an international workforce.

12. Create effective communication guidelines for international teams 

Managing teams remotely can be tricky for any business leader. But throwing international employees into the mix can make things even more challenging. You’re dealing with overlapping time zones, varying work cultures, and different communication preferences. 

This is why clear communication guidelines are vital for international teams. Clarify how and when to communicate to ensure everyone’s on the same page — no matter where they’re located. You can do this through the following means:

• Providing written guidelines for company protocols, like lodging complaints, communicating with fellow colleagues, and taking time off work

• Outlining who to contact for certain queries or issues

• Clarifying the communication tools you use (including whether certain channels are used for specific types of communication) 

Empower your team by learning how to manage remote workers 

Managing teams remotely is no easy feat. To do it well, you need good communication skills, the right technology, and the ability to set clear boundaries and expectations. Follow these tactics, and you won’t just be the best remote manager your employees have worked for — you’ll be the best manager they have ever had. Period.

And to take your remote team management to the next level, use a global HR platform like Remote. We can help you manage your team members wherever they are in the world. Book a demo to see how it works! 

Note that Remote CEO and co-founder Job van der Voort regularly shares tips for remote leaders on his Twitter account. Follow him for more advice!

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