Companies whose employees are working from remote locations face various challenges. One of these challenges is an optimum collaboration of the distributed team. The team leaders and managers find it very difficult to efficiently execute team-based projects.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, most companies are preferring to work from remote to maintain social distance and keep their employees safe. Here, in this article, we are going to discuss various tips and tricks that will help you to manage and efficiently collaborate with the distributed team.
1.Know Your Team Members
The best way to improve the collaboration of a distributed team is to start interacting with your team members. When you know your team members very well, then it will become easy for you to manage your distributed team.
Also, you should encourage your team members to stay in touch with each other. This tip will further help you to achieve your objectives without any problem. In the ideal case, the best-distributed team is formed by the team members who have worked collectively earlier.
If it is not so, then it is important to organize a face to face meetings with team members. These occasional meetings will provide a chance for team members to efficiently collaborate and know each other in person.
2.Create And Adhere To Rules
When the team members are working remotely, then team members may not much rely on the company and it will discourage the engagement. To avoid this problem, the company should create strict rules and policies for working together.
The team leaders should organize meetings in which they should motivate team members for teamwork. You should take suggestions from your team members for creating rules for a team member. When your team members are involved in it, then they will feel motivated and they do not break these rules.
3.Encourage Communication
The team leaders and managers should communicate with their distributed team. It will make them feel like part of the organization when they are working remotely. Also, they should motivate the team members to efficiently communicate among themselves.
When the team members are working collaboratively at the office, then they can easily remind each other about the task that they forgot. In the case of a distributed team, a communication gap starts forming and it affects productivity.
Thus, by putting efforts into improving the communication among team members, the productivity of employees can be increased when they are working from a remote location.
Every team member in the distributed team should know that it is very important to help others and do not hesitate while asking for help. Not just team members, but team leaders should also communicate efficiently with their teams.
In case, you are busy doing some tasks, then let the team members know that you will help them after completing your task. But make sure that you help them after some time.
4.Share Updated Data
Mostly, the team members of distributed teamwork in different time zones. It is one of the biggest barriers is an optimum collaboration between different team members.
Though employees agree to quickly respond to the emails, communicate frequently, but due to different work times, they may not be able to do so. The best way to avoid the communication gap is to form a team within the same time zone. But it is difficult to do.
Another solution is to start using a project management tool. You should use this tool for identifying the status of tasks performed by different team members. One of the biggest advantages of using the virtual task board is that all team members can have a look at the updated data.
5.Organize Regular Meetings
Organizing regular meetings for distributed teams is very difficult, especially for those teams in which the team members are working across the world. But it is possible to hold regular live meetings.
These kinds of meetings will help in improving collaboration among team members. You should convey to your team that a live meeting is organized for a specific date and specific time.
6.Real-Time Videos
The team leaders should often communicate with all their team members working remotely through video calls. If the higher level of staff is working at the office, then they should do a video call to the team members and show them what is going inside the office.
This kind of trick will make the people who are working remotely part of the organization. These kinds of video calls should not be related to the work. Make sure that your team members enjoy these kinds of meetings.
Final Words:
These are few top ideas to efficiently manage your distributed team and improve their work efficiency. If you are facing any problem in managing your team members working remotely, then consider implementing the above-mentioned points.