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Managing a remote team is more complex and quite different from overseeing your traditional in-office employees. For example, you won’t be able to ensure an instantaneous response to questions from your staff members like you can for in-house peers. Usually, it can take a considerable amount of time to reply to emails, provide and receive feedback, and more. Similarly, it becomes more challenging to keep track of the progress of workers in your remote team.
Although the concept of remote work is rapidly gaining popularity with many companies switching to remote work permanently. Analytics have shown that 80 percent of global employees prefer to work from home. However, it is still not preferred by most managers due to remote team management issues such as varying time zones, inconsistent internet speeds, and communication difficulties.
Read on to learn some tips on how you can effectively manage your remote digital marketing team.
Develop A Strong Company Culture
Having a clear and strong company culture encourages loyalty, commitment, and dedication from your employees. Your employee handbook, contractual agreements, company policies, and your management style should be built on this culture.
This is only possible if you effectively convey your company’s vision and mission statement to your employees on day one of employment. This will provide the perfect foundation for employees/management and employee/employee interactions, as well as handling outside business transactions.
The key to fostering a positive culture for your remote company is to allow for the freedom and flexibility of your virtual team while still ensuring accountability. This will allow you to attract employees who are a natural fit to your organization’s structure and share its core beliefs and ambitions.
Use The Right Tools
There are different types of tools available to help you effectively manage your remote teams. These include tools for time tracking performance, online communication, and task allocation.
Communication Tools
Proper communication is a key element of any collaborative effort. Instant-messaging tools provide an effective way for communication among employees through text messages and video calls. Although most people are comfortable talking through text, we recommend incorporating video call sessions for team meetings as they are a good way to show your employees that they have your undivided attention. It also allows your remote marketing team members to see the friendly faces they work with every day.
There are different kinds of free tools you can use to make video calls such as Zoom, Teams, Skype, and Google Hangouts on a daily basis.
Productivity Tracking Tools
Generally, remote workers are more productive as compared to office-based employees. However, it is still a good idea to use productivity tracking software to organize and track your marketing team’s workload. For instance, you can use tools like Time Doctor, Desk Time, etc. to monitor your employees’ work productivity and time given to complete a task.
Task Allocation Tools
To ensure that each team member is crystal clear on their responsibilities, using a task-allocation system is a good option. Such tools allow you to assign tasks to each member of your marketing team with specific instructions and due dates. This way, everyone will be informed about who is working on a particular project, who should deliver what, and when.
Collaborative Working Tools
The free software provided by Google such as Drive, Docs, and Sheets is a great way for people to work together at the same moment even when they are at separate locations. Google Sheets allow for many people to work on the same spreadsheet at the same time. For instance, Sheets can be used to save SEO keyword information for each client’s content. Team members can regularly update the information directly onto the sheet without delays.
Similarly, Docs are great for collaboration as they allow for multiple contributors to comment, write notes to one another, make amends, and highlight sections. You can switch between different versions at any time to view all changes made by individual contributors by viewing the version history. It also shows you who did what and why, as well as revert to any version you want.
Hold Everyone Accountable
A successful remote digital marketing team is result-orientated and has a clear set of goals and deadlines it has to follow. A major part of holding everyone in your team accountable is to ensure that they know which professional and personal goals they should be working towards.
Setting KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and holding one-on-one evaluations two to three times each year is equally important for remote companies and office-based ones. As a team manager, you must ensure that every member of your marketing team is working towards clear targets.
Also, rewarding their performance with bonus rewards, if appropriate, is a great way to keep them motivated.
Meet At Least Once Or Twice A Year
Finally, as a team manager, you must make sure that you arrange a team meeting or get-together to celebrate your successes. Having your remote team members meet over lunch or for a coastal trip in the summer is a great way for interaction. It might help foster connections in your team, enabling them to build a perfect work colleague relationship.
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Worktually helps you hire the right employee for your company. Partnering with us will help you smoothen out the tedious process of posting job ads to hire a candidate. You can contact us for more information about our services.
