Remote operations
Marc Prempain
15 April 2024
Share this article
Share this article
With the vast emergence of working from home, remote meetings have become an essential part of a workflow. Since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, as many as 88% of the organizations worldwide made it mandatory or encouraged their employees to work from home, completely changing the way they manage their day-to-day operations, collaborate, and conduct meetings, all moving to a remote environment. What are the different rules that apply when you have a meeting via video conferencing versus a meeting in a designated office, and what tools can help successfully manage a remote team?
When preparing to conduct a successful remote team call or a video conference, you need to keep in mind three essential pillars to the meeting – connection, collaboration, and feedback.
Firstly, to avoid any glitches and unnecessary stress during your call, ensure all your equipment is well-connected and runs smoothly in advance. Knowing your software and hardware well can help you use your tools more effectively, and resolve problems quicker, so try checking equipment prior to the start of your meetings.
Is the microphone working? Can you hear the other participants? Does your camera work? Can you share your screen without delays? Make sure you enter the call early, so you can set up all relevant equipment and know whether to use an alternative solution or call in a remote expert in advance.
Once in the meeting, don’t miss a chance to connect with remote colleagues and help them make their presence felt in the room. Encouraging small talk or an interactive activity at the beginning of the call helps people feel more connected to other team members, engaged in the meeting, and eager to collaborate efficiently. Remember, some people prefer not to use cameras during a video call, hence it is important for the managers of remote teams to introduce everyone before the meeting starts.
The most important thing you can do when you conduct a remote meeting is set expectations and remind everyone of the goals at the start of the meeting. Have a plan with what you want to cover and stick to that plan – it is better to share the agenda ahead of time to those who will participate, so that everyone can prepare.
After the call finishes, send a follow-up email recapping the main points of the meeting and next steps. This increases the effectiveness of the meeting and reinforces the importance of remote meetings to your remote team. Always give them a chance to leave their feedback regarding how they felt about the meeting and whether any improvements could be made in the future. It is vital in remote working relationships that you are clear and outcome-oriented with performance objectives and expectations for individuals and teams.
Together with the shift to more remote business operations, it has been noted that the use of remote collaboration tools has gone up significantly – and for good reason. 90% of employees find digital tools extremely useful for remote team collaboration, which has been shown in an increase in employee productivity up to 30%.
The best thing you can do is apply a combination of tools, where each of them relates to a certain task, making them a perfect match. Communication and collaboration will be far more engaging and efficient for everyone in your remote team once they have the right solutions to do their job in place. The most common remote-collaboration solutions that can enrich your project management during remote work are:
Managing remote teams requires a different skill set than managing a team that interacts face-to-face. With most remote workers doing their work from their homes, sometimes even from different countries and time zones, it might be harder to establish strong relationships between the employees, across teams, and with the company’s managers, CEOs, and founders. In fact, Google found that since 2020 there has been a 9% increase in their search interest related to “team-building” – it is hence very important to facilitate team building for your remote team.
20% of remote workers identify communication as their main obstacle in working from home. It’s key to provide one-on-one time with all of your team members, ideally face-to-face. Make them recurring and regular, as check-ins as such are a chance for remote workers to discuss matters they are not comfortable sharing in a group setting, making them feel more valued and important. Encourage multichannel communications with each employee within platforms that are suitable for them. Encourage them to reach out via written channels to discuss simpler or smaller issues that don’t require a virtual face-to-face conversation.
Finding the right work-life balance while working from home can be quite difficult, thus you should try to emphasize the importance of life outside of work. Encourage team members to create a group project that anyone on the team can participate in for boosted collaboration and dedicate a part of your time for team members to discuss what they’ve been doing outside of work each week.
The best thing a remote team manager can do is to practice empathy, as well as have patience and compassion both in their actions and communication. Let loose a little and be understanding – remote work environment should remain professional and productive, but leave some room for humanizing and humor. Try to cultivate an open and accepting environment where employees can discuss struggles and work toward a solution. In the end, this new remote reality is still fairly new for everyone, and different people cope with it in their own individual ways.
Although some of us have recently started going back into the office, many places still prefer to stay within the hybrid work model, allowing the employees to work both from the home office and the regular office alternately. Today, 92% of remote employees expect to continue working from home at least once a week, whereas 80% expect to work remotely at least three days a week. It is thus important to continue to strive to ameliorate your remote team management on a daily basis. Creating a productive workplace that caters to various individual needs of your remote team requires commitment, creative thinking, and the right balance that will keep them engaged and interested every step of the way.
Join our newsletter to keep up to date with the latest news in the visual support industry.