More businesses are starting to work with remote teams rather than having an office-bound team. The main reason for this is because businesses don’t have to geographically restrict themselves to find talented professionals.
Also, new technology and platforms have enabled many businesses to build and work with a remote team. By building a remote team, you can save your employees from long hours of commuting and give them a better work-life balance.
One of the major hurdles in working with a remote team is communication. A remote team might feel isolated and disconnected, which directly impacts their performance. To enhance their performance, you need to constantly motivate your remote team.
Are you wondering how you can motivate your remote team? This post will talk about some of the most effective strategies to motivate a remote team.
1. Provide Opportunities for Professional Development
One of the best and most effective ways of motivating your remote team is to provide them with opportunities to enhance their skills. The new skills and talent will help your remote workers to grow professionally and become more reliable.
This also indicates that you are invested and interested in the growth of your remote employees. And you value them enough to help them achieve their professional goals. An employee with a better skillset can also deliver better work. So, investing in the professional growth of your remote employees will benefit your business in the long run.
2. Give Due Reward to Top-Performing Employee
If you don’t recognize and appreciate the good work of your team, they may feel neglected, unappreciated, and ignored. And this will eventually affect the quality of their work, impacting the overall success of your business.
Appreciating the work of your remote employee can really motivate them and enhance their performance. From time to time, everyone likes to hear to a few genuine words of appreciation.
But how are you going to acknowledge their work and reward them? There are several options. If your remote employee is consistently delivering an outstanding performance, then you can recognize their hard work by giving them bonuses. Or you can even consider promoting them.
If the overall team is performing exceptionally, ensure to thank them for their valuable contribution. And if a project is doing remarkably well, then don’t forget to make an announcement in your team chat.
The whole idea of acknowledging and appreciating their work is to show your employees that their work is not going unrecognized.
3. Treat Your Remote Team as a Real Team
It’s very important to treat your remote team as a real team with real people. Just like your office-bound employees, you should create a working schedule for your remote team as well. Set a mandatory minimum number of working hours for your remote employees.
You can also set a sign-in time and log off time. The time schedule will encourage your remote team to start their work on time and finish it in the given duration. This will make your remote team feel like they are also an integral part of the organization. And it will motivate them to work even harder to deliver the best results.
Setting a schedule may be difficult for your remote employees if they are spread across different time zones. But tools like Time Doctor can help you to track their working hours.
4. Make Small Talk
When managing a remote team, managers end up communicating only when they have to assign or discuss work. The communication is limited to talking about work, deadlines, and projects. And this can be a huge problem.
Work-related talk with your remote team members won’t help you to understand them as a person. You need to build rapport with them and make them realize that you actually care for them as people.
Aside from just talking about work, ask them how they and their family are. You can even talk about common interests and hobbies and bond over them. It’s a very easy and simple yet effective way of showing your employees that you value them.
Bridging the differences and increasing communication can motivate your remote team to enhance their performance.
5. Set Goals and Give Clear Directions
It’s important that your employees understand the organization’s goals and objectives. Also, every individual employee should be aware of their own duties and responsibilities towards the organization.
You give clear directions to your office-bound employee to achieve the bigger picture. Similarly, you need to create and set goals and responsibilities for your remote employees as well. Also, the goals and clear directions are the foundation for smooth remote working arrangements.
The goals and responsibilities can be key motivators for remote employees to deliver their best.
6. Get in Touch in Person
It really doesn’t matter how far your remote is geographically spread. You should try to get each and every remote employee together for a recreational meeting, at least once a year. If you have a huge team spread around the globe, then you can organize small, regional meetings instead.
This strategy is very strongly recommended for businesses with a majority of team members working remotely. You will be surprised to see how these face-to-face meeting can boost the motivation of your remote team.
These meetings can also result in some inspiring ideas.
Motivate Your Remote Employees and Build a Successful Team
To achieve the organization’s goals and objectives, you need to motivate your employees to work hard and deliver the best. Especially if your employees are remotely working, you need to put in extra effort to motivate them and to build a successful team.
Just because they are working remotely doesn’t mean you cannot bond with them or talk to them about topics other than work. Start with small conversations and communicate frequently to make them feel important. Also, don’t forget to acknowledge their hard work. You can reward them with a raise or bonus. Or you can promote a deserving employee.
Provide opportunities for professional development of your remote employees. You can even arrange for a training program to build their skillsets. You can also motivate them by setting goals and giving them clear directions to achieve their objectives. Lastly, treat them as any other normal team and not as a separate team.
If you know of any other strategies to motivate your remote employees and build a successful team, please share your thoughts in the comments.
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