Team-building While Working Remotely

Ever since the pandemic began, there has been a huge spike in the number of people working from home. The pandemic forced many companies to adopt a new way of working. This gave rise to many complications like the lack of efficient communication with the team and the inability of certain individuals to cope up with the change. Nevertheless, people still found their way through these dark times and figured out ways to build, handle a team, and practice some team-building while working remotely.

Although the idea of having to work from your home may sound appealing and even ideal at first, working online can turn out to be quite complicated and taxing at times. The communication and engagement within the workspace diminish significantly, which affects the morale of the team. The same thing can be observed in education. Students may love the idea of attending school from the comfort of their rooms but this doesn’t help them learn as effectively as they do in a classroom. Again, communication and engagement plays an important role in this. Along with which, the presence of peers also plays an equally important role in their working psychology. While working remotely you might face multiple team related issues, here are some of them and how to deal with them.

The most prominent problem that arises while working in a remote environment is definitely the lack of interaction among the team. And this is extremely important, especially for team-building while working remotely. Less interaction among the employees is bound to adversely affect the working environment and the productivity of the team as a whole. A lack of physical engagement also demoralizes the team significantly. As for differences in work ethics, people tend to work better when they are around people who are also working as it drives their collective motivation. Effective communication is a challenge while working remotely. Discussions over text messages tend to create misunderstandings and calls can be distracting when you are making them to multiple people.

Another problem faced during such situations is the lack of enthusiasm from the employees. A whole new working system, fresh challenges, the collision of home and work life, etc. can lead to an employee not being able to focus as well as they would otherwise. The distractions that come with the comfort of one’s house can lead to being inconsistent, unmotivated, and stressed. This is only compounded by technical issues like unstable internet connections and inadequate hardware.

Team building while working remotely

Keep your team together

The first step in team-building while working remotely is to make sure the team still feels like a team. The problems mentioned above can be solved by regularly involving the team in active conversations and video conferences. Just like you would in an office by engaging your employees to update you on their progress, you can do the same thing by engaging with them online so that they still feel the bond of the team although they are not physically in your presence. While asking them for their progress it would be a wise choice to update them on what you are doing as well. You must show them that you are working equally efficiently so that they are also inspired and compelled to work.

Engagement

Remote workers will become more efficient when leaders or managers set ideal timings for regular communication. Establish a rule of engagement, and enable your team members to have an open communication channel. Let your team know the best time and manner they can reach you during working hours, for example, let the team members know that you are free during the evenings for video calls or phone calls and if in case of an emergency during the earlier hours they can text you.

Scheduling

Another aspect that is highly important as well as challenging for team-building while working remotely. For a global team working remotely, one of the biggest challenges is scheduling a meeting or a conference call due to the difference in time zones. So, how can you solve this problem? First find a time that works well for everyone, you can make your team take a poll and decide what time is best suited for all members of the team. To keep up with this schedule, make use of calendar apps. This helps make the process of scheduling a meeting less stressful.

Starting your day with a video conference in order to discuss your goals for the day and ending the day with another conference to evaluate the day’s results and productivity is a great option. There are many tools online that will help you make scheduling calls, online meetings, and video conferencing with your remote team easier. These tools not only help make scheduling for you easy but also help team member’s schedules become more flexible. A few you can use are Zoom, Google Meet, GoToMeeting, Cisco Webex, and BlueJeans. While you can use Google Calendar to ensure everyone on your team is reminded of the meeting in time.

Building trust

While remote leaders often worry about the completion of tasks by team members, team members may have a range of concerns, which include the constant feeling of uncertainty. This includes fear of being paid on time or at all in some cases. And even losing their job.

As a leader being transparent can help you build trust with your team members and any other parties concerned. Do not just assign tasks to team members, instead invest time and energy to help train and develop your team. This investment in their performance will help build trust among team members. So prioritize spending time on learning and helping your team develop. Also, take the advice and suggestions of team members and try to include every team member, when working on any tasks.

Assessment

As a remote team leader, assessment helps you determine whether team members possess the necessary skill set needed to work from home effectively and plan accordingly. You can assess your team members by making them take a performance review. Ask co-workers to provide feedback for the individual concerned. Or ask them to self-evaluate and give their own opinion. Establish a daily call system with your team members. This can help you better understand the working style of each team member – whether they like to work more independently or are highly collaborative, etc.

It helps to regularly review the new processes and methods of work you have put in place. This will help you see what works and what doesn’t so that you can then revise the processes to increase productivity.

Individual circumstances and cultural needs

As a leader, you must be fully aware of the personal needs of the people in your team. For example, when a remote working parent has to care for their children. You also need to keep in mind the cultural needs of your team members when working in a cross-cultural team. Often the most common issue is communication. You need to carefully set the tone for communication with cross-cultural team members by recognizing the needs of people of different cultural backgrounds and ensuring the rest of the team understand it too. This will help prevent any confusion and accidents in the future as well as promote a healthy respect for the dynamics of a cross-cultural team.

Recognize that every individual member of your team has a significantly different working style. Some prefer detailed and systematic guidance while others like to work more autonomously. But the most important element of team building is acknowledging the differences of your team members.

Getting accustomed to a new team-building process

In order to adapt to the growing change, you need to focus on being accustomed to a new team-building process. They are bound to come with complications at first due to their fresh implementation, however by constant, it will become easier with time. Again, the most important step is to actively involve everyone in your team and focus on interaction on an individual level too. The more you initiate conversations and get involved with the entire team, the more the chances are of growing a better remote work relationship and environment. Working will not be the same as before, therefore you need to establish some new ground rules and new ways for team-building while working remotely.

Realize that your team is no longer working in an office and therefore keep your expectations grounded by that fact. You have to reinforce clear-cut goals, make the rules such that they are neither as strict as in an office nor are they too lax for the employees to be too laid back.

A sudden wave of change has rocked the foundation of everything we know and practice in our work life, and in other aspects as well. It has also shown us that we can adapt and that we need to. Although the pandemic made working and coordinating from home very challenging, we have still managed to become accustomed to the new rules and will continue to do so.