Motivating Teams Working Remotely

This article by Pilar Orti first appeared on WorkingWise.co.uk on 25 March 2020. WorkingWise.co.uk has been acquired by 55/Redefined.

Are you a manager who has suddenly found yourself managing a remote team? Here are some tips on how you can manage your team from afar.

Make Changes to the Language You Use

Change the conversation you have with staff, so that it does not focus so much on the measurement of work done. For example, you could ask people about how they are organising their time, find out how they are managing in the home/working setting, and see if there is anything needed to support them in their work, rather than focusing on what they have done. Make it clear that they can ask for help if they need it, and encourage them to speak up if there is anything they need to get their job done.

Show Empathy

Try not to overwhelm staff by putting lots of pressure on them in the first days of remote working. Instead, try to understand the context in which people are working and bear in mind that timetables and schedules will change as employees balance homeworking with childcare, and other caring responsibilities. It might not, for instance, be possible to just convert meeting times into conference call times. Managers need to remain flexible. “Trust is important as is giving people the space they need,” says Pilar. “There is a real need for empathy.” Don’t make people feel you are checking up on them all the time. Be mindful of what is helpful and what might affect people’s motivation.

Communication

It is useful to share availability across the whole team, so everyone knows when other team members are working. Managers can find times that overlap for everyone when conference calls, etc, can be held. Agree times when you should not call people, unless it is urgent so they can get their work done without interruptions. Managers should also role model not always being “on” to make sure they send a signal that periods of unavailability are acceptable.

Use the Phone

To avoid being sat down all the time on online conference calls, try to also use the phone to keep in touch. It means you can move around more, take a break from your desk, even step into the garden if you have one. Managers should be role models to their staff, and emphasise the need to keep healthy and move around.

Work Out Loud

Practise ‘working out loud’ through tools like Slack where you can collaborate together and share ideas. Doing this can give you new insights, you might not have benefited from if you just focused on results. There are all sorts of ways of working out loud, including diagrams, charts and audio notes. The latter can help workers who are more visual or aural thinkers. Managers can use different channels to communicate with their team, for instance, a weekly audio message summing up the week can be effective, more personal and informal. It illustrates that there are different ways of communicating and is more inclusive.

Soft Communication

It is a good idea to use your shared communication tools to create some ‘soft communications’ in place of water cooler moments. For instance, you could share humorous observations, chat about the latest boxset, for example. There is one slack channel titled, ‘What cheered me up today’. It helps to raise the mood and keep people motivated. When you work remotely, water cooler type moments are less spontaneous but you could schedule more social video meet-ups. The meet-ups can be short and themed around something like TV series to get the ball rolling, or run an after-work ‘virtual’ drinks get-together.