The novel Coronavirus has forced the people of the world to be locked down in their homes. Businesses all around the world have been severely affected due to this lockdown. Industries that have been the most affected are Travel, Aviation, Transportation, E-commerce since they have been almost shut down for the time being. Apart from these industries, businesses that have never adopted the practice of working with remote teams or aren’t familiar with the fact that even with remote teams they can do great business, are suffering.
The corona scare came unwarned and suddenly put everyone in this situation. However, a lot of businesses, especially the IT and Management workforce are doing well working remotely. Although people are managing to work , many have no clue how to and how to efficiently work remotely.
Without a defined set of goals, productivity can’t be guaranteed. Employers as well as the employees should discuss business goals and strategize daily tasks accordingly. This practice will improve remote productivity as well as it will unburden the headache of a disorganised workflow. Planning and productivity are directly proportional and therefore, setting daily goals to achieve bigger goals is very essential in boosting productivity in remote teams.
Following-up to the above point, scheduling daily meetings with remote team members is very important for planning out tasks. It is advisable to conduct at least two meetings a day, one at the start of the day to discuss daily goals and one at the end of the day to see what has been achieved and what’s left.
It is good to discuss daily tasks but it's even better to keep a tab on all the tasks accomplished and the remaining tasks as it will help in easing out further planning. It can get haphazard if there is only manual reporting and no real-time software to track tasks. However, with apps like JIRA, Trello, etc you can easily and efficiently increase productivity within remote teams.
When working with remote teams, the biggest challenge that arises is that there is very little scope of discussing plans and clearing out any doubts, as and when required. However, if you are smart enough, you can leverage technology and stay connected at all times and remove any wastage of time due to delay in response/solution to a problem, thereby increasing productivity within the remote team.
Again technology plays a very essential role in driving out productivity within remote teams. Using cloud-based file sharing apps like Dropbox, Google Drive, etc. not only ensures a smooth functioning but also sees to it that the documents shared are safe and secure.
Most of the above points simply point out to the fact that incorporating digital workplace strategy is what’s needed when working with remote teams.
Remote teams also involve people working from there home where a regularly stable internet connection can be a problem due to data limitation and other factors. And to avoid such scenarios, remote employees can turn off video calls to limit bandwidth requirements while surfing or browsing. This is another minute but important factor that can significantly boost productivity while working with remote teams.
An Agile Business Model allows business to react quickly to unpredictable changes by offering flexibility within the team. It is a simple model wherein the entire team is adaptable to all the processes and in case of emergency, any member can take over the responsibility of another team member.
While working with remote teams, it is crucial that each employee contributes as much as s/he can, thereby improving delivery processes.
Incorporating a remote working business model is the need of the hour. It isn’t just beneficial considering the current scenario but is a highly flexible model which will help any business in the long-run. This is the right time to experiment and should be utilized by businesses to make the best out of it.