5 simple ways to address remote team challenges

Remote teams are becoming more popular than ever, but it's not without its challenges. One of the first issues may be remote team set-up itself, however one of the biggest issues facing remote teams is communication. This can be especially difficult when working with international colleagues, who might not be fluent in English or may have cultural differences that affect how they communicate. 

If you're outsourcing to a company in India you won't face this issue as India has the second largest English speaking presence in the globe (read more about the benefits of outsourcing to India here). For all the other hiccups you may face with your remote teams, here's a few tips:

How to solve remote team challenges:

Communicate with frequent updates

Get everyone on the same page on what they're working on, how it's going, and when they can expect to see results. This will help you avoid any confusion or miscommunication that might arise from a lack of communication and help keep your remote team focused on the task at hand instead of getting distracted by other tasks or projects in their queue. Communicate regularly with remote team managers—and make sure that this communication is open-ended rather than limited to formal meetings.

Encourage collaboration

Collaboration is the act of working together to achieve a common goal, this can go a long way in solving remote working challenges beyond just the scope of work assigned to the remote team too! Collaboration helps build trust between colleagues or different remote teams because people get to know each other's strengths and weaknesses; this makes them more likely to work together effectively in comparison to working alone.

SWOT

To tackle a few remote team challenges before they arise, give your remote team heads feedback on their strengths, weaknesses and areas for improvement. This response and feedback has the opportunity to avoid remote working challenges by giving them the opportunity to develop new skills and hone their current ones. This constant feedback also keeps teams in check and reminds them that they are effectively being monitored for accountability and efficiency.

Monitoring and improving team productivity

Monitoring and improving team productivity is a crucial step in ensuring that your team is healthy. By using data from productivity to measure the effectiveness of your team, you can make sure that they're working as efficiently as possible and maximize their output.

When it comes to measuring productivity, there are two main ways to do so:

• 1. You can use time spent working on projects or tasks (or all time) as an indicator of how much effort people are putting in. This would be more useful for larger teams where everyone has different skill sets and responsibilities within the organization, but it's also useful for small groups with fewer resources who want some level of predictability when deciding how long something should take them before moving onto another project/task.

• 2. Another method involves looking at the number of completed tasks per person or team over time - this gives us an idea whether each member or team might need some help completing those tasks or whether these individuals or groups are performing these tasks efficiently.

Multicultural teams

Remote teams often consist of multicultural teams, whether they're placed in the US or UK and especially if they're placed at an offshore location. These team members consist of various professionals that tend to belong to different races, religions, speak different languages and have different life experiences. Managing these teams can be a significant challenge, however creating a SPOC (single point of contact), preferably the manager of the remote team, that understands the culture, language and regulations of your base country. This individual should also be capable of balancing the cultural differences to provide rich and different ideas from what could be formed with an in-house team working domestically.

Conclusion

We hope that this list has provided you with some insights into how to address some of the common remote team challenges. Remote work can be a great tool for your business and allow you to build your team in a way that fits your needs. As long as you keep communication open, encourage collaboration among all your employees and take care of each other as individuals, setting up remote teams and handling them can not only lead to the handling of certain business operations, it can also lead to adding and growing your business as a whole. 
If you're looking to improve and enhance certain areas of your business, check out our extensive list of services or reach out to one of our outsourcing specialists to learn more about how we can help your business.