Today, every business model is getting more digitally equipped than we could ever imagine. Technology is taking new shapes every day to fit people’s needs, bringing us innovation to make our life easier. The advancement has made it easy for startups to adopt a remote-first culture before the Covid-19 lockdown.
The virtual business model has completely changed relationships with employees. Remote working is way more than just working from home. For startups, the remote environment requires different skills, better communication, and use of other technologies. Instead of reporting to the office, employees manage everything from home. This can yield significant benefits like increased productivity and happier employees. On the flip side, it can slowdown workflows if you do not have reasonable control over your employees and a proper plan to execute your business.
Your remote employees and their performance are essential for your business growth. If you can nail this process of virtual work management, you’ll find that creating seamless workflows is so much easier.
This article focuses on five tips for managing a remote workforce for every startup company. Ready to discover how to implement remote work? Let’s get started!
1. Spot and recruit talent quickly
Tips managing a remote workforce
To grow your startup with remote employees, the most significant advantage is, you have a vast option to hire talent from any corner of the globe. You can get the best people for your business, regardless of their location and timing. Hiring remotely for high-skilled employees requires a slightly different approach. You need to ensure that anyone you are hiring has the right mix of skills, knowledge, sincerity, and dedication to adapt to the new work culture. Also, it would help if you made sure whether the new employee is the right fit for your business, or otherwise, you’re back to square one. It is crucial to conduct strict vetting using technical assessments, video interviews, and complete reference checks before hiring someone.
2. Be organized and flexible
It can be challenging to manage a startup at the best of times, and with remote teams, it can even get more complicated if you are not ready with your budgeting, business goals and plans. Having a concrete plan is a must to manage your remote teams and you should be open to adjusting strategies for your team. Allow flexible hours to maintain consistency and inform your employees about the importance of their work for the company’s growth. Let them know that the company is open to flexible hours as long as it is completed on time and of acceptable quality. As an owner or manager of the growing business, you have to be up-to-date about each team member’s availability to ensure you can reach them when needed.
3. Adapt to better communication
managing a remote workforce
While your business is growing along with your hybrid team, it’s essential to adapt to the new ecosystem of digital communication. Depending on the type of your startup business, try to set up regular events of effective communication with your employees in a non-disruptive way. Besides regular contact, try video conferencing at least once or twice a week to regain a personal touch from face-to-face communication with employees. Effective communication, undoubtedly, helps you make important decisions faster. As a startup, you must ensure that everyone is on the same page. If any of your employees are not sure about their task, it could lead to a significant loss in revenue.
4. Implement the right tools and processes
The biggest challenge you’ll face as a startup owner is managing tasks with equal effort from your virtual employees. It would be best if you measure your employee’s productivity individually. Luckily, plenty of software can give an overview of how your workers are performing each day by measuring their productivity levels.
Supervise remote teams with RemoteDesk
Productivity tracking platforms like RemoteDesk are instrumental in monitoring and getting real-time data about employees working for you remotely. The software also keeps a complete record of the time log of each employee. Under the dashboard, you can get visual data about productivity levels, idle hours, and time records. With appropriate screenshots and Face ID verification, you will never have to worry about fake identities. With RemoteDesk, you can easily manage to see all your employees at any time to check whether they are working or not along with their productivity metrics.
As a startup owner, maintaining an office space could seem like a frightening prospect. However, with such remote team management tools, you can be rest assured.
5. Support Your Staff
This is perhaps the most significant part of managing your remote team. Your remote employees require your support as they get involved in your business. Without your guideline, they can never give their best for you. Remote employees often suffer from the feeling of isolation. Therefore, you always have to be in good touch with each of them to avoid burnout. You fundamentally have to look after your remote workers just as much as it is to look after your business. Besides having regular group meetings, try to organize small but effective calls with each employee to ensure that they have plenty of opportunities to share their problems with you. If any employee shows signs of stress over their workload, try to help them ease their concerns. A weekly chit-chat can help you build better relationships with each employee and allow you to know them personally as well.
Conclusion:
To successfully grow your startup remotely, you have to think out of the box. With an average mindset, your startup can survive only for a smaller period. It would help if you brainstormed every day, both alone and with your team. Practice communication and collaboration for better team building and excellent performance results.
