Remote work is here to stay. Whether your company has allowed its employees to work from home or wherever, or have started relaxing location requirements, allowing people to work remotely has steadily grown in popularity.

That’s because remote work is good for business. Many companies and organizations that employ a remote workforce have reported increases in both productivity and morale among their employees. Some have even said that this practice has caused operatring costs to decline.

Plus, remote work or other flexible working arrangments is becoming a more common demand among many employees. It has been shown that offering employees the ability to remote work not only attracts talent, but also retains it.

The key to remote work and unlocking its benefits, though, is understanding how best to manage your remote or distributed workforce. Without these best practices, remote work won’t be as beneficial as it could be.

Remote work is increasingly popular

FlexJobs and Global Workplace Analytics performed an analysis and found that there has been a sizeable upward trend in the number of people in the United States who work remotely. Over the last five years, remote work has grown 44%. Over 10 years, remote work has increased by 91%.

Ready to be truly blown away? Between 2005 and 2017, the analysis showed that there was a 159% increase in remote work.

Today, there are an estimated 4.7 million people in the U.S. who work remotely.

So, chances are, you or your company will eventually encounter - and should strongly consider offering - remote work.

Know how and when to communicate

If your coworkers or colleagues are located somewhere else, then you won’t be able to catch them as they arrive in the office each day or as you pass them in the hallways.

This means there will be a few communication strategies that need to be put in place to make sure nobody is left out of the loop at any point.

First up, you need a plan for how to handle synchronous and ansynchronous messaging. A synchronous message is shared over a phone call, video call or in-person. An asynchronous message is delivered via a messaging platform, SMS or text messaging, email or any other platform where the message is composed and then sent as a whole.

A remote team needs to know what type of messaging is appropriate. Without this knowledge, you could see productivity take a hit. A conference call that could have been a group text message or an email thread that was a little too nuanced and should have been a phone call are two perfect examples of this.

Your team should also know how often they are expected to communicate and for what reasons. A regular schedule of meetings - or email check-ins - helps keep everyone on the same page as far as what projects are being worked on, what deadlines need to be met and what challenges team members may be facing.

Make sure feedback goes both ways

As a manager of a remote team, you need to always provide opportunities for feedback. This needs to go both ways. You should provide feedback regularly and expect feedback from your team on a regular basis, too. Even those who are not managers but still work with remote colleagues should follow this model.

Proper feedback delivered regularly establishes better trusting and respectful relationships between managers and their direct reports and between coworkers.

In some cases, it may be necessary to have one on one sessions with remote employees or team members. These opportunities for feedback can uncover ideas or concerns that would otherwise go unspoken.

Hire trustworthy doers

We love this tip from Zapier: If you are in charge of hiring for a remote team, then be sure to hire people who you would describe as doers.

This is simple. Doers get things done. They are motivated and have no problem checking items off their to-do lists. If there’s a problem, then a doer seeks a solution.

These people should also be trustworthy. You must be able to trust that your employees are doing their work because you cannot oversee them - not that bosses should constantly hover over shoulders, anyway.

Set expectations and boundaries right away

Here is a tip that applies in every work situation, but is of even more importance as far as remote work is concerned.

When a person is working remotely, they are likely using communication tools that make them very available at alomst any time. They’re highly connected to devices that have email accounts, messaging apps, texts and a variety of other communication methods.

Set boundaries for when communication will occur - or at the very least set expectations for when the members of your team should reply to those messages.

Be reasonable, though. Imagine your team is working normal business hours in an office that opens and closes. Don’t send an email before or after hours and expect an immediate response.

If there’s an emergency, then communicate with your team that there are times when a response will be necessary. Let them know how they will be contacted. Try to keep this to a minimum, though.

Be aware of different time zones, too, when communicating with team members.

Use the right tools

Good management of remote teams often comes down to the software, servcies and tools that are used to communicate.

Select services that are reliable and include all the features that your team will need to communicate efficiently and effortlessly. When possible, don’t overlook free solutions that can go toe-to-toe with paid versions. This is even more true for small businesses and startups.

This is where Conference Town shines. Our service provides all the features your remote team needs to hold better, more enjoyable conference calls - for free.

Get started today

Signing up for a free account is a breeze with Conference Town. Once you sign up, you will have access to all of our conferencing features without needing to pay any of the fees or extra charges that some of our competitors try to add on to their services.

Want to try our service first? You can start an instant conference call right now to see how it works.