3 Tips To Better Manage Your Work-From-Home Teams

Remote workforce challenges and how to overcome them

Burnout. Quiet Quitting. The Great Resignation. 

Employee engagement is at an all-time low. According to the latest data from Gallup, just over one-third of employees (34%) were engaged, and 16% were actively disengaged in their work and workplace. 

Engagement can be especially hard to influence and manage while working remotely, but it’s a skill we all must hone – especially in 2023. 

As an executive, your actions play a significant role in your team’s overall job satisfaction, engagement and career development. And while technology helps with nearly all aspects of business today, including the ability to work remotely, it can create a barrier when it comes to people management. Communicating solely through technology makes it harder to manage teams, foster relationships and build engagement. 

Commonly cited challenges by C-suite leaders who manage remote teams include: 
 

• Communicating openly and effectively 
• Developing relationships with individual team members 
• Building trust 
• Creating a sense of team 
• Ensuring productivity and alignment 

So, how can C-suite leaders better manage remote teams who are largely disengaged? Three relatively small adjustments will help make an immediate impact. 

3 Tips for Cultivating a Successful Remote Workplace 

If your remote team isn’t coming together the way you hoped, you can turn it around with a slight shift in mindset. 

Apply these best-practice tips to create a remote-first culture that increases engagement, improves productivity and builds a sense of team. Many of these suggestions, once implemented, have the ability to make an immediate difference.

1. Focus on What Matters — Your People 
Your people come first. Without them, work doesn’t get done. Stick to the 3 C’s – communication, consistency and collaboration. 

Communication requires more effort with remote teams. With fewer or no opportunities for in-person workplace interactions, like a story in the break room or a joke at the lunch table, it’s harder to build deep relationships. Virtual communication might become more formal and less personal, which can make people feel less connected. 

This is why it’s important to focus on building individual relationships. Make it a priority to understand who each of your team members are, what motivates them, how they like to receive praise and recognition, and how to give feedback. You should also schedule consistent one-on-one meetings with each person. Turn on your camera and take a minute to ask something social, like about their weekend or the dinner they told you they were going to make. Don’t be afraid to share your own personal stories, too. Your team members are looking to you as the example of how to communicate in-person and online, so set a strong standard they can follow. 

Other tips that can help: 
 

• Practice active listening, especially in calls and meetings. Don’t simultaneously answer emails or look at your phone. When you’re genuinely engaged, it shows. 
• Make yourself more accessible online. Change your status to “available” on collaboration tools or establish a thirty-minute window when you’re available each day to answer questions. 
• Rally your team members and motivate them. Give recognition frequently, and make each person feel valued as a member of the collective group..
• Tell people what’s going on in the company. Your team doesn’t have the big picture – you do. Explain how the business is doing, communicate goals clearly, and update them on changes as they happen.
• Make space for employee well-being. Schedule fun, virtual meetings like coffee chats or happy hours. If you’re not sure what to do, ask the team for their ideas on how they want to socialize remotely. 

Be on the lookout for signs of burnout or disengagement, which can be harder to notice when you’re not in person. Keep Dr. Albert Mehrabian’s 7-38-55 rule in mind, which is that communication is 55% nonverbal, 38% vocal, and 7% words only. You can tell a lot about how someone is feeling, even if they don’t openly say something, by their body language. When you’re not in person, you can pick up on these nonverbal cues over video meetings. Are they paying attention and making eye contact? What is their posture like on camera – are they leaning in and actively engaged in the conversation or are they tilted away from the screen and appear to be closed off? What can you pick up on from their facial expressions as conversations are happening? Make the time to know your people and look for the signs of a change in them when you meet, even when it is only virtually. 

2. Be Considerate of Everyone’s Time 
Be mindful of your team’s time and be deliberate with meetings. Keep your meetings on point and on schedule to drive value. If you notice everyone working on other tasks during a recurring meeting, reevaluate its necessity, length, the range of topics covered and whether everyone needs to be on the call. 

You should also optimize agendas for the best return on each participant’s time. People work from different time zones, so be considerate when scheduling meetings. If you must schedule a meeting during some of your team members’ lunch time, encourage them to take lunch earlier or later. It shows you respect their personal time. 

Establish boundaries and protect your time. Block off your calendar for lunch, breaks and deep-work hours, or you might find your entire day booked with meetings, leaving no time for projects or planning. Encourage your team to use similar strategies; model the standard you want for the company. Being on video calls all day is exhausting and not the best use of time. Could some meetings be better handled with a message or an email? Be mindful and make the change if that’s the case. Another best practice to consider is designating one day per week as a “no-meeting day”; this allows everyone to work without interruption. 

3. Use Technology to Your Advantage 
Technology provides us with many ways to communicate. Use the method that fits your purpose. If a call is essential to brainstorm or to prevent an overly long email, schedule it. If a quick message on Slack, Teams or another messaging tool is more appropriate, go that route. 

Find out how each team member prefers to connect and have team discussions to decide which channel to use when you need an answer right away and which to use when you don’t. Remember, when using digital channels, to be mindful of your tone to prevent misunderstandings. Generationally, there are nuances in written communication and even punctuation. For instance, the ellipses, which is often used by older generations as a continuation of a thought can be interpreted by younger generations as the omission of something. Be clear and thoughtful when it comes to who you are communicating with and how. 

In a digital world, we can work from anywhere. Take advantage. Listen to a call on a walk or work from your porch. Encourage your team to do the same and to enjoy the perks of remote work. Autonomy gives them flexibility and builds trust. 

In Summary 

Statistics show employee engagement is declining, but your team doesn’t have to be a statistic. Remember, a healthy remote work environment requires intentionality. If you’re genuinely interested in your team members’ well-being and growth, they will feel it. 

Once you adopt a remote-first mentality at the executive level, others will follow and so will engagement. Not only will this help maintain a healthy work environment, but it will also help your company attract and retain the best talent. 

Monica Foster and Heather Johnson are Managing Directors at Focus Search Partners. Monica joined Focus Search Partners in 2020 to launch and lead the firm’s Interim Executive Services (IES) practice, providing on-demand interim and project-based executive talent to companies across industries, at every stage of the business lifecycle.  Heather brings more than 12 years of experience in executive search to the team at Focus Search Partners. She has spent over a decade in the Healthcare and Private Equity Retained Search space.