Communication is key to smooth employee management, especially when it comes to managing remote workers. As your employees are not in the same room as you, it might be difficult to keep your eyes on them all the time. Therefore, it is crucial to establish an open communication line with a remote team because unclear direction and miscommunication often result in a lack of productivity, poor performance, even stress.
See also: Costly Conversations: How Do Employee Communication Behaviours Impact Your Bottom-Line?
Aside from clear communication, a team leader should also show enthusiasm and liveliness in their distant conversation. Why? Because perking up in the way you communicate indicates that you do care about your team. It can also create powerful online interactions between companies and remote members as remote staff tend to feel left behind if there is no good or continuous communication, resulting in decreased motivation and productivity to work.
Frequency in communication with your team is crucially needed. Not only can it be highly motivated, but it can also serve as an aspirational metric. According to an interview with David Grainger, a weekly or bi-weekly one-on-one meeting that focuses on coaching should be considered. There should also be continuous monitoring that not only focus on company matters but also an individual’s wellness. As an example, you should regularly check on your employees about their condition, what they are up to, or their personal highs and lows. Casual conversation will likely help you maintain better communication with your remote team.
It is true that remote team does not like to be micromanaged, just like in-house employees. But while you can communicate daily with your in-house staff, so why can’t you do the same with your remote group?
Further, an expert and director of Real Estate Webmasters, Vy Luu suggested that as frequent as 77 times in a week which equates to 11 times per day is valuable enough to make sure that you have conveyed the right support and message. Around this time also, you should make sure that your remote staff are completely focused on their tasks by ensuring clarity, support, and encouragement in your daily communication. In addition, you should not just plainly communicate about what matters. Aligning remote communication with company goals has to be on your top list communication strategy.
“The job of a leader is to actively communicate the vision and remove roadblocks so teams can operate at their best.” – Vy Luu
Fortunately, aligning remote communication with goals is not as hard as it seems. You only need to transform your in-house development program to video or text-based communication. For example, while maintaining wellness of your remote team, you can relentlessly link individual accomplishments with your business aims. You can also have a group discussion about people development and opportunities, follow up on daily activities, provide ongoing specific feedback in writing, as well as chatting about unrelated work once in a while.
Hints: as writing is a crucial skill in maintaining good communication, you should possess better writing ability.
In addition, you should let your emotion come to live even for a text. Alizan K. Lowell, a psychotherapist and psychoanalyst, suggested that emojis are small icons that help us add tone and clarity to our communication. By adding some smiley or wink while texting your remote team, it can affect your team’s feelings in a positive way such as lighten their mood, soften the blow, and cosy feeling of collaborating with you. Thusly, adding a “🙂” or “😉” or using those emojis that are available in your messaging feature will be so much helpful.
Read also: Leaders, Stop Saying These 5 Phrases to Employees
