Running a Team of Remotely Placed Employees

The virtual workplace has become a part of accepted reality, and brings its own challenges along with its advantages. A team consisting of remotely placed employees working together on a project can be formed in varied manners – from being formed entirely of in-house employees geographically distributed across several branches of the same company to a team formed of in-house employees and external freelancers or consultants.

Running a team of remotely placed team members, where ‘location' is irrelevant, emphasizes the role of ‘constant communication' and ‘transparent systems.' Running such a team requires a different strategy than that employed in a workplace where you can relate and interact with each employee face-to-face.

The best kind of members for your team of remotely placed employees



You may not always have a say in the matter when choice is made on selecting team members. More often than not, external experts and consultants would be on such a team by dint of their subject expertise, and you'll have to accommodate them, even if they sport frustrating attitudes. However, if the opportunity arises where you may exercise a choice in the selection of team members, keep the following points in mind:

• Self-motivated members are best as remotely placed constituents. They usually favor independence and go out of their way to ensure independence and their choice of being free of a physically “third-party-owned” workplace. Consequently, they are dependable workers, if professional.
• People with a greater level of communication skills are always a better choice. You have to explain less and need to listen less, because they understand things quicker and can effectively communicate any problem without beating around the bush.
• People who like to set and achieve measurable objectives, in short, people who are result-driven are essential for teams running on remotely placed employees
• Professionally honest and mature people are of course better work partners. Immature team members who fear to come forward with problems and seek solutions openly, or fail to internalize feedback or absorb criticism are safer to avoid when remotely running a team.

How to get a team of remotely placed employees going:

The following tips are good enough to get your team going

• First define targets against time frames
• Set reporting schedules
• Ensure constant communications
• Ensure the best hardware and servers with the best uptime
• Ensure each member has access to broadband and the required bandwidth in internet connections
• Create a internet chat room specific to the team
• Create document management systems and systems where people can collaborate
• Ensure desktop sharing and web conferencing systems are foolproof and secure
• Ensure fair and consistent feedback
• Ensure fair rewards and incentives
• Use computer to computer video and other instant messaging systems
• Keep in mind cultural and language barriers

That's really all about it. Most of the other things that come up are met in everyday workplace situations. In a team as considered here, communications hardware and internet connectivity play a big role as do the platform of collaboration. If the non-human constituents including hardware and software experience frequent problems, that affects the human constituents or members to a great extent. All of these factors need to be taken into account when you are thinking of running a virtual workplace.