Getting Results from Teams in a Remote Work Environment
Companies are hesitant to let their employees work remotely because they’re concerned it could affect the bottom line. The truth is that if you can’t trust your team to deliver in a remote work setting, then you simply can’t trust them. We have unlimited technology now to support remote work, so there’s no reason companies should not permit remote work.
Working in a remote environment has numerous benefits for employees, from providing flexible work hours and eliminating arduous commutes to attracting unrivaled worldwide talent.
If your technology teams aren’t thriving in a remote environment, it's likely time to revamp your strategic planning and execution practices.
I have worked with countless leaders, all of whom had their own styles, but the best ones clearly conveyed to their teams what they were trying to accomplish. They were also excellent communicators and knew how to work with their teams in order to execute on their strategy.
Great leaders are not only clear about expectations, they also entrust team members with autonomy and provide them resources to complete their assignments.
In a remote environment, it’s especially imperative to communicate expectations clearly.
Here’s how you do this:
Set clear expectations around behaviors
Work with your team to create both team and individual goals
Hold individuals and teams accountable to these goals and guidelines
Constant communication and feedback
Set Clear Expectations
Tech companies love to talk about culture, which is why many firms tout their amazing cultures when they recruit talent.
The companies that actually deliver those great cultures are the ones that hold every employee accountable to embody their values.
As a leader, set clear expectations and boundaries around what is and isn’t acceptable and then take action when someone falls out of alignment with those expectations.
This relates to both the performance and the behavior of team members.
Create Team and Individual Goals
Creating OKRs is one popular way to set goals, but companies can adapt their planning and goal-setting processes to their size and their stage of evolution.
It doesn’t matter the exact means or frequency, but it has to be done.
One of the companies I worked at told new hires about OKRs, but HR failed to create a cohesive process with dates that held people accountable to the results. This consequently created confusion, and there was no common definition among employees of what success was for each of them.
When you don’t have a clear process around what is expected of employees around their performance reviews, OKRs and goal setting will fall flat.
It can be a lot of work to implement this, so start small and then continue to grow the goal-setting process at your company. Creating an OKR process at your company can be just as iterative as Agile software development.
I recommend that all remote teams have an in-person offsite once a quarter because these meetings are great places to align on strategy quarterly, as well as to create execution plans.
Accountability
This is the place where most companies and leaders fail.
It’s easy to talk about how great your culture is, but the true test of a leader comes when someone on your team isn’t living up to the performance or behavior expectations you have defined.
Communicating clearly when someone isn’t performing is an art that can be practiced over time, but remember that compassion and honesty are key.
Salesforce, which is a company that excels at execution, did an outstanding job of this. When I worked there, there were clear deadlines around when you had to complete your yearly goal setting (called the V2MOM), as well as when you had to review these goals.
Everyone’s V2MOM was available for anyone in the company to see, so there was transparency around what everyone was doing.
When you make it clear what success looks like for everyone at the company, it’s easy to be honest with employees about their performance.
Setting clear expectations will yield positive results.
Communication
Communication is key to any relationship, especially where remote work is involved. I encourage teams to schedule regular meetings, and to have some virtual social time to chat with each other.
Scheduling weekly and daily status meetings, staff meetings and 1 on 1 meetings ensures you have time to collaborate with the people you work with. These virtual meetings are essential to building trust.
There is no such thing as over-communicating, so encourage your team to share information via multiple channels: emails, slack, text, and phone calls, and confirm that everyone who might need the information has it.
The more transparency the better. People can always filter out information that isn’t useful to them.
The future calls for remote work, and the best and the brightest employees (the ones you want to hire) want to establish their work lives around their personal lives, not the other way around, so continuing to provide remote work opportunities will ensure your company can attract and retain the best talent.