Ultimate Guide to Manage Remote Marketing Teams
In response to the global pandemic of the Covid-19 and all the uncertainties, remote working or working from home–has become common across most of the industries. As a result, thousands of team leaders and managers are suddenly finding themselves running a totally remote team.
As a manager of a remote team, you need to be tactical and coordinated to make sure that your colleagues feel involved in the loop and how they can be effective in your company. It takes extra time, a lot of communication, and a good sense of inclusion and empathy. Whether you’re a new or an experienced manager, moving from leading in-office to a dispersed team can be a major transition. To assist you on how to manage remote teams, here I have mentioned some tips below:
Create an Efficient Remote Recruiting and Onboarding Process
Before managing a remote team, you need to hire and onboard the new talent. To get started with this, use digital platforms like Indeed or LinkedIn to announce and promote about new job role. If you are hiring for a role that is open to being remote or in the workplace, conduct all the interviews by video call to eliminate any location bias in your recruiting panel. In addition to virtual onboarding, each employee has daily check-ins, career chats and ongoing training with his or her supervisor to ensure that their job is progressing.
Schedule Effective Virtual Team Meetings
When you have a remote or global team, team meetings will be a crucial means of communication. Conducting weekly standup virtual meetings via Zoom and other standard video calling applications enable teammates to talk about projects or goals. Once you’re about to arrange the meeting, make sure to pick a time that fits in various timezones for team members. Stick to this meeting time and stop canceling to make sure remote workers who have not received a notice of cancellation.
Before going ahead with virtual meeting, send an email and calendar invitation to your team. Also, include meeting login information or a number they can call, if they face any technical issues. Just before you start the meeting, make sure that your computer’s sound and video are working properly. Also, ensure that the environment around you is calm and not distracting from your teammates.
Conduct Regular Check-Ins with Individuals on Your Team
While you or your team members are working remotely, you can’t quickly turn to them to ask them a question, or have a casual conversation about work. That is why you should always consider scheduling one-on-one calls with your team mates, in addition to your list of remote meetings.
Regardless of whether it’s a progression of one-on-one calls with employees working autonomously or a group call with the people whose work is exceptionally collective, the most significant thing is that these calls are normal and predictable.
Consider the Implementation of Digital Productivity Tools
In addition to the video calling app, there are other useful resources you can use to handle remote or distributed teams. Here are few types of digital productivity tools to start implementing:
- Scheduling Tools
When everyone in your team is remote, it would be difficult to schedule a meeting. Fortunately, there are plenty of tools for requesting, managing and scheduling meetings with your team. For example, if you’ve Microsoft Outlook or GSuite, you can see the schedules, working hours and availability of your teammates. You may then send an invitation to a meeting for a time when they are free. Them your teammate will approve, deny, or suggest a new time for an event from there itself.
- Task Management Systems
You can create a collaborative team project with a task management system like Trello or Asana, and digitally assign the tasks to various team members. You can also set deadlines for the tasks and check to see if they are marked as complete.
- Instant Messaging Applications
Have you ever been caught up in a giant email thread where multiple people replied to the same message? With instant messaging applications, you will be able to create group threads to discuss projects, upload conversation assets, and see when other team members have responded clearly. This is also a useful way to communicate topics that don’t require a full video call to discuss with your team.
Be Aware of Time Zones and The Boundaries of Remote Employees
As a remote team manager, navigating around the different working hours of your teammates is important, while also encouraging teammates to be aware of other remote teammate schedules in your time zone.
As you onboard employees or implement a team calendar, ask remote teammates to mark their working hours on their schedule. They should also have an informal meeting with teams and clarify time zones and regular work hours, just to make sure all team members are up-to – date about who should work when.
Plan Virtual Chats to Align with Other Teams
At an organization with remote or scattered employees, you shouldn’t simply concentrate on your own team. You should also be sure to regularly communicate with other departments to see where your collaboration can line up with there’s and where you can profit the greater business.
As a marketing manager, you should try to plan virtual chats with sales managers and other teams to discuss goals and where your team can align with theirs. You can also use digital resources, such as marketing attribution apps, to get an understanding of how your work impacts the company. In the long run, these meetings would encourage you to think about the business with a broader perspective, rather than constantly concentrating on the efforts about your team.
Consider Virtual Opportunities for Team Bonding
In order to create a better team, consider virtual opportunities which allow teammates to get to know each other on a more human level. If your schedule is extremely limited, you can also find space in daily team meetings for virtual bonding. In addition to allowing teams to get to know each other through virtual events, you can also identify opportunities where you can more personally get to know the individuals in your team.
Provide Encouragement And Emotional Support To Your Team
It is crucial, as a remote team manager, to consider the difficulties that your employees may face and give them any other guidance when required. If you have any in-office teammates, you should also encourage them to regularly consider the challenges a remote employee may be going through.
When you make good use of emotional intelligence, your teammates will feel more confident coming to you with questions and concerns. They will build a greater sense of faith in you as their boss, too. Most of all, a person who knows their emotions and other people’s emotions will handle teams in a variety of different situations.
If you’ve never worked remotely or supervised remote teammates, it could take time to develop the perfect dispersed team management strategy. As you develop your management strategies, your most important goals will be to help the team run efficiently, create an inclusive work climate that encourages employees to excel at all times and use emotional intelligence.
