Day #9: How to keep a remote team motivated and engaged?
One of the concerns of creating a team remotely that I heard regularly from leaders, is if they will have the same level of motivation and engagement as the ones that work on-site.
How did I start as a remote worker?
To give you some context, I’ve been working remotely since 2015. I’m based in Portugal and my first experience as a remote worker was in that year working remotely for a French company. Since then, I’ve never worked in an office again. I started as a Mobile Engineer, then a Web developer and after 2 years, I created a remote team around me. After that opportunity to create a remote team, I became an Engineering Manager of remote teams for different companies and I’ve been working as a manager for more than 4 years. Also, because I feel that remote work completely changed my quality of life, I decided to create the app
https://Remote-Work.app
where you can find daily remote jobs, and many more features are coming to help remote workers to have a better professional remote career.
First step… The leader has to be committed to working remotely
Remote working started much before the Covid situation, when many companies became remote-friendly, not as a choice, but as a way to survive. Actually, since a long time ago, remote work was a way for companies (usually small/mid-size companies), that need to scale fast but can’t find the required resources in their physical area. So, this is the first problem, that is, they hire remotely not because they want, but because they need to. Well, to be fair, that is normal, an opportunity just appears when exists a need for that opportunity. That is not exactly the problem, the real problem is more the mindset of their leaders, where they regularly just think they just hire remotely as an alternative to not being able to hire locally, rather than thinking in the way “I don’t care where you work or where you are from, I just need that you bring the expected value I need”.
If you want to create a healthy remote team, you need to bring that spirit, that commitment to the team that you don’t have any preference for someone remote remotely or on-site, what you are concerned is just about the expected results/value that someone will bring to your team/project.
So, this is your first step, don’t use remote working as an alternative to your local options, but just as another way of working, and you don’t have any preference for having someone working on-site or remotely. Because, if you bring that mindset to the team, everyone else will follow you.
Trust: Measure the results rather than working time
I consider this point as the main point for a remote-team to work motivated and engaged with your company and project. You need to trust in your team, and they have to trust in you. For them to trust you, you already took the first step in the previous topic. Now, for you to trust in your team, you have to focus only on their results, on their improvements, on their innovations, etc…
How to do that? It’s simple, each one in the team/company should be focused on their responsibilities. So, if you are the leader of a team, you are responsible to make sure that the goals of the team are well planned, the company strategy is properly shared with the whole team, and the culture of the company is being practiced by everyone in the team (including you as a leader).
You as the company leader, should not be a passive member of the progress of those OKRs and start thinking about what comes next
The way that usually I’m doing in the companies I’ve been working is to clearly define the OKRs (Objectives and key results) in each layer of the organization. This is what will guide your teams for a mid-term and then is up to your team to do what they have to do to achieve those goals. You as the company leader, should not be a passive member of the progress of those OKRs and start thinking about what comes next. Meanwhile, your Product Manager in cooperation with your Engineering Manager starts to refine and plan with their respective teams on how to achieve those OKRs, what they have to do (clearly define the scope of that deliverable), clarify what the expected outcome, plan different and small deliveries to reach the OKR, and estimate each deliverable to be able to measure the progress of each OKR and the impact of that progress.
Now, let the team do their job, they know what they have to do, they know why we are doing what we are doing, and they know the impact of that development will have on the business.
Results instead of working hours
Your team will assume their own accountability if you give them the freedom to choose how they work.
On the above topic, I explained how I do to let the team work independently aiming for the goals defined for the company. Now, why you shouldn’t worry about the time your remote team works? First thing first, let’s be honest, no one expects that someone will be always working for the whole 7/8 hours per day, just looking at the computer developing new software. It’s not productive, it’s not healthy, and it will not bring innovation or communication between members of the team. So, independently of being on-site or remotely, we don’t expect this will happens.
So, we should start to forget to think about a work day in terms of working hours, it can happen that someone works 9 hours one day because he/she was trying to finish something instead of just skipping to the next day, or can happen that someday that same person doesn’t feel so much productive and stop working a bit earlier (and just works 6/7 hours), and so, what’s the problem? On the previous topic, the OKRs and the delivery plan are already defined correctly? Now, just trust in your team, and don’t manage the way they achieve those goals. Your team will assume their own accountability if you give them the trust and freedom to choose how they work.
Bring equal career opportunities for remote workers
As I said previously, one of the biggest concerns I had when I started working remotely, was the fact that I felt that I didn’t have the same opportunities being remote as if I was working on-site. I know that this is not so common right now due to the growth of remote working, however, it still exists the stigma of promoting someone that works remotely rather than the ones that work on-site regularly. But if someone delivers the same or even more value to the company, why you will differentiate someone that works remotely from the ones that work on-site?
Usually, the main problem is that the ones that work on-site are more visible to the whole company, and to the leaders, so it’s much easier to catch them in a coffee at the lobby, share some ideas, and feel more committed to the company rather than the ones that work remotely. But that is not true, it’s not because someone works remotely that he doesn’t feel committed to the company, if that happens, is probably because the company treats differently the ones that work remotely and the ones that work on-site. What you should measure is the results, as we explained above, and if someone was a key-solver to achieve those goals independently of being remotely or on-site, why you should care about if that person goes every day to the office? So, if you treat fairly everyone in the company, giving the same career opportunities independently of being always on-site or remotely you will have a fully committed remote team, trust me, I already lived that situation.
So, what do you think about those points? Even if you are a company leader or a remote worker, do you agree or do you have any other point of view? Feel free to comment below.
Have a nice week, David, @journeypreneur
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