Management Tips

19 Secrets to Remote Staffing Success

Tips on how to improve and grow your business with our remote staffing solutions. Experience has proven that clients who struggle with remote staffing are usually unprepared and underestimate the involvement required to build successful remote working relationships. Many business owners and managers have limited experience working with people offsite and are unaware of the various online work practices, tools, effort and time needed to establish clear communication, build trust and ensure people are working under your direction to your standards.

Management Tips

19 Secrets to Remote Staffing Success

Tips on how to improve and grow your business with our remote staffing solutions. Experience has proven that clients who struggle with remote staffing are usually unprepared and underestimate the involvement required to build successful remote working relationships. Many business owners and managers have limited experience working with people offsite and are unaware of the various online work practices, tools, effort and time needed to establish clear communication, build trust and ensure people are working under your direction to your standards.

To save you the headache of finding out on your own,
we’ve compiled our top 19 secrets to a successful remote staffing relationship:

Preventing Stress

Avoid keeping staff in a state of constant emergency or under tight deadlines. This can lead to staff feeling too much pressure and affect the quality of work outputs.

Transfer of energy

In the beginning of a remote working relationship you will need to transfer high level of energy to drive work tasks forward with your staff and get things moving.

Be involved

Be prepared to be more involved with staff to assist them to execute their work tasks and ideas. Hands-on management is advised in remote working relationships.

Differences in culture

Be aware that people located abroad may speak and understand English but may not necessarily think in the same way you might expect or experience with local staff. Sometimes pointing out the obvious is necessary.

Integrity is key

Ensure you connect with your staff in a meaningful and transparent way. Be sincere, direct and mean what you say and how you say it to avoid any misunderstandings. Don’t make token statements without backing it up.

Be aware of risks

The greatest danger in remote staffing is mixing autonomy with isolation. Ensure your lines of communication are always open and that you are available. Don’t take weeks to respond to recorded voice messages or emails.

Integration

Keep asking yourself, how can I best integrate my remote contractor to become an extension of my own local team? Do more to keep your staff involved in what happens with your company, don’t over look the importance of keeping your remote contractors in the loop with your company intentions.

Avoid Sarcasm

Sarcasm and teasing in distant relationships are not advised due mainly to cultural differences. What may be considered a joke in your country could be offensive elsewhere or could be something that someone else may not be able to fully understand and feel uncomfortable as a result.

Staff morale

Be prepared to regularly check in with your staff to gauge morale. This step is important when hiring staff based off site due mainly to the fact that you do not have the same physical presence found in a local office environment and it is easy to miss or be unaware of staff’s emotions or issues that could be effecting their work outputs.

Addressing Fear of Failure

When working with new staff, it is important to remove the fear of failure they could feel if you need to correct their work. Ensure that they fully understand what it is that you are communicating when you need to review their work tasks and remember it is important to recognize the positives as well.

Company Culture

It is best to demonstrate what work needs to be performed via screen share and phone calls. These communication methods reduce the chance of any misunderstanding of instructions, which can happen when only using email to communicate work tasks.

Clear communication

It is best to demonstrate what work needs to be performed via screen share and phone calls. These communication methods reduce the chance of any misunderstanding of instructions, which can happen when only using email to communicate work tasks.

Technology

Use the Remote Staff technology available to you such as our activity trackers, screen shots and communication portals to assist you to establish work transparency and keep up with work progressions. Be tech savvy.

Expected work progression

Working with a remote team will mean that you will be moving slower than working with your local team. However, just because you are moving at a slower rate does not mean you cannot accomplish your set targets and goals.

Giving Feedback

When giving feedback about work, ensure your review is constructive, in a language that is understood and clearly focusing on the work tasks performed and not the individual.

Use webcams

When starting a new working relationship try to incorporate webcam meeting. Webcams are extremely useful when reviewing staff’s work to pick up on the confidence of staff in accomplishing the job as well as a great way to pick up on body language which helps to avoid any misunderstandings, especially with long drawn out projects.

Dealing with criticism

Any personal criticism must be dealt with on a one to one basis and never in a group situation. A major cultural issue in Asia is when a person loses face. This may not mean much to you, but in Asia it is considered extremely rude to belittle or correct someone in the presence of others.

Leadership

Establish clear leadership guidelines highlighting what you want done, how you want it completed and to a standard that is acceptable.

Communicate via different methods

Communication is a key to keeping your working relationship in healthy shape. Using different methods of communication such as Skype, emails, screen share technologies and most importantly phone and not relying heavily on just one mode of communication is recommended.