Building trust within a team in a virtual environment can be challenging. It takes additional focus, lots of patience and oftentimes requires working through challenges. As more global organizations transition to remote work options, more leaders are faced with managing virtual teams.
Remote employees need to be heard, trusted and motivated to work effectively and to boost productivity. A teamwork-oriented environment encourages a workplace in which trust, commitment, and productivity promote a spirit of innovation within a business.
Here are some of the best ways to build trust and boost productivity within your remote team:
Three Ways to Build Trust in Remote Teams
- Focus on Results. A lack of trust in your employees can lead you to become a micromanager. The type of manager that questions every move of its employees and focuses on what’s going wrong. Micro-management produces nervous, frustrated employees who cannot do their best under strict conditions. In contrast to tuning in to what they do every minute of the day, leaders and managers should focus on the performance of their remote teams. Avoiding micromanaging inspires and motivates team members to always work their best while they’re at home.
- Encourage Clear and Casual Communication. Lack of communication could develop insecurity and stress in your remote employees- or the opposite may happen, where team members under-share and feel that no good news is worth communicating. For remote workers to communicate efficiently and achieve results, direct communication is essential. Sharing information openly with the team and leaders should be utilized frequently when working virtually. Details like project progress and task status should be available to communicate with team leaders at any time.
- Building Interpersonal Relationships Within the Company Culture. It’s important to take time to socialize virtually. As social interactions are not as frequent, virtual teams need to have a channel that replaces the social interactions in a physical environment. A leader can encourage personal connections by encouraging team members to share more personal updates about how they spent the weekend, or any life updates that they may have. It’s important to be inventive and invest time and energy in building rapport with team members as it is an investment that will lead to enduring relationships. The quality of the relationships between the team members can make the difference between goals being reached and goals being exceeded. It is always more rewarding to work on a collaborative and successful team.
Three Ways to Increase Productivity In Remote Teams
- Using Collaboration Tools. Using the correct applications to help support the team through collaboration is crucial to effective remote working. Remote teams need an infrastructure that allows them to focus on achieving their goals. Shared folders, collaborative documents, etc. play a key role in this.
- Track Your Time. Specific work activities can help with setting and achieving realistic goals while boosting productivity in remote teams. It is too easy to have the task fill the time, which is not cost-effective for any organization.
- Set Self-Imposed Deadlines & Limit Yourself. Try to define a time frame for yourself and stick to it for extensive research or projects. It’s important to watch that you’re not overworking yourself. To combat overworking, and to completely disconnect from the stress of working from home, it’s important to set boundaries for your work team and your family.
These best practices will help you improve trust in your remote teams and drive a more productive workforce.
