Before the days of web conferencing, video chats, instant messages, and overall unified communications presence it was difficult to manage people who weren’t present in your location. Now, people can be present without really being present. Whether your employee teams are in the same building, city, or even country you can host video conferences where you can share your screen for all to see and even allow others to provide feedback with the click of a mouse.
Regardless of team size you can enable your team members to see each other as often as they need to. This comes in handy especially if you have outsourced software development teams. So now that you have the technology and the means to allow people to collaborate, how do you manage them? This article examines methods you can use to manage your geographically dispersed teams.
Select the Right Employees
Hiring efficient productive employees is the first step in getting them to collaborate and report back to you. You need to look for people with the matching skills, qualities, and qualifications to meet your business needs. Do you have someone who loves working on their own but is great at what they do? This is good, you may have them report directly to you or a team leader but keep their group participation at a minimum unless absolutely necessary.
Managing people who are not physically present can be risky but if well executed it can save you a lot of money, time, and overhead. Just think, if you outsourced half of your staff you could move into a smaller building, pay less overhead, and charge your clients the same amount you do now to increase your revenue. This part examines some of the things you should look for when hiring employees to work together remotely.
Qualities you should look for when selecting the right team members of dispersed teams should be:
Self-motivators
These are people who have no problem seeking problems and solutions. These people can work by themselves but are not necessarily loaners. They can work well in a team for collaboration and always pay attention to detail when getting the job done.
Excellent Communicators
These people need very little face to face time with you or other team members because they relay information and facts needed when working on projects. These people don’t mess around, they work hard and communicate their plans and work in an efficient and precise manner.
Results Driven
These employees like to set their own goals and work hard to achieve them. These people should feel at ease with being assessed by key performance indicators (KPIs) in order to reach certain performance milestones.
Honest
Almost most important of all is honest workers. Do your outsourced or remote workers charge you honest hours or do they round up? While you can’t watch over everyone you need to be able to trust them that they are putting in the work you need them to. These people are also reliable to be called upon when needed. Honest, open, and straightforward workers are key when managing dispersed teams.
