Top Remote Team Management Tools — June 2020

Before investing in any remote work management solution, you should schedule a demo with your platform(s) of choice. They’ll give you the opportunity to see how everything works and ask questions to make sure it’s the right fit for your organization. 

Here are some questions we recommend asking: 

• What are the best practices for remote worker adoption on this platform?
• How have you seen remote workers mis-use this product?
• How will this solution fit into the rest of my tech stack and therefore what integrations do I need?
• How will others in the organization use this solution?
• What are the key features I want to ask about?
• What are the things that would make me nervous about buying this sort of solution?

How you implement a remote work strategy is so important for the success of your employees — and your company as a whole. Here are a few ways to make remote work a high-functioning component of your business that keeps employees engaged and happy, fosters company culture, and brings in the most productivity for the business. You can also learn from an interview done with a PeopleOps pro who's run a remote team for years now.

• Mimic your office culture: Whether you’re going fully remote or just hiring remote workers, you want to make sure the online culture matches the in-person/office culture. So think about what your culture is and what makes it work. What makes it fun for your employees? From there, you can think about ways to bring that fun and unique energy to the remote space. Whether it’s through digital coffee breaks, “water cooler” chats, happy hours, etc. And, as budget allows, plan for at least one in-person retreat each year for each team or the whole company so remote employees can interact with their colleagues in person. 
• Create “socializing” channels: Using Slack or another messaging platform, create unique channels specific to different hobbies or life stages. That way, employees can interact on a personal level and get to know each other “outside” of work.‍
• Commit to transparency: To help teams stay on the same page and consistently feel like their work matters, make a commitment to transparency and open communication. The last thing you want to deal with is an employee who feels in the dark on a project or sidelined just because they aren’t in the office every day.‍
• Have regular weekly or daily “stand-ups”: To keep everyone on the same page and help achieve the transparency and communication that is key to remote work success, have each team hold a standing video call once a week or every day where each team member shares what they’re working on, where they might need help, what they’ve learned from the previous week/day that might help their colleagues, etc.‍
• Use a shared language: This is really geared towards global companies with employees who don’t have the same native language. Since remote work is done online and things like shared knowledge-bases should be centralized to maintain consistency and understanding across the entire company, you should opt for everything to be written in one shared language that everyone understands.‍
• Be nimble: Remote work is on the rise, but it has not been the norm in business — i.e. everyone works differently in a remote environment or with remote employees. As such, you should expect some “testing and learning” as you get a remote strategy off the ground and be prepared to make changes as needed.