How to integrate remote management into your company in times of crisis?

Faced with the rise of teleworking during the health crisis and the change in ways of organising at work, companies in all sectors must adapt their management style and learn to manage their teams remotely.

So what are the challenges and issues related to remote management? And what are the keys and best practices to know to integrate such a team management method with your employees in the home office? Here are our tips.

 

The challenges and issues of remote management

While working from home has a number of advantages (better QWL; work-life balance; greater flexibility, etc.), this way of organising itself comes with many challenges for employees, but also for local managers.

Indeed, physical distancing greatly complicates communication, performance monitoring and task control. Mobilization and the ability to lead and federate teams is generally more difficult remotely.

For their part, employees may feel a certain social isolation and a loss of meaning, which inevitably generates a drop in motivation and disengagement among teams. The Psychosocial risks (overwork, stress management, burnout, etc.) are also higher.

On a collective level, teleworking can also impact group cohesion, team spirit and can be a real brake on collective intelligence. This can, in the long term, have an impact operational efficiency and, ultimately, the performance of the company.

 

What are the keys to integrating and succeeding in remote management?

To succeed in remote management, it is important to know several good practices, such as:

Defining the conditions for teleworking

Above all, the role of the manager is to define the conditions of teleworkingl in order to provide a framework for its teams. This is essential to structure remote team management and to set some essential rules for the right teleworking and team coaching virtually.

Here are some examples of conditions to define upstream for successful remote management:

• The number of days teleworking per week;
• Time slots during which each employee will be reachable;
• The frequency of individual and collective exchanges;
• The tools, equipment and resources made available to teleworkers;
• Any teleworking schedules to be respected;
• The nature of the missions and tasks to be carried out at home and on site;
• The rights and duties of employees working from home;
• The way in which on-site and teleworking teams are coordinated;
• The monitoring and control tools set up by the team leader (reports by email; telephone exchanges, etc.);
• …

Implementing adapted digital tools

To manage a remote team, digital tools are essential to promote the operational efficiency of teams and to ensure smooth and instant communication.

To do this, the choice is vast: intranet tools, shared agendas, collaborative project management tools (Monday, Trello, Asana, Notion, etc.), videoconferencing tools (Zoom, Skype for Business, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, etc.), instant messaging (Slack, WhatsApp Business, etc.).

Maintaining a close and trusting relationship

In order to protect themselves from the risks of disengagement and to compensate for any drop in motivation among their employees, the manager must succeed in preserving, even remotely, a close and trusting relationship with their teams.

To do this, certain managerial skills and human qualities are essential, such as: active listening, empathy, interpersonal skills, emotional intelligence, etc. In remote learning, to succeed in leading a team with benevolence and leadership, to soothe possible tensions and to manage conflicts, it is all the more important to adopt a participative (or collaborative) management style and a “manager coach” posture.

The local manager must also ensure that he or she is exemplary (punctuality, optimism, listening, etc.) and that he or she can be reached, available and accessible to everyone.

He must also be all the more attentive to the warning signs of disengagement, stress and burn-out.

In addition, it is important to avoid any form of micro-management, excessive control and to ensure that you encourage the autonomy of teams, the taking of initiatives, and do not hesitate to delegate.

It will also be necessary to think about motivating, congratulating, valuing and rewarding employees on a regular basis, and to communicate about the company’s culture and values in order to maintain a sense of belonging.

Promote team cohesion

Ensuring commitment, cohesion and team spirit is indeed a real challenge when working remotely. However, this is essential to preserve social ties and collective intelligence.

To do this, it will be beneficial to use collaborative digital tools, to organize virtual events (web-conferences, webinars, training, etc.), team-buildings and individual and collective coaching with the aim of promoting mutual aid and strengthening links between peers to achieve objectives through collective intelligence.

Communicate with clarity and transparency

Finally, it is important, as a remote local manager, to be very clear when issuing directives to employees and setting objectives. This is essential to avoid possible misunderstandings or ambiguities that could have detrimental consequences.

It will also be important to carry out regular updates to highlight any difficulties encountered and to take stock of the actions carried out and future actions.