Three ways to support managers of remote teams

By Jhana staff, based on research presented in a recent webinar

When we did a study of 812 managers and HR professionals who use Jhana in their weekly work, the area of least confidence among managers was managing remote workers. This is logical. Remote work isn’t quite yet at scale, but it’s rapidly becoming more common — and that can be challenging for some managers more used to legacy reporting structures.

Fortunately, there’s a lot L&D can do to help. That’s why we hosted a webinar recently on how HR and L&D can support managers who lead remote employees and teams. Our guests were Andrea Richardson from Toronto-based Infusion, who is the Director of Global HR there, and Alex O’Connor, a senior writer/researcher at Jhana, who holds a PhD in social and personality psychology from UC-Berkeley and led much of our recent work on remote teams.

Watch the full webinar here.

If you’re pressed for time, here are the three biggest takeaways.

1. Address feelings of isolation

One big problem is that many remote workers reported feeling more isolated, feeling more like a contractor, seeing less purpose in their work, and were less likely to have a close friend at work. Turnover among them can thus be higher. (There is much research about the power of friends at work.)

Some approaches to solving the isolation issue: make sure remote workers visit the central office a few times a year — or even have the manager go visit the remote worker where they’re based. Also consider having a series of team members conduct 1-on-1 meetings with the remote worker, so that consistently they’re seeing and engaging with co-workers.

One idea mentioned on the webinar, used at Infusion, is to purchase two $50 coffee cards at the beginning of the month. You give the cards to two employees. They take someone out for coffee (different team/remote), and then that person gets the card and takes someone else out. So on, so forth. You can usually get 5–6 coffee dates out of each card, which means 10–12 people are getting engaged with each other and discussing life/work.

2. Assess fit for remote roles

Via research we’ve done at Jhana for our topic on managing remote team, here are four critical questions managers should ask — about themselves or potential candidates — to see if they’re suited to remote work:

1. Have they thought out the challenges of remote work? Do they have strategies for addressing those?
2. Are they capable of spending long stretches of time alone, yet outgoing enough to seek out information when needed?
3. Are they good communicators?
4. Do their expectations around career development match what you and your organization typically would provide to remote workers?

There are dozens more questions than this; it’s only meant to be a start.

3. Overcoming the communication roadblocks

Communication roadblocks are one of the biggest hurdles remote employees face and they come in many forms, including:

• Time zones
• Languages
• Explaining and checking in on projects
• Mistrust [predominantly managers thinking remote workers were not working as hard]

Time zones can be fixed on most calendar apps, and there is a concept called “Golden Hours” whereby teams set a 30-minute window they all know they can be available and schedule regular check-ins for then. It’s not always perfect, especially in the summer as people travel more personally, but it’s a good baseline approach.

Languages can be fixed by assigning translator pairings across certain teams, or even using basic web-based apps like Google Translate when composing emails. Making sure that at least one other team member is capable of communicating in a language of someone you hire remotely is going to be essential.

Communication issues in the workplace have been going on for eons, and there’s no quick fix. However, defining priorities more clearly and having regular upfront discussions on what’s been done and what needs to be done will help.

Mistrust occurs on in-person teams too, but to fix it in a remote context, managers should have clearly-established check-in dates around KPIs and goals. You don’t need to micromanage a remote direct report down to the hour, but you should be able to get a holistic sense every 1–2 weeks of where everything stands. If it concerns you as a manager around day-to-day availability, ask your remote direct report to be on your organization’s IM channel (Google, Slack, etc.) for a period of each day so that you can reach them quickly.

Jhana provides bite-sized learning for anyone who leads a team. “Bite-sized” means content aimed at making them more effective as managers, but presented logically within the scope and context of everything else they have to do. Learn more at our website.