As 91% of firms in Britain have at least one employee working from home and with the rise of the digital workplace, it is likely that some of your project team members and other stakeholders will be based primarily out of the office.
Learning how to effectively manage remote employees will ensure that wherever your team members are based, they will be as motivated and productive as possible.
Encourage communication
As you know, stakeholder management is a key part of project management. Creating open communication channels is crucial to ensure that they are kept up to date with deadlines and for you to give feedback on the quality of their work.
Whether you prefer to use email, web conferencing, or phone, you should look to schedule regular communications on an individual and team basis. This is not only to talk about your project, but to also include them in casual workplace conversations so they feel like they are part of the team.
Trust them to get on with their job
As discussed above, good communication is important when managing a remote worker. However, it is easy to fall into the trap by calling them multiple times a day, to check on what they’re working on.
It is important to show your trust by giving them the freedom to get on with their job and to not micromanage. To think about it another way, would you be in constant contact with them if they were based in your office?
Use technology to manage and collaborate at a distance
When some of your team aren’t based in the same place as you, it can be hard to share ideas and monitor productivity in order to get the right results.
By setting up on online workspace, you can get a complete overview of what your team is working on, whilst also being able to collaborate in real time with them. The leading online collaboration tools should allow you to create tasks for team members, edit documents together and encourage debate through wikis and blogs.
Discover the other features that you should look for in a collaboration tool with our free guide:
