How to Connect Better with Remote Employees

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The modern age of information brings up a lot of problems that never would’ve really occurred at the same level in the old days. One of these involves dealing with remote employees. It can be a lot more difficult to manage employees remotely then it is to manage people who are at the same location as you. Fortunately there are a few things you can do to help improve the situation.

Record Everything

It’s a lot easier to keep track of employees when they’re nearby since you have them sign things, and you can ask them questions directly. This is less the case with remote employees. So this means that it’s important to write down everything relating to a project that the employee is working on. Staying organized is pretty important for that reason. If you don’t stay organized and record everything relating to that particular employee or project you can quickly become confused and if they are far away it can be harder to clarify things quickly and easily.

Stay Connected

It’s also important to make sure that you keep in constant communication with remote employees. If you don’t have the ability to walk down to their cubicle to ask them a question due to them being on the other side of the planet, it becomes even more important to make sure they know that they can email you with any questions whenever they need to, and vica versa.

Do More Than Just Text

One problem with using text only is that you will tend to miss the full picture after a long enough time away from the remote employee. There are some things that just can’t be expressed terribly well in text only, such as exactly how someone feels about a project. It can also be hard to show exactly how a project is going. This is why it’s important to use remote collaboration tools like Trello or Google Docs to keep track of everything and allow for project managers to get a sense for how projects are going.

Encourage Collaboration

It’s important to try to facilitate collaboration and communication between team members, especially if some of these team members are on the other side of the globe. A lot of miscommunication can happen as a result of poor communication between team members which is more likely if they aren’t really talking to each other very often. This is much less of a problem when it comes to employees that are in the same area, since the social nature of what they’re doing is much easier and has less hassles associated with it.

Use Cost Effective Phones

It can be even more tempting to not communicate enough when employees are on the other side of the world and when they can only talk on the phone through expensive methods. This is why something like a Business VoIP approach can be very useful. Many of them have very cheap or even unlimited programs that will make it easy for people to communicate over the phone essentially for free in any area where they have access to the Internet. If this approach is used, the employee might as well be across town since the inconvenience is mostly eliminated.

How to Connect Better with Remote Employees