6.4. Organisation and management of remote teams

Nowadays, teams do not have to work in an office. Many companies in response to today’s challenges are gradually encouraging employees to work remotely. For some types of business, remote teamwork is not a luxury, but a necessity.

For us, the reasons for creating a remote team are not so important. It is far more important to understand the rules and techniques to make a remote team effective.

Not all off-site teams are remote.

A distributed or remote-first team is a hybrid model in which there are remote employees and those sitting in the office. On the one hand, they use all the digital tools of the remote team. On the other hand, the corporate culture affects them differently.

A completely remote team has no physical office at all. All employees are able to work from anywhere in the world. They simply connect to the Internet and use a specific set of virtual tools. Often a remote team is a group of professionals from different time zones, with different skills and different cultures, working together on a single project.

Setting up a remote team has its pros and cons. Pros:

–office rental costs, equipment depreciation costs are reduced;

–you can hire high quality professionals from different cities and even countries not obliging to relocate. Moving an employee to a new place of residence will not be a reason for dismissal.

Cons:

–the team management and team building system become more complicated;

–the system of assigning work tasks, monitoring their implementation and evaluating their quality becomes more problematic;

–recruiting new employees becomes more intricate. Special methods are required to test competencies and personality traits;

–if employees are located in different time zones, coordination of joint work becomes more challenging;

–remote employees may not understand the overall goals or strategy of the company;

–cultural differences are pronounced in international teams. Employees have varying career attitudes and family traditions and approach their working day differently.

We can see that remote teams have more disadvantages than advantages. So why are there more and more remote teams? There are four advantages in teaming up remote workers:

–you hire the best people wherever they (or you) are;

–you improve your quality of life;

–you can manage your productivity;

–you have low employee turnover.

Managing a remote team has some basic principles associated with managing any team. Working remotely also places new demands concerning the way you collaborate, communicate, make decisions, get work done and organise your workspace and working hours. To reap the benefits of a remote team in full, you need to set it up properly.

Building and setting up the work of the remote team

When building a remote team, these processes become much more complex. The selection of remote team members has several particularities.

First, personal qualities and motivational traits are essential. The key qualities are responsibility and self-organisation, autonomy and proactivity. The employee should be able to handle minor difficulties, find and propose solutions to problems independently.

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Secondly, to work in an international team a person should be fluent in a foreign language, which will be the main and obligatory requirement for all communications. Therefore, proficiency in a foreign language is a professional skill that is necessary for the performance of basic duties.

Teamwork is first and foremost about constant communication and interaction to resolve a variety of issues. Working in an office often makes these processes invisible. They happen naturally. How are meetings and discussions organised if all team members work in the office? The manager gets up and says: “Guys, come here, let’s talk”. Employees go to lunch, have coffee, meet in the corridors. At any of these moments, they can discuss a difficult issue or exchange ideas. Remote workers have no such opportunity. Here, all processes have to be set up with great care.

Here are some time-tested recommendations.

1.Organise your digital office space. Create a virtual office-like experience by defining the stack of tools and services you will use. Remember that they should complement each other and, if possible, be networked together.

Many organisations use Slack or MS Teams to organise workflow. They allow you to monitor the composition of members and remove employees who leave in a timely manner, which is important for corporate security.

What is good here is video conferencing services that support open video rooms, such as Zoom. Regularly scheduled meetings can be held there. The manager can set “office hours” and keep his virtual zoom room open. It’s also possible to set up a virtual zoom kitchen / coffee shop, where employees can join in during coffee and snack breaks and chat about anything.

Monitoring the work and effectiveness of a remote team requires the special attention of the manager. There are special programs for controlling work. These are the task management services (Jira, Asana, Bitrix, Trello) and the time management services.

You will need cloud storage and collaboration programmes (G Suite, Office 365, Yandex.Disk, Box, Dropbox) as well as digital signature and document management services to organise your corporate workflow.

If you set up the virtual office together with your team, there may be disagreement about which software to choose. Each team member may have different preferences. Decide for yourself or by majority vote. Use one service in each category, avoid duplication. Someone will be temporarily inconvenienced, but the whole team will benefit.

2.Set rules for working together. A remote team makes the same rules as an in-office team. But there will be much more of these rules. These need to be clearly defined:

– working hours;

– availability;

– communication methods and style;

– responses to requests and emails.

Working remotely is in fact a job. And it requires setting clear boundaries, separating it from personal life. Team members work from different time zones. So beeps, chat messages or emails can disrupt someone’s sleep or their family’s personal time. You need to discuss the work schedule with each team member and stick to it.

Managers often face cultural obstacles when managing remote teams. In multicultural teams, misunderstandings and conflicts are more likely to occur. This can only be resolved through feedback and understanding that colleagues are people with different cultural backgrounds.

The work of remote teams is dominated by written communication in corporate messengers. The rules for remote team work should clearly outline the rules for business correspondence: speed of response to a message, acceptability of voice messages, use of emoticons, and etiquette. There are special rules for communication on the Internet called netiquette. They are set in every online community. Formulate such rules for your remote team as well.

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Remote team management

Well, you have created a virtual office, invited team members, formulated rules for working together, set up business processes and communication channels. It’s time to get the team to deliver the result, to achieve the goal you have set.

What should the team leader take care of the team to make it effective?

Three things traditionally plague remote working. These are organisation, communication and motivation. These are the things that ensure the effectiveness of the team. When managing a remote team, they need to be approached without “office” stereotypes.

Organisation. If people are sitting in the office, in plain sight, you can walk up, look at the monitor and ask how the project is going. This method does not work with a remote team. Special time tracking and monitoring services are used to control the work of remote employees. A time tracker tracks an employee’s activity and generates detailed reports. Usually, the presence of a time tracker is enough for an employee to initiate self-discipline.

In the case of remote teams, it is better to evaluate efficiency using KPIs rather than workload. KPIs — key performance indicators are numerical performance estimates that help to measure the extent to which goals or the optimality of a process have been achieved, namely performance and efficiency. For example, two staff members work on similar tasks in a BIM project. One of them completes the work in two days and the other in five. If you compare the productivity, the first employee performs better. However, there may be many errors in his work that will take extra time to correct. And the quality of the second employee’s work can be exceptional. KPIs are therefore a more informative way of monitoring task performance.

At the end of the reporting period (month, quarter and year), the manager analyses the quality of each member’s work: how many tasks have been completed, how many deadlines have been missed, and how many mistakes and disruptions in the workflow have occurred. This method works in absolutely any country.

Communication. Most people are used to working in an office and think that personal communication is more effective than virtual communication. Unfortunately, this is true. Remote teams need over-communication: there has to be much more virtual communication than while working in a normal team.

These are a few rules for enhancing team communication.

1.If team members live in different time zones, determine the main time zone. This is necessary for general conferences. But team messenger messages can be sent 24 hours a day.

2.Use only one language for communication (e.g. English), even between employees from the same country.

3.Set a response time of 12 hours for the message. This allows you to prepare a reply and take into account the time zones.

4.Document all meetings. Documenting and logging meetings should be a rule, a responsibility and a habit for every employee. Having complete information greatly reduces the disconnect and uncertainty inherent in working remotely.

5.Create an individual link for each employee to make a personal call and indicate the time difference with the main time zone.

6.For employees to feel a part of a team rather than a collection of individual professionals, set up video meetings. Call once a week at a convenient time for everyone. This is especially true if the team is small, up to 15 people.

7.Turn on your sound and video during video conferences. This creates the effect of face-to-face communication. An exception can only be made for too noisy sound background from one of the employees (e.g. being on a construction site).

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Motivation. Financial and career motives are satisfied in a remote team in the same way as when working in an office. What are the specifics of managing motivation in a remote team? What does transform scattered specialists into a team? To begin with, it is the atmosphere in a team. In a remote team, it has to be created literally step by step.

Feedback from the manager and other team members is vital for a remote team. Specialised programs, regular surveys, smart services, and Q&A sessions can be used for this purpose. In order for the team to work effectively, the HR department is to constantly monitor the mood of its members. Healthy team relations have a direct impact on the achievement of goals.

Identify informal leaders and make them your allies. In a remote team, management will fall entirely to the informal leaders, whether you like it or not. Modern ONA (organisational network analysis) tools can automatically identify these informal leaders. Organise regular one-to-one meetings with them. Show them your professional respect by delivering your ideas in person, listen to them and make sure you take their opinions into account. Empower them.

Specially tuned informal communication helps to build team spirit. It is important to celebrate the small achievements of the team on the whole and each individual member of the team. Whereas in the office you can congratulate employees in person, in remote work it is not so simple.

Send personal messages to employees when they grow professionally; publicly congratulate the team when a project succeeds. Provide digital perks for productive work (e.g., gift certificates for products or services).

After a work day is over, you can host informal virtual hobby club meetings, group games and competitions. You can invite other teams working in your organisation. This will raise the organisational culture to a new level.

Working remotely is not suitable for everyone. Some people feel isolated and lonely, especially if they stay at home all the time. But it is always possible to find those who really enjoy it. The job of the manager is to create the right conditions and do the best to make sure that the remote team brings the most value to the organisation. Obviously, advances in technology are making working with remote teams much easier than it was even five years ago. But even now, such work is considered laborious.

Of course, you can discuss all the pros and cons of a remote team, but let’s be honest. We already work this way. We check our mail on weekends, read papers on the way to work, and finish projects at home in the evenings. Even now we work remotely, the only question is how often and how many of the right tools we have.

6.5. Work activity’s motivators

American engineer, researcher, manager Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856–1915) is considered to be the founder of work motivation. His psychotechnical approach led to a fourfold increase in productivity.

Initially, two physiological motives were thought to be implemented in labour activity: material rewards and working conditions. Note that this was wage labour, the place of which was given to slavery or close to it.

Social motivators began to be added from the beginning of the twentieth century. Motivators of the psychological level appeared by the end of the twentieth century.

Motivator is object (material or ideal) for the sake of which an activity is carried out. Potential motivators are values, interests and ideals inherent in a given society, which, once accepted by the individual, become a motivating force for him or her.

Motivation is not limited to a single motivator. It is always a complex of interrelated motivators. Today there are twelve motivators of labour activity. Let us briefly discuss each one.

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Physiological level motivators.

1. High earnings and material rewards. A man’s main driving force, his only need, is money. At first glance, it may seem that they are very comfortable workers and a manager does not need to think about how to motivate them. They are ready to tolerate any, even the most boring job, to perform the same tasks for years, to work on weekends, to ignore the physical conditions of their work.

However, this simplicity is deceptive.

Satisfying such a person by raising his wages is not realistic — he is always short.

It should be borne in mind that someone who is prepared to do anything for money will be inclined to ignore established rules and regulations and, in extreme cases, to commit illegal acts if it is financially profitable for him.

People who are financially motivated prefer to be rewarded for their own efforts, and therefore do not like teamwork, and are reluctant if they have to work in a group.

At the other extreme, money is at the bottom of the motivational hierarchy. This does not mean that such people will allow themselves to be exploited and work for free. If a person is paid below what they consider fair, they lose motivation altogether. No matter how one feels about money, it sustains one’s existence. If there is not enough money to support their usual lifestyle, people start moonlighting in other organisations, which of course has a negative impact on their main job.

2. Physical working conditions. Work motivators from as far back as the last century have wanted to be excluded from the list of motivators. Working conditions are the responsibility of employers. But why was it left in? There is a direct correlation between an employee’s status and the physical conditions in which he works. If an employee complains about poor working conditions, this is most often an indicator (motivation) that they cannot satisfy some other need, such as the need for power, for recognition, etc.

Social level motivators.

3.Social contacts. This motivator captures a person’s natural need to socialise, which is determined by their innate psycho-physiological features, the type of nervous system. They are, as a rule, extroverts.

They respond positively to the motivation to benefit the whole team and the reputation of the whole department. They tend to work in a friendly environment where they can chat, discuss family and personal problems. They tolerate the hustle and bustle around them and the noise they create.

An organisational culture that centre on individual work, in which people are kept in individual cubicles, is not suitable for people who want to socialise.

Highly extroverted people are not endowed with sensitivity (their insensitivity allows them to be outwardly active in extreme situations and to withstand intense environmental pressure). They are, for this reason, a frenzy to people who are poorly communicative. Not to mention the aimlessly wasted time for work.

If a person’s motivator fixing need for social contact is low, it does not mean that they have no need for communication. They are introverts: they need others less and not in such doses. At work, they have a practical, consumerist attitude towards others. They may feel sorry for wasting their time in idle conversations.

4.Relationships. This motivator captures an individual’s need to establish and maintain long-term relationships with a small group of people. Studies show that modern people tend to avoid close relationships, preferring “casual acquaintance” which does not touch the depths of the human soul.

This attitude is facilitated by the characteristics of modern production and society in general, in which people are easily replaceable. Organisations do not pretend to be a place of work for life. Many organisations are seen as dynamically unstable, with staff constantly being “reshuffled” as a result of multiple reorganisations. For this reason, people do not want to expend effort and energy on building long-term relationships with their co-workers because they know “parting is just around the corner”.

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5.Recognition. Everyone needs recognition, attention and approval. The manager wants the employee to do the job effectively and efficiently, and the employee wants to be valued through approval.

People who have a high need for recognition are very comfortable for the organisation. These people are socially adaptable and compliant, and tend to conform to social and group standards easily and without much coercion.

Successful organisations go to great lengths to acknowledge their employees for any achievement, big or small. The means of such motivation have long been thought of and work without fail. It is a plaque, a commendation, a praise, and anything else that makes such people feel good.

But there is also a downside.

An addiction to praise is formed in people who are insecure. Those who seek to compensate for insecurity demand constant attention. This becomes a significant problem for leadership, an impossible task for management: the time and energy (emotional) cost that is spent recognising them no longer covers their real worth.

There is a further difficulty. People who are highly dependent on recognition are unable to make decisions for themselves and find it hard to navigate situations, especially when they are new. They are characterised by a marked degree of anxiety and tension.

6.The drive to achieve. The strength of the need for achievement depends on three factors: the expectation of success, the value of the results obtained (rewards and rewards), and a sense of personal responsibility for the achievement.

These individuals are very useful to the organisation. They are competitive and self-directed. They are not difficult to motivate. They always need a goal. But not every goal is good enough for them. A goal is only good for them if it can be achieved quickly and successfully.

Challenging, uncertain goals require long deliberation, careful analysis of possible failures, adjustments, and even the closing down of a project before it begins. Achievement-minded people have a hard time with discussions; they are people of action. The goal should be measurable (evaluated) and not contain particularly risky activities.

Another difficulty in working with such people: they prefer to do everything themselves; they do not cooperate with anyone.

It is difficult to motivate people who have no need for achievement. They may be interested in a goal, but they will not make the effort. Among such people there are also those who have low self-esteem and self-respect and are unable to have a positive perception of those around them. The services of such people are not in demand in the modern Western world.

7.Power and influence. A person, however much they may aspire to power, will never declare it openly. Firstly, it is not welcomed in society. Secondly, an excessive need for power prevents success. The ambition and vanity of a manager prevents him from creating a real motivational environment for employees, in general, for those around him. The ability to step into the shadows in order to give others the opportunity to grow and try new things is an essential quality of a manager.

A person may aspire to different kinds of power: position, expertise, resources, etc. It is important to determine which ways of influencing people this person prefers, what means he / she uses to achieve his / her own goals.

8.Interesting and rewarding work. People tend to form an idea of themselves on the basis of the work they do. If you ask a person who they are, most will say their last name and point to their profession, suggesting it as a means of defining themselves.

There are positives and negatives to any activity. “Pros” attract a person and can keep him or her in the job for a long time, compensating for the “cons”. An interesting and rewarding job has the greatest significance for the individual.

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This creates ample opportunity for motivation. Different people give different meanings to interesting work. Interest can be expressed in three areas: the content of the work, the ways of working (which can be combined with motivation for personal achievement) and the people with whom one works (which can be combined with a desire for power, influence and recognition). It is important to understand what is interesting to one is not interesting to the other and not to view the other person’s interests through your own.

Psychological level motivators.

9.Structuring. This motivator is typical of people who would like to see the world as predictable and controllable. They need order, the establishment of and adherence to rules.

The desire for order and structuring is directly connected with physiological features of a person, the level of anxiety, viscosity of nervous processes. Such people need to know exactly what is required of them. Lack of structure is fraught with serious stress for them. Those people who have the misfortune to encounter them feel like victims under tight control.

Structuring and organising is a useful and necessary part of any work activity. Signs of structuring include: time; rules and procedures; regularity of activities; societal norms and expectations; religious and ritual activities; repetition; well-developed written communication; predictability; planning.

Motivating people who are highly structured is difficult. It requires either establishing the order that they demand or letting them establish the order themselves. This will immediately create a problem, as we live in an unorganised world. Some compromise is achieved if there is a rigid system of order within which there is ample room for flexibility.

If there is a low appetite for structure, it means that the employee’s appetite for variety and innovation is high.

10.Diversity and change. The desire for variety and change relies heavily on the psychophysiological characteristics of individuals. They find rules irritating. They are capable of fierce resistance to any attempt to restrict their freedom of action.

These workers face minimal problems in times of change. But change needs to be paired with something, like creativity or achievement. Otherwise, it leads nowhere. Characteristics of such people are:

– a desire to avoid routine and do “something new”;

– unwillingness to set and discuss goals, especially long-term ones;

– a tendency to leave tasks unfinished;

– the need to maintain a high level of excitement;

– inability to cope with changes which affect their personality.

11.Creativity. On the one hand creativity is the ability to produce non-trivial, almost spontaneous solutions, on the other hand it is the ability to systematically develop new ways of seeing the old. Creativity is one of the most important factors that ensure the competitiveness of an organisation.

There are many limitations to the manifestation of creativity:

– the peculiarities of the organisational culture, the need for teamwork and personal preferences;

– the need for personal space, personal growth, regulations and structural constraints;

– the ability to concentrate own efforts, self-start, shift attention according to dictated conditions, focus on organisational goals;

– the ability to understand the ideas of others, bring forward ideas within the main line of action, defend the ideas;

– willingness to make mistakes and accept them.

12.Self-improvement. In which spheres of being is the person’s need for self-improvement realised? What does self-improvement have to do with a person’s work duties? For example, there are many people who are keen on physical improvement. What is it for them: a goal or a means to work more effectively and efficiently?

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The attitude towards workers for whom the pursuit of self-improvement and self-actualisation is an important motivator has never been clear-cut. Such people are difficult, uncomfortable, practically unmanageable. But progress and advancement are the result of these very people.

Here are some characteristics of people who have a high need for self-improvement.

They assess work in terms of what it gives them in terms of professional or personal growth. Otherwise, they believe, such work leads to degradation. Having quickly completed their work, they switch to something more meaningful for them. In extreme cases, they stop working altogether, condemning themselves to a low standard of living and engaging solely in things that contribute to their self-actualisation.

A desire for autonomy and detachment from people, no desire to depend on anyone, no desire to feel attachment. This peculiarity makes these people motivationally unmanageable: no loyalty to a cause or organisation can be counted on.

The main question, self-improvement, is for what? The goals may be different. Independence and autonomy: financial, professional, in all areas. To gain recognition in one narrow field or among a wide range of people (expanding superficial knowledge in all fields), increasing influence or for self-sufficiency.

Summary

1.The team has an artificial origin, where each participant is self-centred and does what they are interested in. A team is created to solve complex problems with multiple solutions requiring a wide range of competencies.

2.A team goes through five stages on its way to becoming a top-quality team: formation, boiling, normalisation, functioning, change.

3.A successful team performance requires a high level of psychological culture of the team members, understanding and acceptance of diversity of people, which ultimately results in: “1 + 1 + 1 = 9”.

4.Each team develops its own rules, but there are universal rules: “Self”, “Activity”, “Here and Now”, “Sincerity and Openness”. These rules apply only within the team.

5.Remote teams have advantages over regular teams. But managing a remote team requires extra skill and effort, as well as special software.

6.The most difficult points for remote team management are organisation, communication and motivation.

7.The work activity of modern man includes 12 motivators on three levels: physiological, social, psychological.

8.The physiological level includes two motivators: material incentives and conformal working conditions. These motivators are the conditions of life support.

9.The social level includes six motivators: social contacts, relationships, power and influence, interesting and rewarding work, recognition, striving for achievement.

10.The psychological level includes four motivators: structuring, striving for change, creativity, self-improvement.

Think about and answer these questions

1.From your point of view, what is the most difficult stage of team development for a project manager? Please explain why you think this is so.

2.Which rule, from your point of view, is the most difficult to follow? Please explain why you think this is so.

3.What motivators do you rely on in your daily work?

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