Remote working has accelerated in recent years. Among the many benefits, it can provide greater flexibility, a better work-life balance and reduced commuting expenses. Whether workers are fully remote or enjoy a mix of office and remote environments, flexible working is a new reality for many businesses.
Moreover, flexible working is an excellent way to attract top talent, and remote work has become increasingly popular. In our recent Special work management report, 'Productivity is not a place', we found that 99% of employees actively chose whether to work remotely, hybrid or in-office, with 96% very or somewhat satisfied with their work environment.
A remote workplace offers new opportunities for companies to leverage tools and tactics to ensure their teams remain collaborative, productive and connected. Successful team management is an essential component of a thriving remote workforce. Collaborative work management (CWM) tools help with team management and are designed to support and encourage collaboration and communication among your teams. If you would like to learn more about collaborative work management, you can read our recent blog post, which breaks down everything you need to know. For now, let's look at the challenges and opportunities of CWM in a remote working environment.
Key challenges and opportunities of collaborative work management
1. The importance of team member engagement
Working remotely creates a physical barrier between your teams. This physical barrier can leave your workforce feeling distant and unmotivated. Therefore, it's essential to make an effort to encourage relationships within the team and create a sense of camaraderie. You can do this through regularly scheduled engagement activities where employees can get together virtually. Work management tools offer many ways for teams to engage and connect through features like file sharing and instant messaging. Also, meeting face-to-face to maintain in-person team bonding is still a good idea. Meeting physically will further enhance team bonding and camaraderie.
2. Strong communication and collaboration
When discussing remote working, one of the most prominent questions organisations ask is how to encourage collaboration and communication. Tools can allow your remote teams to communicate, collaborate and access resources quickly. This software enables teams to meet specific goals or solve business problems through task management, document sharing, and collaboration with thoughts and ideas. You can reduce silos between teams and departments by centralising team information in one place and increasing transparency. It enables your remote workers to be more productive, which enhances their performance. It's essential for businesses operating with a remote workforce.
3. Regular video conferencing
Often, with remote work, there needs to be a face-to-face connection. That's why scheduling regular video calls and team catch-ups is essential. You can use catch-up time to set goals, align focus, share team news and anything else that benefits the team. Video conferencing is an excellent way to communicate, catch up and collaborate face-to-face. Moreover, it's more flexible than arranging an in-person meeting, as virtual meetings can be joined anywhere at any time.
4. The power of task automation
Repetition of menial tasks can lead to burnout and a demotivated workforce, so automating where you can is worthwhile. Automating repetitive tasks means your workforce can focus on more important work and creative tasks. This helps streamline processes and improve productivity and can help prioritise and track progress. You can use CWM tools to automate repetitive tasks. For example, you can automate notifications and calendar updates, while some CWM tools provide the ability to automate ticket status.
5. Work management tools set expectations
When working remotely, it can be challenging to keep track of workloads and the tasks currently being completed by the rest of the team. That's where work management tools can help. Work management tools aid transparency and keep everyone in the team aware and up-to-date with task progress. You can use work management tools to track projects and update progress. Doing so avoids bottlenecks, aids team member productivity and helps handle expectations between managers and teams.
Conclusion
Remote work is ideal for many employees in today's modern workforce. Flexibility, reduced costs and a better work-life balance are why many employees want at least some form of remote work. And when it comes to attracting top talent, flexible working (whether fully remote or hybrid) could be a key selling point.
Organisations will stay competitive and reap the benefits of flexible working by adopting tools and practices that enable effective remote team management. Work management tools keep a remote workforce collaborative, communicative and productive. These tools help teams connect, define plans, bring silos together with shared visibility of projects and work, reduce tool-switching and technology fatigue, and much more.
Are you ready to help your remote team reap the many benefits of work management tools? We can help. Find out more about our solutions today.
