Managing Remote Teams: Creativity

Alongside the growth of remote and hybrid work arrangements, there have been many associated benefits – and, indeed, some challenges too. In recent years, over three-quarters of respondents to Travel Perk’s survey indicated that their companies have shifted to hybrid working styles. Among these respondents, most reported that they were required to work from the office between one and four days per week. This means that a majority of employees in the workforce are now splitting time between the office and working from home. Additionally, almost 10% of employees said that they worked remotely all of the time. Clearly, the norms around working arrangements have been shaken up, and these changes are here to stay.

Employees and organizations alike are benefitting from this move towards flexible working styles. Over one-quarter of Travel Perk’s respondents said that hybrid work benefits their lives by allowing a better work-life balance. According to employees, additional benefits include:

Increased productivity
Improved mental and physical health
More comfortable working space
Improved relationships with bosses and colleagues

Employers are feeling the positive impact of these changes too, both in obvious and indirect ways. For instance, increased employee productivity means more work being done on behalf of organizations. And improved mental and physical health amongst employees means that team members are happier at work, leading to less burnout and better performance. Happy, healthy employees also tend to stick around longer, saving the organization the cost of needing to recruit and train new hires.

Confronting the challenges of remote and hybrid work

Despite these benefits though, these new work styles come with challenges and growing pains too. Team leaders who were trained to manage in-person teams will need to pivot to apply their existing skillset to a new context, adding new tools when necessary. Many traditional management techniques will become less applicable in remote and hybrid settings when entire teams are often not in the same physical space at the same time.

Additionally, managers will find that it’s more difficult keeping up to date about their employees’ productivity levels, their progress towards individual and team objectives, and their well-being and contentment more generally. Rather than being frustrated by these challenges, team leaders can adjust their management style to regularly check in with employees about how their work is progressing and evaluate performance by outputs rather than day-to-day productivity.

This is usually not the case when working remotely, however. Managers must get creative about how they generate creativity among their remote teams. Luckily, there are three simple tricks team leaders can use to foster creativity even in physically distant teams.

First, team leaders are tasked with providing the time and space for problem-solving and generating creative ideas. Rather than hoping good ideas will happen incidentally, managers should facilitate specific virtual meetings that are expressly labeled as brainstorming or problem-solving meetings. When employees are aware of the purpose of these meetings, they can prepare appropriately with the knowledge that the meeting will require them to be active and engaged.

When running these meetings, stick closely to the purpose. While some amount of drift and off-topic conversation might be inevitable, allowing for too much unrelated commentary will make it difficult to keep people productive and engaged. Similarly, ensure that the people invited to attend the meeting are only those who likely have something valuable to add to the discussion. Including team members who have other important projects to work on or whose work is unrelated to the problem or idea being discussed will only decrease the likelihood of having a productive meeting.

Finally, encourage team members to use a variety of tools to collaborate and brainstorm with each other. While virtual meetings are useful to gather members of the team together for synchronous communication, there are a wide variety of tools available that enable asynchronous collaboration among employees. These tools can help continue the brainstorming or problem-solving conversation beyond the virtual meeting.

To learn more about simple changes that managers can make to effectively lead remote and hybrid workers, contact a ServiceSkills representative today and request a free demo of Managing Remote Teams.