We’re living in a world where remote and hybrid working are now the norm. Driven by lockdowns and the pandemic, businesses have been forced to adopt a ‘working from home’ approach. This ability to work remotely has driven productivity and efficiency for some companies, but can create its own challenges.
When a whole team, or even a percentage of a team, are no longer sitting in the same office space, there are some very specific considerations to bear in mind. How do they access the systems they need? Where is all the company and customer data stored? How can people collaborate? What’s the best way to communicate?
If you’re going to make it easy to manage a project with a remote or hybrid team, you absolutely need to think through these questions and come up with some practical answers.
For example:
The obvious problem of video based meetings is not being in the same room as the project team. Over the course of the pandemic, we’ve seen video meetings and platforms like Zoom and Microsoft Teams, come into their own. Holding your kick-off meeting and regular team catch-ups via video calls helps everyone to feel involved. It also helps to create more of a ‘team spirit’ between a group of people who may be hundreds, or even thousands, of miles apart.
During meetings, you need good ways of taking down notes, capturing actions, or summarising what’s been discussed with the client or the team. Using a cloud-based document system, like Microsoft 365, Google Docs or Evernote, allows you to capture these ideas as rough notes. Or you could use an AI transcription tool, like Otter.ai, to transcribe the audio from the meeting as it happens. Then provide the team with a full written breakdown of the call.
Once the project is underway, it’s important to monitor progress, record which tasks have been completed, and stay in control of a disparate group of people all working in different places. Project management solutions, like Asana or Trello, can be great tools for tracking the progress of a project, and keeping everyone on top of things. When these tools are cloud-based, everyone has access 24/7 from any internet-enabled location. This makes it easier for everyone to be kept in the loop and for managers to see how each person is tracking.
Working together from a distance is another hurdle for a dispersed team to overcome. However, with cloud-based collaboration tools, like Monday, Slack or Microsoft Teams, you can quickly create an online space for the team to share documents, have online chats, upload different document versions, and generally boost the collaborative process. The easier you make it to communicate and share files/info, the fewer challenges you’ll face as the project develops.
Whatever the project, there are going to be certain costs, expenses and budgetary considerations to cope with. Staying in control of that, with a team of remote workers, can be a challenge – both for the project manager, and the company’s finance team. The answer is to use a project management tool that integrates with your main cloud accounting software. Many of the top project management and invoicing solutions can connect directly to platforms such as Xero, QuickBooks, MYOB or Sage. Apps, like DiviPay or Pleo, also provide ways to manage your remote team expenses when employees are making ad hoc payments, racking up project expenses, or have control over their own budgets etc.
As the benefits and flexibility of remote working become more widely felt, we’re likely to see even more projects being run remotely. Employees are likely to no longer be clustered in the same office 5 days per week. So, if you want to keep your competitive advantage, you need to be ready.