Building trust in remote management is essential to empower and support your remote team. You must trust your employees to complete quality tasks by the deadlines without seeing the work completed. Similarly, your team members must trust that everyone is doing their part to work toward shared goals.
Facilitating trust among your remote team helps your employees feel that everyone receives the necessary communication and that the work is evenly distributed. This trust encourages your team to remain engaged and productive. Trust also increases job satisfaction, team morale, and attraction and retention rates.
Choose among these strategies to build trust and empower and support your remote team.
Set Expectations
Clarify what you expect of each employee and your team. Emphasize work hours, communication, skills, learning and development, and other relevant issues.
For instance, you might expect your employees to work 8 hours daily and attend a weekly team meeting. Clarifying the level of contact gives employees control over their schedules for work-life balance.
Create Goals
Work with your team to develop project goals. Gaining employee buy-in increases the likelihood of reaching these goals.
Ensure the project goals are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART). Include the following information:
- What your team should accomplish
- How each goal relates to the project
- Why each goal matters
- Which resources are needed to attain each goal
- When each step of a goal should be accomplished
- How progress and success will be measured
- Which employee is responsible for each role, responsibility, and task
Provide Collaboration Tools
Facilitate collaboration by giving your team the essential tools to complete their work. These tools support sharing and storing information in a central location for easy access.
Examples of collaboration tools include:
- Video conferencing software such as Zoom or Skype
- Chat apps such as Slack or Discord
- Cloud services and file sharing, such as Google Drive
- Project management applications such as Hive or Monday.com
Schedule Team Meetings
Hold regular team meetings to help your remote team stay aligned on projects and goals:
- Focus on what was completed since the last meeting, what is being worked on, and what still needs to be completed.
- Provide time to address questions, problems, and concerns and provide support.
- Celebrate your employees’ accomplishments.
- Provide motivation to continue moving forward.
Prioritize Transparency
Be open and honest with your employees. Being transparent sets a positive foundation for managing your remote team.
For instance, show that you value sharing ideas, information, and perspectives and encourage your team to do the same. Also, hold your employees accountable for their work.
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