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5 signs that your team needs a remote project manager

Remote work is on the rise, and many companies are realizing the benefits of avoiding rush-hour traffic and reduced operating costs to run an office. However, those employees formerly on the frontline are used to being managed in-person. And a remote set up can throw them off track by changing the routine as they know it.

Remote work is on the rise, and many companies are realizing the benefits of avoiding rush-hour traffic and relaoji.orgduced operating costs to run an office. However, those employees formerly on the frontline are used to being managed in-person. And a remote set up can throw them off track by changing the routine as they know it.

With the outbreak of the novel coronavirus, many frontlines and non-essential businesses that can run fully online have given their staff the option to work from home on a semi-permanent or flex-time basis. And with it have come constraints of managing work and ensuring tasks are on-track for completion.

Now that micromanagement is being chased out of the corporate setup, alternatives to managing a now-virtual team are being explored. After all, teams don’t evolve overnight into self-organized units. They require guidance and relevant involvement from stakeholders vested in looking after the health and performance of both the business and the people it employs.

The usual steps in the work cycle are to identify priorities, draw up deadlines, and delegate them to competent people. But what happens when you find out that one or more departments are competing to get their work seen first? If everything is a priority, timelines conflict and concerned members get stretched thinly trying to do it all. Worse, they no longer remain able to recollect and mark their progress if there are too many action items that require their attention.

Course-correction

A dependency can exist between two or more tasks. Confusion over who is taking what up, and where the dependencies lie arises when there is no visibility into what everyone as a whole is doing.

Course-correction

The remote project manager can use to check in on task statuses, pending decisions on action items, and review workflows that they are tagged in.

燭wo or more members on a team are double-booked or locked in on the same work which requires fewer people. New work cannot be assigned because the calendar has been blocked with busywork.

Course-correction

First and foremost, a remote project manager should use timezone applications to be informed of time differences automatically. They can accordingly sync their team’s calendar by location, which in turn indicates work hours for which a member is expected to be online, responsive, and available for comment.

Course-correction

Course-correction

Steer away from the expectation that now that your team is remote, they can log in earlier and log out late. A work-life balance is essential to the longevity of productive employees even if they have nowhere to commute to. Set time aside to draft a work policy that is more intentional about and weave your people’s interests, processes and tools into it so that they look forward to work, as opposed to having a skewed perception of it.

The takeaway

should be a more deliberate step than a secondary consideration when teams are working remotely. It goes beyond using asynchronous or synchronous channels to replicate the in-person interactions. It is about helping workers feel connected to the company, to their work, and to each other. Over the course of time, these remedial actions will enable teams to take ownership of tasks and their professional growth, all the while learning to collaborate better on the ones that need more than one stream of input!

is the founder and brains behind , a remote-work resource center for the ever-growing tribe of teleworkers. A former team leader and subject matter in resource management, Aakash resides in London and enjoys table tennis, reading and good cuisine in his free time.

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