Seven Best Practices for Remote People Management

People management, especially of technical staff in nearshore or remote or out-of-office operating modes, requires a combination of communication, empathy, organization, and technology proficiency. This article describes Looi Consulting’s best practices in remote people management, distilled from years of hands-on experience.

Our recommended best practices to improve remote people management are:

Invest in Communication

All too often, communications atrophy when working remotely. The absence of interacting serendipitously with colleagues means people must go out of their way to engage with others.

• Regular Check-ins: Schedule regular one-on-one and team meetings to maintain connection, understand challenges, and provide guidance. Run these meetings with a standing agenda but append a period of open discussion.
• Appear “present” in online meetings: Conduct meetings with the camera on and always look into the camera to engage the audience.
• Clear Expectations: Clearly define roles, responsibilities, and deliverables to avoid misunderstandings.
• Active Listening: Encourage team members to share their thoughts and concerns. Practice active listening to understand their perspectives and to reinforce that they’ve been heard.

Build Trust and Autonomy

Trust and autonomy are force multipliers, especially in a distributed work environment. Building these attributes can result in higher functioning teams–with the understanding that others will make mistakes along the journey and the means and outcomes may not be the same as what the manager originally envisioned.

• Empower Your Team: Trust your team to do their jobs without micromanaging. Encourage them to take ownership of their tasks. Reinforce success with words and actions. Correct failures promptly without apportioning blame.
• Transparent Communication: Share company or team goals, project updates, and performance feedback openly.
• Cultural Sensitivity: Recognize and respect cultural differences in nearshore teams, adapting management styles as needed.
• Create Safe Spaces: Ensure that there are modes or situations or meetings where people are safe to express their views or to bring up unorthodox ideas.
• Depersonalize. Play up the team effort and team members’ mutual dependency. Acknowledge and reward team success.
• Personalize. Call out and praise individuals where appropriate, citing specific activities that resulted in desirable outcomes.

Define Roles and Boundaries

Working remotely often limits the non-verbal cues that people can see or use in communicating things like hierarchy, position, humor, empathy, and so on. Clarifying responsibilities, boundaries, escalation paths, and so on, can help team members align better with each other and with expectations.

• Use models like RACI: Clarify who’s responsible, accountable, consulted, informed for decisions or tasks in a project. Identified roles help teams function more efficiently.
• Appoint SPAs, or Single Points of Accountability. SPAs for functions, technologies, decisions, features, and so on, helps projects run smoothly and team members with clear escalation paths. SPAs can be integrated into a model like RACI.
• Delineate boundaries between consultants and employees: Sometimes roles differ not just among team members, but because of their employment status. A well functioning team may not differentiate between contractors and employees, yet legal and other considerations often require clear bright lines for certain functions, such as providing career advice.

Focus on Team Building

Building camaraderie has been a staple of management practice for at least half a century. Online, not so much. Innovative approaches and virtual friendly activities are called for. Often a third party or facilitator can help to design activities and orchestrate them.

• Virtual Team Activities: Organize online team-building exercises to strengthen relationships and foster a sense of belonging.
• Encourage Collaboration: Promote cross-team collaboration on projects to build camaraderie and share knowledge.
• Encourage Exploration: Support occasional (and regular) tasks of interest to team members so that they can investigate, learn new things, and bring them back to the team. Make sure these activities are actionable, measurable, and time-bounded.

Adapt Your Leadership Style

Leadership is not just charisma or technical competence or strategic foresight or aspirational thinking. Often it requires listening and a demonstrated willingness to incorporate feedback into plans and actions. Thus, it can be both active and passive.

• Situational Leadership: Adjust your management approach based on the individual’s experience, task complexity, and the team’s needs.
• Lead by Example: Implement some of these best practices. For example, use active listening in normal discussions and goal setting.
• Emotional Intelligence: Develop emotional intelligence to better understand and manage your team’s emotions and reactions.
• Flexibility: Be open to different working hours and styles, especially with remote teams across different time zones.

Provide Continuous Learning Opportunities

Professional development is the responsibility of the individual, but nudges, opportunities, and advice at the right time can be all the difference in a person’s career.

• Upskilling and Training: Offer opportunities for technical staff to improve their skills through self-study, directed investigations, courses, workshops, or certifications.
• Mentorship Programs: Pair less experienced staff with senior mentors to guide professional development.

Measure and Adapt

Measurement, assessment, and adaptation is common to most people in life. Objective quantification, regular feedback, and multiple sources of input allow managers to step up to the next level.

• Regular Feedback Loops: Create a culture of continuous feedback to understand what’s working and where improvements are needed.
• Don’t Shoot the Messenger: Avoid blame apportionment unless essential or culpability is clear. Encourage the expression of bad news or potentially adverse outcomes in the spirit of problem solving.
• Performance Reviews: Conduct regular performance reviews, tailored to remote work challenges, to ensure that staff are meeting their goals. Use OKRs, KPIs to manage objectives and use employee feedback tools.

By integrating these practices, managers can enhance their people management skills and lead a more effective, motivated, and cohesive technical team, even in remote or nearshore operating environments.