Council Post: How To Motivate Your Team When Working Online

As more and more businesses find new ways of working in response to the coronavirus, management effectiveness is essential.

If you are a manager, one of your tasks is to motivate your employees and foster the team’s spirit in order to achieve your common goals. Whether you work in an office or from home, a common goal is good for morale. Collaboration and mutual feedback make people feel valued. Pooling diverse skills is generally more productive. However, working remotely can make achieving these things tricky, so I’ve outlined my tips for sharing information and motivating your team while working online:

Sharing information is essential.

One way to motivate your team is to share information. I’ve found that ensuring employees are aware of what is happening outside their departments, what the company is aimed at and how the result of the mutual work will affect each member of the team can make everyone much more efficient.

When people don’t have enough information about a situation in the company, they might begin to envision the worst or assume they have the whole picture. When people work from home, a lack of information becomes more sensitive and can result in loss of motivation and productivity.

To start sharing effectively:

1. Hold weekly meetings or video calls. These are an effective way to exchange information and keep your team updated. My first startup was a marketplace where customers and cleaners connect with one another. We had several departments working remotely, so it was important that each department knew what the others were working on and how it influenced the whole process. From the very beginning, we chose a model of remote work to be cost-effective as a startup. So, how to manage exchange of information in this case? Choose a day and contact each department on a weekly basis.

2. Set up an agenda for the meeting. When planning this agenda, think over the topics you will discuss regularly. Then, decide who is responsible for each point of the agenda, and set a time limit for the meeting or call. I’ve found it’s best to keep the meeting within an hour. Every week, I would hold an online meeting with the customer support team of our company. Each member participated in the discussion, including the head of support and the person responsible for mass recruitment. Our traditional agenda was the following:

• Updates concerning the cleaners, including employment statistics, problem cases, ideas on how to improve or upgrade business processes, etc.

• Updates from the manager of the support team, such as statistics of the department’s performance, problem cases in process, new cases that can become the base of further development, etc.

• Updates from the first line of the support staff, such as the most difficult cases each team member faced during the week, how they dealt with them, what they learned and how those cases might impact the further development of the company.

• Updates from the operation manager (me). I let others know what the marketing team was doing and what campaigns and activities were being launched. I also informed colleagues about what the software development department was working on, when updates were going to be launched and any other updates concerning the company.

3. Involve everyone. Even when working online, you still have to hold important conversations. For example, during each remote meeting held in my company, we discussed how to make the company more customer oriented. It’s important to involve each person and each department in such a discussion so that your team feels valued and does their best to positively impact the success of the company.

4. Make an action plan. After each meeting, update your meeting minutes, and make an action plan with small steps based on what was discussed and decided. During the next meeting, discuss what was completed from the previous meeting’s minutes. Such an approach is especially essential when working remotely, as I’ve found it can help each employee know that they are an active, meaningful team player, which ultimately can help boost their motivation and build rapport.

I’ve followed these steps for every meeting I’ve conducted. As a manager, this approach helps me stay updated and look deeply into what is happening within every department. From an employee’s perspective, these meetings give them a clear view of what others do and offer a whole picture and vision of the company.

It can be difficult to rebuild your way of management from offline to online. By following these tips I learned from my remote management experience, I believe you can make the transition a little more seamless and keep your team’s spirit and motivation high.

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