Leave a Comment / Uncategorized / By Tim Lauenroth
“When we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also we do things together”
Barack Obama
This quote sums up the key success factors of a remote team: individual initiative and collaboration within the team. At first glance, this sounds relatively simple, but it is a challenge, especially in international constellations.
Building a team that can successfully work remotely is crucial, especially for the future direction of the working world. Due to the technical possibilities available to us today, it is often more effective to assemble teams digitally. Travel costs are saved, teams are more flexible and can be very successful if set up correctly. Several success factors are essential to building a successful remote team.
Hiring the right people
Building a successful team starts with putting the right people together. Especially with international projects and teams where different work attitudes, cultures and values come together, assembling them is a complicated and challenging process. You should consider the following things when hiring a new member to a digital team:
The employee should be able to take initiative
The ability to be on your own and perform your own tasks and complete tasks independently of the team is one of the factors people look for when hiring employees. If the employee’s intrinsic motivation is so high that he or she can work on his or her own without any problems, he or she will bring to the team crucial expertise in the relevant area.
Expertise
Without expertise in the corresponding field, the employee brings the remote team fairly little. Since each employee’s own initiative is a key factor in the success of the project team, employees rely more on their expertise.
Very good communication skills
The success of the project depends on the quality of communication within the team. This includes, for example, being readily available and proactive in regularly communicating with each other about tasks and progress. It means that the employee must proactively participate in communication within the team. For example, a daily meeting is a good way for the whole team to exchange information on a regular basis. In this meeting, each team member names the tasks he or she has to do today and shares his or her progress with the rest of the team.
Set guidelines
Adherence to certain guidelines is essential to the success of the project. Establishing core working hours during which each team member must be available is one component to ensure regular interaction with each other. In addition, goals should be set, both for each individual employee, but especially within the team. This promotes a healthy dynamic within the team and increases the motivation of the employees to want to achieve the goal.
Another guideline is to determine how the work of the team members should be documented in order to be able to show the progress to the project manager and the employee. You can find a solution for this in point 5. A point from which further guidelines can be derived is the definition of values and norms within the team. Especially in international projects different values and norms meet. One possibility is the introduction of a Pink Space.
Set up Microsoft Teams as a central platform for the execution of your projects
Microsoft offers Microsoft Teams, a platform that is particularly suitable for projects that are carried out remotely. There are several reasons for this:
First, Microsoft Teams is the best tool for communicating with each other. This is mainly because interactivity on the platform is very important to Microsoft. There are many ways to exchange ideas on the platform. Be it via chat, with a voice call or via video. This plays remote Teams into the cards.
On the other hand, Teams not only serves as a communication platform, but is also the central platform for linking Microsoft365 programs together to build your individual Microsoft365 environment. The connection provides you with automated processes that save you manual work and allow you to work faster and more effectively. In addition, the platform offers you many other advantages.
Record your team’s working hours with timeghost
With our software, we have specialized in the recording of working times within projects. On the one hand, timeghost gives you an overview of the working hours of your employees. On the other hand, you as a project manager can go into depth with different filters and take a closer look at the working hours of your employees. For your employees, entering their working hours is intuitive and easy, so that no time is lost.
Your employees also have the advantage of being able to display their working hours in a measurable way in the remote working space. Here you can see in detail how timeghost is structured and what options you have as a project manager or as an administrator in the software.
The best way to test timeghost is with our 14 day free trial to see how we support you in the successful execution of your projects.
Try it yourself
We really appreciate all the feedback we can get, so please feel free to contact us and tell us what needs improvement or what you are missing in timeghost.
If you need any help in setting up timeghost, please don’t hesitate to visit our Support Center or send us an email to support@timeghost.io.
Get the timeghost Teams App
You only need to install the timeghost Teams App directly from the AppSource Store in the application. You can find a manual on how to do this right here. The timeghost app includes all features that you know from the web client and since you use your Office 365 account in order to access timeghost you’re set and done in only a few seconds.
