The Challenges of Remote Teams(and How to Overcome Them): Part 3
If you’ve been following along, we have already explored a couple of challenges for organizations who employ remote teams — poor communication and lack of accountability. Today, we’re looking at the idea of unclear roles and the perception of limited opportunities for advancement.
Not to worry, by implementing a few new processes into the routine within your organization, these challenges are easily overcome.
Unclear Roles & Limited Advancement
When your team is all in the same space, team members overhear each other’s conversations and trip over each other in forced collaboration. Conversely, when the team is not working directly together, there’s a natural tendency for roles to become unclear and muddied. Without frequent and formal communication as mentioned previously, employees may be unsure as to who is doing what or what tasks need to be completed.
While employing the suggestions from our past blogs will help to alleviate these problems, it is important to recognize that remote employees may feel they are “out of sight, out of mind,” that their talents and established responsibilities are being overlooked or forgotten. They may not be receiving an equal distribution or work, or being recognized for what they are doing.
This can also lead to remote employees experiencing fewer opportunities for job advancement. Because they aren’t as visible and understood as your in-house team, those special projects or promotions that come up may be immediately be given to the people you see daily and understand more completely.
Try to host regular teamwide meetings, conferences, or retreats that bring your employees together in one place. Whether you host it in your workspace or decide to take your teams out of office, these facilitations will allow your team to come together, reconnect, and share what they are up to. This is also a great time to conduct performance reviews and succession discussions to gauge who is on track for advancement and help your team get a clearer view of their career path.