7 Challenges in Managing Remote Teams And How To Solve Them

7 Challenges

In Managing Remote Teams

And How To Solve Them

Managing remote teams can be complex. Here are the 7 main challenges you may encounter and pro tips from Etcetera PM expert Elen 11 years of experience with projects in various industries on how to deal with them:

1. Remote work itself is the first challenge

Technical issues like power or internet outages can make a person disappear from work without any way to reach them. While this issue becomes even more extreme in Ukrainian context, last winter also taught us that this challenge can be solved. Many of our freelancers have power generators, ecoflows, or even starlink. And they know all nearest cafes and coworking spaces that have shelters, power and internet at any time to stay connected.

So, as a PM, your task is to support your team with finding best backup solutions for technical emergencies.

2. Personal schedules and time zones

Freelancers are not 9-5 workers, so dealing with different time zones and the fact that some people only wake up at noon, and work all night can be tricky for team communication and alignment. There are a few tips on how we tackle this issue:

First, try to find a common time slot what works for everyone for regular meetings. Often this also depends on the client’s time zone.
Second, establish a rule for response time, for example, we all know that if we receive a message in working hours we need to reply within an hour. Even if we just reply “got it, will address tomorrow”, this still helps to keep the communication going.
Last tip is to NOT include everyone is ALL the meetings. Of course, sometimes the whole team needs to meet. But often it’s just the designer-developer or developer-QA who need to discuss something. Avoid trying to find the perfect time that works for everyone when it’s just 2 people who need to talk.

The task for PM in case of such challenges is to control the communication and make sure the team receives and replies to all the messages in time.

3. Personalities

Another challenge (which is also common in not-remote teams) is that team may not get along. Some people just have incompatible personalities and it’s really hard for them to work together.

Here are a few tips to solve this:

During team selection process for a particular project, if you have 2 people with similar expertise, chose the one who has good relations with the rest of the team in this project.
Regular team-building activities can enhance bonds. Try to get to know the people you work with better outside their work environment. Even in online, this has proven a great tool for Etcetera and we have regular online drinks, online board games club, offline meet-ups.
Besides events, try to implement small rituals and inside-jokes for every team you are working with. In some long-term projects, we have nicknames for each other. In other projects we have a tradition to exchange photos every Friday. These small things really help people to get along better and improves their cooperation.

4. Organization and control

Multitasking between multiple projects is common in remote teams, so it’s hard often to control what everyone is doing and if they are working at all or sleeping because the neighbours had a loud party all night. While personal responsibility is one of our main team values, even with it, you need to have some kind of control over the team to meet the deadlines and reach all the deliverables.

Elen says, the best solution to add control to in managing remote teams is regular routine check-ups. Either small 15 minute calls every morning, or having everyone send you a list of tasks for their day will give PM a way to monitor the performance and enough flexibility to adjust if something gets out of control. Which brings us to the next point👇

5. Emergencies

Stuff happens either you are woking in office or remotely. But in case of remote teams the main challenge is not knowing someone has an emergency that can impact work. The only solution here is make it a must that in force majeure situations, team members inform their the team. If someone has an emergency, then must tell immediately before it’s already out of hand, allowing PM to adjust tasks distribution and if needed communicate the delay to the client.

6. Technicalities

Working on multiple projects often means using multiple tools. Some clients prefer Asana, others use Trello, Notion or just send all the task in a Skype chat. While this is not a major challenge, it can cause certain inconveniences and sometimes problems with reporting the progress.

There are a few solutions, Elen recommends:

First option is automation and integration. Thankfully, almost all modern tools support import, export and automatic transfer of tasks. So, select a preferred platform, integrate it with others and the team will not need to jump between different tools.
If the tool that client uses does not support integration, the next option is to try to convince the client agains using it.
If the second option doesn’t work and the client insists on using some weird unique tool that noone has heard of, then team building helps 🙂 You gather with the team, complain to each other, share emotions, and then try to figure out how this tool works together. In some cases, PM will take on the task to input all the information in the tool, allowing team to focus on their work.

7. Burnout and its detection

Spotting a decrease in a team member's productivity can be challenging when you don’t see them in person next to you. Even more challenging is helping them deal with it. Because Elen believes, PM’s job is not just tracking project performance and deliverables, but the emotional state of the team as well.

A short test to detect burn out is usually some ‘stupid’ question asking the team to explain how something works. This will show you if the team member is enthusiastic enough to teach, share knowledge, educate on their subject. If not - they may need some incentive to put the light back in their eyes.

Facilitating learning and development can restart people’s engine. A great way to do it is to offer a common problem to brainstorm. Discussing the issue, coming up with creative ways on how to solve them, researching the subject gets the team involved and they start caring for the project that they are doing. The ultimate goal here is to prompt someone to development in their field because they are genuinely interested in it. Sometimes, they just need reminding of it 😉

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