Is your team remotely (un)productive?
Back in 2019, while working for Attuned’s sister company Wahl+Case, a tech and startup-focused recruitment company in Tokyo, I was asked to manage a much smaller business unit based in San Francisco. Well, to be fair, I volunteered because:
1) I was already running the Japan business, so there was logical overlap.
3) I believed in my ability to get things back on track.
In retrospect, the smartest thing I ever did was close the business down right before coronavirus hit in 2020. The decision wasn’t made because of some incredible foresight I had into the level of chaos COVID-19 would cause globally, but rather an admission that it made more sense to cut our losses and focus on our successful Japan business.
As such, my first foray into managing remote teams wasn’t remotely successful. Of course, that’s not all on me. The situation I inherited would have been challenging for anyone, and the San Francisco recruitment landscape is especially brutal for the non-initiated. However, I learned a lot about the challenges of remote management: what to do, what not to do, and—perhaps most importantly—how asynchronous communication can make or break a team.
That initial failure, and the learnings that came from it, helped immensely when we made the decision to move to a hybrid office/remote style of work in 2020.
Now, after three years of experience managing remote teams, here are my key takeaways as well as some suggestions for increasing motivation and productivity.
Make trust the default
There were quite a lot of horror stories floating around during the early days of the pandemic. People forced to work with cameras on all day, managers constantly checking in to make sure people were at their computer, or people even having to communicate bathroom breaks to their teammates.
How utterly demotivating.
In order for remote workers to flourish, trust is the most basic building block. This also needs to be two-way trust. In other words, the manager needs to trust the team, but the team also has to trust the manager.
Trust starts when people have clear priorities and objectives to go along with a clear team vision, but it also goes a level deeper to intrinsic motivation. When you understand a person’s motivators, you also gain an understanding of why they work. This also helps instill transparency, and with it trust.
2. Video meetings are useful, but exhausting.
Fig 1: Mehrabian’s 7-38-55 Communication Model
Let me tell you, Zoom fatigue is a real thing. When meeting face to face, there are so many different elements to our communication (see the 7-38-55 rule). Think about the massive impact video meetings have on our ability to listen if what we say accounts for only 7% of communication. Bad connections, low frame rates, and background noise all conspire to divert our attention. The extra effort needed to focus your attention completely on the other person, lacking all these other verbal cues, is immense.
In fact, a study from 2021 showed that turning cameras off increased productivity. In order to get the most out of this, make a conscious decision about which meetings should be video on and which can (or should) be video-off. Personally, I like one-on-one meetings to be video-on while any group meetings can be video-optional. You can also take it a step further and make some meetings video-off 100% of the time.
3. Establish communication preferences
Mine are simple:
If you want a thoughtful response or it’s a long and complicated issue, send me an email.
For quick questions or updates, Slack me.
If it’s urgent, call me.
These work well regardless of how spread out your team is. Of course, if someone is calling me at 3am something better be on fire, but if it is, calling me is the right move.
The reason why establishing these preferences is important is because people have different work styles. Some people are drowning in email but always reply to DMs, for example. These can all be written down in a shared document that everyone has access to. This is especially useful for teams that are working across time zones and might rely more on asynchronous communication.
4. Intrinsic motivation can be your superpower
As I mentioned earlier, understanding motivators can help establish trust. But there’s another reason you should be thinking about intrinsic motivation—it’s simply much more effective than the carrot and stick approach of extrinsic motivation. There’s decades of research on this subject, but for the CliffsNotes version, check out our white paper, which boils it all down nicely.
When you factor in remote work, intrinsic motivation is even more important given it’s a lot harder to run incentives or provide perks when no one’s in the office. This is where Attuned can help by providing detailed data on individual and team motivators so that leaders can make more intelligent decisions that will positively impact their team.
5. Remotely Productive
If you’re still struggling with remote management, you’re not alone. Companies have gone through large-scale changes in culture and management while trying to adjust to the demands of a changing workforce. As with most things, there’s a certain amount of trial and error involved while also dealing with changing attitudes towards remote work. So while these tips might not be a silver bullet solution, they’ll hopefully get you a little closer to building a productive and motivated remote team.
Download The State of Motivation Report 2024. It’s free!
