What to Do When Your Top-Performer Goes Remote

What would you do if one of your best performing employees decides to move to Hawaii?

Would you give a pat on the shoulder and kindly show the door? Or would you freak out, back up your things and ask if you could join?

Wait, there’s a third option. An option that I, as a remote team leader, have been faced. An option that is welcomed by more and more team leaders around the world. An option to let this employee start working remotely.

In the U.S, 34 million people already work in distributed teams. According to Forrester Report, this number is expected to grow to 63 million people. What’s staggering is that in a short period of time the proportion of people working from out of office has already grown by 80%.

At times, when more and more researches prove that too many employees are disengaged and unmotivated, a change is needed. What is more, new generations entering the workforce demand more flexibility and autonomy. Giving these people the freedom they crave isn’t necessarily a bad idea. Actually, surveys show that remote workers tend to work longer and be more engaged.

Taking the decision to let employees start working from remote locations isn’t enough if your organization is stuck in 1986. As a remote team, you must start embracing technology in its glory. Actually, technology needs to become your best friend. After all, it’s truly the only way remote teams can stay in touch and keep collaborating.

How to collaborate with your remote team-members?

The answers is simple, by embracing technology. But in this case, email isn’t the answer. Actually, email should be banned from teamwork. We already spend nearly 30% of our time in mailbox. It’s a lot of time wasted to such a poor collaboration tool.

Email wastes a lot of time, gives no overview, lacks in transparency and overall, is anti-social. It might be good for quick communications, but terrible for collaboration. That’s what social technology is invented for.

So, use tools that provide a quick overview what has been done, what anyone is planning to do next and what challenges the team is facing. Learn from Skype, whose teams use the PPP (progress, plan, problems) methodology.

Being miles apart, you’re not able to walk up to your team-mate’s table to ask for a current status update. The PPP process solves this issue by keeping everyone updated on each other’s goals, achievements and problems.

Having to deal with different time-zones gets messy. This means, there might be times you wait days for an answer. With social technology, you are able to quickly give feedback, assign tasks, share comments. All of which is done in the relevant work context, eliminating confusion and increasing focus.

When it comes to tools and apps, consumers are spoilt with alternatives. Well, I don’t mean it in a bad way. It’s good if you have alternatives to choose from. But the greater the list of options, the more confusing it gets. To create a virtual office, the Zapier’s team uses Campfire and Sqwiggle. Our remote team uses the tool we are developing: Weekdone’s weekly team reports. The Buffer team uses Hipchat and iDoneThis. For additional ideas, check out these tools for remote teams.

These are just few of the options. The lesson is, if you choose to go remote, embrace the social technology and don’t forget to bring everyone on-board.

What tools would you recommend?

  This article was written for Business 2 Community by Connor Brooke.
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Author: Connor Brooke

Connor is a Scottish financial expert, specialising in wealth management and equity investing. Based in Glasgow, Connor writes full-time for a wide selection of financial websites, whilst also providing startup consulting to small businesses. Holding a Bachelor’s degree in Finance, and a Master’s degree in Investment Fund Management, Connor has

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