It is no great secret that retaining good staff is a challenge for any business – whether they work locally or in a remote team setup. As managers of remote teams with outsourced workers, we face the same challenges in this area that any local ‘bricks and mortar’ business would face as well – having team members poached by other businesses or looking for higher paid jobs and therefore leaving your team to go and work for someone else.

There are many simple keys to how you can help to prevent this happening such asensuring your team is a great environment to work in, offering incentives, and ensuring that you pay your staff well. These are obvious; any business consultant or book will tell you these are the keys to retaining staff. I obviously utilize these in my own team environment, however my major principle for retention is relationship.

Some of my team have worked with me now for multiple years. We have been together through the good times, through the great times, and through the tough times, and it is all because of relationship. They are people that I do not consider to be workers, but team mates, and in most cases even friends. I even will refrain from calling this a strategy because I believe that building your relationship with your team members that goes deeper than simply a working setup, is just basic human decency.

It is not within my framework as a person and my ethics to only communicate with people when I am telling them what job they need to do. I want to know how their weekend was, what they are planning to do, how their family situation is; all those kind of aspects that go towards a relationship that is more of a friendship. That is what allows me to retain staff ,apart from the other strategies such as salary and ensuring my team is great place to work.

Strong relationships is what keep families together during tough times, and the same principles work within your team. Spend time getting to know your team, understand what is going on in their life, support them with that, and develop a relationship that keeps their commitment regardless of any outside pressure.