If you know my back story then you know that I have been working with remote teams and outsourced workers for quite a few years now, in all the different types and capacities. In any business, or team environment, often the word that is thrown around when looking at finances, budgeting and forward planning is the word “efficiency“.

If we or our teams, whether remote or local, can work more efficiently then it reduces our expenses and therefore increases our profits. It is a basic rule of business; do a job faster but with the same level of quality, and at the end of the day you make more money.

Working with these teams for a few years now has allowed me to summarize all that experience into three keys you need to have to run your team efficiently.

 

1. Communicate well.

There are so many communication barriers that we need to overcome when working in these remote environments. Firstly, there is the obvious one, “distance”. By sheer definition, a remote team means that it is somebody who you are not located physically close to and this means your communication is generally across the internet and therefore very impersonal and challenging. Other barriers that arise are language barriers and of course general communication issues like terminology and the use of jargon.

I often tell people that one of my primary roles in my job (perhaps I should put it in my business card) is being a Geek to English translator. I talk with clients and work with them in English – not geek speak, not using technical words or expressions full of jargon, but rather communicate with them in a language that they understand. I then translate that into geek and communicate it to my team and speak in their language explaining how we are going to practically achieve what the client wants.

Communication is such a big part of my job especially when it comes to working with my remote teams. I have to find ways to communicate with them that overcome all the barriers. I communicate with them visually to ensure that there is no misinterpretation when it comes to language, or my geek to client translation. I communicate with them via instant messenger and emails so there are written records. We use collaboration systems, we use Skype for voice and web cameras, so many different methods can be used to ensure that you cover up all your bases.

I have one team member who does not like or rather does not work effectively if I create a video screen cast for him, it is just not the way that his mind interprets the instruction that I’m giving. So in that circumstance, I will type out a task brief for him. For another one of my team members, I will simply turn on my screen casting software and talk away to him for ten minutes and then send him the video.

You cannot put communication in to a single box when it comes to your team. Everyone communicates differently and it is your job as their manager, as their employer, as their team leader or whatever position you may give yourself to ensure that you are communicating effectively with them. Effective communication or successful communication with your team is the biggest key to efficiency that I could ever teach you.

 

2. Use systems.

Working with remote teams is not something new. It may be an emerging trend, but it is something that has been utilized by businesses for many years and therefore there are large amount of systems that already exist for what you are trying to do. For example, my team uses BasecampHQ. This allows us to create projects, record documents and files associated with them, assign tasks and people to different projects, schedule those tasks for completion and allow our project managers to review the work.

When I initially started working with my remote teams I tried to do this myself. I used a mixture of different systems such as Google docs, email and instant messengers to try and achieve the same outcome. But Basecamp already existed and when I switched my team into that, our efficiency suddenly grew.

I was no longer the single point of contact regarding a project; all the information is accessible to all the members of the team. Any system like Basecamp is worth the investment that it takes you to learn it, set it up but also any financial investment that you have to give. The small monthly fee that I pay to Basecamp to use one of their higher packages than the free one, is worth every cent and ten times over for the efficiency it gives my team.

 

3. Create processes.

In the last few years in working with remote teams, I have had many team members leave my team for a whole range of different reasons. it did not take me long to realize that I could suddenly go from running a very efficient team to being back to the initial stages of having to train a new team member in everything that had been running effectively. I now will document and create a process every time something new becomes a part of my team’s functions.

Whether it is something simple like transcribing an audio document, right through to the creating of a new website for a project, I bring it back to a process. Those processes for me generally include a step by step document and a training video.

Now when I recruit a new team member to replace someone who has moved to another position, or left my company, I now have an archive of training material that I can assign to them for their first few days with us. That one initial investment of time in creating a process now is a great return on investment as it is utilized many times.

One example of this that had saved me countless hours is a series of videos I made regarding the behaviors and culture of my working team. I have those videos available whenever someone starts working with us. Their first working day is simply to sit there watching videos as I talk to them face to face on what it means to work as part of our team. I have spoken with some of my colleagues and my clients who literally have hundreds of different processes documented that their team can refer to for the different tasks and activities they need to complete.