Skill versus Will matrix determines whether your team lacks skills to accomplish a task or lack a will to do it. Managers that deal with the remote staff have a hard time tackling their team. They do not know what is to be done. For the lack of skills training is the way out and for the lack of will motivation. If your team is working from multiple locations and you are coming up with the issues of managing them efficiently you cannot drive out the optimum productivity. Field activity management software is an easy way out to manage the team that is out of sight.
Given here are top 5 common mistakes that managers are making in the remote workplace and their solutions. To handle your remote team effectively you need to make sure that you are not doing these mistakes.
Failing To Track The Work Progress:
This is one of the most important aspects where you often fail. Your team is out of your sight and hence you fail to track how much money and time they spend on a particular task. When on the field your team has a full freedom to complete a 4-hour task in 2 hours, wrapping the entire work somehow and giving a fake report at the end of the day. A tactful manager keeps track of them in real-time. They are allocated the task at the beginning of the day and told about the deadlines they need to meet and then locate them on real-time with field-management activity tracker. Where are they? Have they visited clients? How long have they talked with the client?
Presuming Their Working Status:
Since they cannot see their team visually on-field, they start assuming things. They cannot judge the productivity of their team physically and make the mistake of assuming that their worker is busy or not busy. Just replying to the texts or sharing online status does not mean that the team member is not busy.
An effective manager does not assume but remains in the regular contact in real-time with the help of sales activity tracker. This helps them remain accountable, ensuring that they remain safe and removing hassles which they may come across from time to time.
Making Use Of Poor Technology And Tools:
Always remember that if you a virtual manager, your brick and mortar is the technology you use. Once you fail to communicate, locate and track what your team members are doing on-field, you fail to manage them. So, ensuring that you have high-speed Internet connections, online sharing solution, VoIP is important. Apart from that, you need a field activity management software to know what your team is doing on the field and where they are.
Poor In Taking Feedback:
Most of the managers think that taking feedbacks is a one-way process but actually it is not. Your team members working out of your sight yearns for the feedback equally. So, you need to praise them from time to time on their achievement. This can become one of the motivating factors to keep performing well and also encourage others to do good and earn praise. Word of appreciation and rewards must be given to those who deserve.
Do Not Encourage Questions:
You fail every time you do not seek clarification. If your team makes mistakes, hides them from you and feels comfortable about this then you are at mistake. Ask them questions and make them feel comfortable in doing so. If they are repeatedly failing to deliver results ask them to suggest the solution to their problem themselves. The more they open up, the better you would be able to handle their issues.
Also, allow and encourage them to communicate with each other during the non-working hours. Give them the opportunity to take decisions and ask where the management lack behind.
A tactful manager is one that communicates clearly the goals and deadlines. Get the daily tasks done efficiently, motivate and reward his team and can trace out whether skill or will is lacking. Most important of all, he keeps himself well-equipped with the latest tools that can help him manage his team in a better way, help him boost their transparency and productivity. Field activity tracker is one such solution that can help them keep tabs on all the activities their team does on the field. This makes them perform better.
