Identifying The Enemy To Online Business.
Even when working remotely, teams must collaborate to succeed. It's important to work together when contributing to the same projects, when reassigning tasks and rebalancing workloads, and when resolving conflicts and disputes.
Despite the objective benefits of working remotely, like higher employee morale and productivity, there are some obstacles to collaborating effectively in this environment.
Remote work is here to stay. So let's take a look at 5 of the greatest obstacles to remote collaboration.
#1. Difficulty in communication
It's important to promote a culture of open communication in the workplace. Sometimes, collaboration is hindered when team members don't feel like they can communicate openly or if there is no unified platform where all team members can express their thoughts and opinions. If team members don't feel like they can communicate, they're less likely to be involved, which can lead to the failure of the project. In fact, according to a recent study, 33% of projects don't succeed because of lack of involvement from all team members.
#2. Lack of commitment
While working remotely, the craving for human interaction may influence you to look around for better opportunities. And no one is there to even hold you accountable about it. If the team does not have the habit of reporting to the team lead and meeting the deadlines, it will be ultimately dissolved. Team leads are responsible for creating an environment of motivation. They must be considerate enough to look after the employees working under them. Managing virtual teams include the responsibility of the e-leaders to keep in touch with the team members and hold them accountable for the deadlines. Although research shows that people prefer working from home, they usually won't reveal how secluded they are.
#3. Role confusion
In a remote environment, it's sometimes confusing to know your role within a hierarchy and your specific set of responsibilities. This can eventually lead to duplicated efforts, with multiple people working on the same tasks simultaneously or worse, dropped priorities. You can prevent this by proactively and clearly assigning roles and responsibilities. The clearer and the more upfront you are, the less room there will be for ambiguities. Formally document responsibilities, if possible.
#4. Lack of clear vision
An unclear goal is difficult to work toward. Without having a clear picture of what ultimately needs to be accomplished, team members might work mindlessly, which would significantly hinder productivity, motivation and efficiency. The lack of a defined goal may also make it difficult for leaders to delegate responsibilities and tasks to each team member. This, in turn, may contribute to negative feelings about a project and hamper work synergy. Employees are more likely to be averse to collaboration when they aren't given key performance indicators to track or when they don't understand what the rest of the team is doing to contribute to the project's success.
#5. Poor time management
Since everyone is working from home, you cannot force them out of their comfort zones. An employee is responsible for his own productivity. But being a leader, managing a virtual team is your responsibility. There can be two reasons for poor time management:
- Remote team members are in a different time zone which makes it difficult to find a perfect time to call a meeting.
- The employees are overworked and sooner or later they burn out.
Overcoming the challenges include keeping track of work being done. The team lead should personally ask each team member to report on a decided date. Make sure everyone on the team is assigned an equal and adequate amount of work. Moreover, objectives and deadlines are clear.
Final Thoughts...
Few remote teams are perfectly capable of efficient collaboration at the start. Instead, it takes time to develop and refine the approaches necessary to succeed in this environment.
Measure and analyze your teams' performance regularly to take inventory of the tools, tactics and habits that are working for you and against you, and in time, you can weed out the things that aren't working, and prioritize everything that is.
Does your business need a virtual customer representative for your website? We are here to help you reach your goals... Reach us here...
You can learn more about our market entry expertise or get in touch to discuss a potential project.
Comments
Post a Comment