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5 Tools to Improve Remote Team Management by @DrRKayGreen

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by Dr. R. Kay Green | Featured Contributor

Remote businesses and telecommuting options for employees are becoming more popular. A recent study has found that 3.9 million Americans work from home for at least half the week. This includes freelance workers and small businesses as well as large corporations.

On the surface, it is easy to understand why so many professionals find remote work appealing. Remote work is not necessarily confined to a nine-to-five schedule, and can be done in the comfort of one’s own private space. In addition, working from home removes hassles such as commute and car trouble entirely.

While some employers may be concerned about the productivity of a remote employee, studies seem to indicate that remote workers can actually be more productive than workers in an office, assuming that the job is one that can be done from home effectively.

However, when building a remote workforce, there is one hurdle that needs to be addressed: team management.

Traditional business spaces offer the opportunity for quick, face-to-face interactions for questions that need immediate answers. Remote businesses, on the other hand, are reliant on emails that may go unanswered or phones that may not be picked up. These methods also aren’t great for team-wide communication, as people can easily be left off of conference calls or email chains.

In addition, remote businesses with many clients may also struggle to manage tasks where multiple people are working on the same project. It can be difficult to tell who is on what part of the task when employees are not necessarily working together at the same time.

That said, the rise in popularity for remote businesses means that more tools are being developed to serve the needs of coworkers that are not necessarily working in the same room. Here are just five of the tools that many virtual businesses use:

1. Asana

Asana is a popular, versatile project management program. It is often even used in traditional workspaces to manage projects across large teams, and its features make it uniquely suited to remote teams. Projects are sorted, assigned to employees. Comments can be added and files can be uploaded directly to the tasks to mark the progress.

2. Slack

Slack is a favorite for many remote workers when it comes to communications. Message logs are separated into channels, making it easy to focus on one conversation at a time. Files can be uploaded and discussed in real time, and there is a private message feature for when co-workers want to talk one-on-one.

3. Proofhub

Proofhub is another project management site, but with a slightly more compartmentalized layout than Asana. There are overarching “projects,” which can then be separated into lists. Tasks can be put into lists, and can be further separated into subtasks. This platform can be very effective for businesses with many clients.

4. Join.me

Join.me is a free screen sharing and online conferencing platform. A voice chat function allows for communication when demonstrating whatever is on your screen. This can be a powerful tool for discussing projects with coworkers or presenting ideas to clients.

5. Zoom

Zoom is a video conferencing tool that allows remote workers to meet “face to face.” Boasting quality audio and video, Zoom is a favorite among many remote workers. It allows for a more authentic team meeting feel, without having to find an in-person location that is central to where everyone is located.

These are just five of the tools that are popular among remote workers. There are several more available, and more will continue to be created. When picking the right tools for your business, it is important to consider your own unique culture and needs.

By picking the right remote teamwork tools for you, you will ensure a more productive and happy workforce.

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Dr. R. Kay Green – Marketing Expert from RKG Marketing Solutions Inc. from Atlanta, GA.

Dr. KayDr. R. Kay Green is the CEO/President of RKG Marketing Solutions Inc. With over 190,000+ Twitter followers, 35,000+ Facebook Likes, and the Top 1% LinkedIn profile designation, Dr. Kay, a self-motivated trailblazer, is the Quintessential “New-Age” Professional Woman, and PhD Marketing Pro. She earned a Doctorate of Business Administration in Marketing, and has completed PhD coursework in Leadership and Organization Change. She also holds a Master of Business Administration in Marketing and Management, a Bachelor of Business Administration in Marketing, and an Associate of Arts in Marketing Management.

She is affiliated with several prestigious universities and has instructed over 350 courses online. A popular speaker on Marketing and Business topics, Dr. Green is currently featured on Huffington Post, Black Enterprise, Black News, The Network Journal, Business Review USA, Digital Journal, College View, Business New Hampshire Magazine, Bay State Banner, Reader’s Circle, North Dallas Gazette, Harlem News, Top News Today, One News Page, NE Informer, Women in Business PR News, Consumer News Today, Women PR News, San Francisco Chronicle, Houston Chronicle, Chicago Daily Herald, The Miami Herald, and Book News Articles.

Twitter – Facebook – LinkedIn

How to have a strong and effective remote team. by @sheclimbsladder

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by Linda Huth | Featured Contributor 

The days I work from home are usually some of the best days. I am comfortable, working on my own time schedule, and am more productive (since I have fewer interruptions). I will even find myself working a little longer than normal since I’m not worried about fighting traffic on the way home.

It’s pretty common these days to see flex time or options to work from home. Just last year, 43% of employed Americans said they spent some time working remotely. This is great as it allows workers to be more productive and give them the flexibility they need with their families.

With the shift to working remotely, teams are having to collaborate differently. When you work out of your home you aren’t able to lean over to the person next to you to ask a question. You have to call, IM, or screen share. This type of collaboration is a different mindset and I’ve collected a few tips on how to collaborate effectively with a remote team.

Establish Communication Norms

One of the best things you can do for a remote team is to establish communication norms. As a manager or leader of the team, you need to also practice what you preach.

I recommend using IM for a quick response to urgent items, however, the phone can be even faster. Is the production system down? Then get on the phone. Have a question when writing up a document? An IM will suffice. Use email for things that aren’t urgent and that need official documentation (like collecting approvals for a document).

Another thing that I have found helpful is to establish team working times. This lets everyone know when to expect others to be available. If I know that Sarah only works 6 am to 3 pm I won’t schedule a meeting at 4 pm and expect her to attend. It can also be helpful to establish team hours where it is expected that everyone will be available.

It can also help keep teams aligned to schedule quick check-ins during projects. This helps everyone stay grounded and up to speed on what everyone else is working on. It also gives people a place to bring up any issues or roadblocks that they have encountered.

Communicate Clearly

When you and your team members are working remotely communication is even more important. You don’t always have the visual cues that you would have if you were working together in an office.

This means that all written communication needs to be clear and concise. You need to include enough detail so that the person receiving the communication knows exactly what you want and when you want it.

Documentation is even more important for remote teams. Team norms, standards, best practices – these all need to be written down. Having this written down gives your team a baseline on how work should be done.

Build a Connection

It’s much harder to build a connection and camaraderie between team members when you aren’t able to meet face to face. Building a connection is crucial to making sure your team trusts each other and will allow them to become a more cohesive group.

This is why it’s important to use video conference whenever it is available. It allows the people on the phone to visually see the other groups. This allows for facial cues and body language to be communicated as well as what is verbally said. If possible, I also recommend trying to meet each other face to face at least once. This allows you to quickly build a connection and strengthen your working relationship.

You can also bring some fun and interaction to your meetings by using icebreakers and team building activities. These can be done remotely with a little creativity. This past month I helped organize a team building activity for my team (that is spread out among 4 different states). The activity involved dividing members in each location into different simulation groups. The groups were then given different rules on how they were to build a LEGO car. Each location had facilitators and a script. We kept the phone on speaker so everyone could hear each other and it was almost like we were all in the same room. The activity definitely increased morale and was something fun in place of a normal staff meeting.

Final Thoughts

Remote teams definitely have to collaborate differently than teams that work out of an office. Team norms, the way you communicate, and the connection you build can help you create a successful and efficient team.

Do you work remotely? How do you collaborate with your team?

Meaningful Work We Can Do From Home? This Entrepreneur Is Making It Happen—And Saving the Environment at the Same Time by @ChristyCareer

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by Christy Williams | Featured Contributor

She’s been called the queen of remote work.

And she knows that finding meaningful work that actually fits in with our lives and allows us the flexibility we need on a daily basis can feel almost impossible.

She would also be the first person to tell you that it’s not.

Sara Sutton Fell is the founder and CEO of FlexJobs. And this woman is fierce.

She has founded not one, but four companies—one of them when she was eight-months pregnant with her first baby. And she does it all with a constant focus on the “why” behind what she’s doing.

If there is an entrepreneur who inspires me to focus on my “why” and do what I can for others, this woman is it.

For those who may not have heard of the website, what is FlexJobs?

FlexJobs is the leading online service for professionals seeking telecommuting, flexible schedule, part-time, and freelance jobs. With flexible job listings in over 50 career categories, and opportunities ranging from entry-level to executive, freelance to full-time, FlexJobs offers job-seekers a safe, easy, and efficient way to find professional and legitimate flexible job listings.

What makes FlexJobs different than other job search websites?

First, FlexJobs’ mission is to help people find jobs that make their lives better, jobs that specifically offer flexible work options.  And we are committed to doing this with integrity, intelligence, balance, communication, and care.

Secondly, we pre-screen every job and company before posting them to our site. This allows us to weed out the scams, shady business opportunities, and other less-than-ideal jobs that are so pervasive on other job boards.

Also, our primary clients are job seekers—not advertisers or employers—and so our goal is really to create a better job search experience for them. In order to do that, we are a membership site, so job seekers pay a small subscription fee to access our database of clean, flexible jobs. In return, we offer a top quality, clean, friendly site with great flexible jobs, excellent customer support, and a satisfaction guarantee.

What, in your own life, led you to come up with the idea for starting FlexJobs?

I founded FlexJobs in 2007 while I was pregnant with my first son, after I experienced first-hand the frustrating search for professional jobs that also offered flexible work options. I knew that I wanted to continue on my career path, but it was important to me to have more flexibility than a traditional full-time, on-site job would typically allow, so that I could better juggle the responsibilities of work and a family.

I wished that a trustworthy site existed that would have done the legwork of screening these jobs!  But in looking thoroughly through the competitive landscape, I realized it didn’t, and so my wheels started turning.

But starting a company with a newborn wasn’t to be taken lightly, and in my own soul-searching, I just realized that I so deeply believed in the importance of flexible work—and having a baby simply reinforced that in a powerful way.  Overall, I believe that a modern workplace should address the needs of today’s workforce, and that utilizing workplace technology to support telecommuting and flexible work will achieve societal, environmental, and economic benefits for both employees and employers.

How do you think flexible work can help people to create meaningful work in their own lives?

Flexible work can allow people to live lives where their responsibilities aren’t constantly in direct competition, and it enables people to have more control over how best to accomplish their goals. For example, for me, working from home and having a flexible schedule has allowed me to be more fully present with what I am doing at the moment—whether it’s at work or at home—because I don’t feel as anxious, stressed, or even angry I’m missing out on the other.

I believe flexible work options can help empower people to be more honest with their priorities, and that honesty, in turn, supports being mindful of what makes us happy, fulfilled, and proud of our decisions.

What does meaningful work look like in your own life?

I believe that no matter what job I have, or anyone has, that you can have meaningful work, at least in elements.  I’m lucky in that I believe in the mission of my job, and I love what I do.  But I also try my best to make my colleagues and our customers happy—as well as try to improve my abilities and skills to continue to do both better. So having meaningful work means choosing to put good into the world in whatever ways you can even if it’s not obvious.

As a side note, these videos highlight that what I’m talking about can be done in all kinds of ways!

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLIdz_Zl1zQ

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cr4vO2ri1yw

 

When you were formulating the idea of FlexJobs in the beginning, did it occur to you that helping people find flexible work could also have a positive impact on our environment, or was that just a welcome side effect?

That was definitely part of my thinking when I founded FlexJobs. I hold a BA degree with the focus of Society, Technology, and the Environment from the University of California at Berkeley, so I’ve long thought about ways to have a positive environmental impact through my work, and I knew the environmental benefits of flexible work, as well as the many societal and personal benefits.

Flexible work can be inherently environmentally-friendly. Telecommuting helps people consume less gas or oil, put less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and better control their own home’s environmental impact because they aren’t commuting to an office every day.

Flexible schedules also reduce commuting times, helping people avoid peak rush-hour traffic jams. And flexible work helps companies reduce their environmental impact by reshaping the way business is done: less office space, less equipment, and less energy to heat, cool, and maintain the infrastructure that traditional offices require.

As a 100% virtual organization, and one that is committed to environmental sustainability, how do you support and/or encourage your employees to commit to that sustainability, too?

FlexJobs is dedicated to making environmentally aware decisions for how we run our company and our individual home offices. We consider the environmental impact that our decisions have, and we commit to trying to lessen the impact wherever reasonably possible.

One initiative we have helps employees maintain a green home office by reimbursing them for houseplants to offset VOCs and CO2, and for CFL or LED light bulbs used in their home offices. We are also a carbon-balanced company through TerraPass. Through this partnership, FlexJobs has reduced its carbon emissions by sponsoring clean energy and carbon reduction projects.

As an entrepreneur and busy mother of two young children, how do you stay mindful and find balance on a daily basis?

Practicing mindfulness is definitely something I try to do daily, starting with the simple moments. Whether it’s feeling the sun on my face as we walk to the car to take my kids to school, taking an extra deep breath before responding to one of them asking a question for the 3rd time (without listening to the first or second response!), or hugging them for an extra few seconds before bed. I always try to be mindful that every moment has meaning, and that I have the opportunity to appreciate that in a way that makes me happier rather than unhappier.

Also, although it’s not daily, I practice Bikram yoga, and have for almost 20 years. Doing Bikram has grounded me incredibly in my life as a busy working mom, and quite honestly, is a sanity-saver for me. I also try to meditate regularly, either when I wake up or before I go to sleep.

Finally, I try to be very mindful of my focus during the day as it relates to whether I’m working or whether I’m with my kids. Because I work from home, it’s easy to blur the lines between work time and personal time, letting them creep into each other, which I don’t believe is a good thing. So I aim to have clear boundaries on when I’m working, as well as to give myself permission to unplug from work when I’m done and focus on my family and personal life.

As a successful entrepreneur and founder of several different organizations, what’s next for you?

In addition to FlexJobs, over the last few years, I’ve founded 1 Million for Work Flexibility, which is right in line with my belief that everyone should have access to flexible work options, and that both companies and individuals (and the environment!) benefit from work flexibility. I’ve also started Remote.co, a one-stop resource for people and companies to learn best practices for remote work so that we can all benefit.

We also recently hosted our second annual TRaD*Works Forum, which brings together the best and brightest minds in the telecommuting, remote, and distributed (TRaD) work community. It’s a great gathering of individuals from the corporate, government, and nonprofit worlds who all see remote work as a huge opportunity with awesome social, business, and environmental benefits.

If you could give our readers one piece of advice for finding or creating their own meaningful work as entrepreneurs, what would that advice be?

Trust your instincts as a very valid part of the equation. It’s important to be responsible and consider your instincts along with other priorities, information, and factors. But I have learned that my core intuition is often a more reliable guide to how I can find my own happiness and authenticity in my career (and life), and so I am very conscientious with it.

Sara and FlexJobs would like to offer you a chance to try their service and find your own meaningful work that you can do from home in your pajamas. As a reader of She Owns It, please use the code SAVE30 to receive up to 30% off your subscription to FlexJobs.com.

Photo credit: Sara Sutton Fell/FlexJobs

It’s 2018, Corporate America—Why Aren’t There More Flexible And Remote Work Options? by @ChristyCareer

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by Christy Williams | Featured Contributor

I am shocked that we still don’t have more flexibility in America in 2018.

Maybe my head has been buried in the sand. Or maybe it’s just because I’ve worked for a company that is so committed to helping people find the flexible jobs they need, that I thought there was more flexibility out there than there really is.

But my experience as someone who is currently looking for that additional side hustle is that there is still a limited amount of flexibility to be had.

I’ve written before about how I would really love to work full time at this point in my life, but I simply can’t within the rigid parameters of a 9-5 workweek. Two kids at two different schools with no busing means I just don’t have enough time that fits within the confines of a super-structured day.

Do I have enough available hours in my weekly schedule to work a full-time job? Absolutely. But some of those hours would have to be nights or weekends. That’s simply what my family’s needs are right now.

But there have been a few organizations that have especially surprised me with their lack of flexibility. They are women-owned, small businesses that are focused on helping women find career opportunities. And within the last several months, three of those organizations have been recruiting for positions that I would be well-suited for. Full- or part-time writer/editor for a career-based website and online service, focused on women. Ummmm…check, check, check. I have experience in all of the above.

So what am I missing? Geographic location.

These organizations are based in Los Angeles and New York, and want someone to work at the office with them. And actually, the company based in New York even said the job could be done remotely after a few days of training at the office, but they still want the candidate to be based in New York.

Now, again, maybe it’s because I have experience working for a completely distributed company where we all worked from our home offices—but I just don’t understand the reasoning behind this.

When I worked at this company, we had a number of communication tools available to us that we all used on a daily basis. Slack, Yammer, and Sococo were among the platforms we would use to communicate with each other every day.

We even had team-building activities using these programs. Once or twice a month, we played trivia as a company on a Friday afternoon, where we all grabbed an adult beverage of our choice and broke up into teams to play. So much more fun than any standard team-building activity in an office setting.

And the funny thing is, I feel closer to that family of co-workers I only knew virtually than I do with any other company I’ve ever worked for face-to-face in a central location. Bar none.

So why are so many so-called modern, progressive, “cutting edge” companies still not embracing more flexible work options—at least more than just your basic flextime?!

I first became a flexible-work evangelist when my boss at the time adopted a new baby and wasn’t able to take any paid time off to be with him. That was in 1998. 1998! That was 20 years ago!

Shouldn’t we be further along as a country than we are right now?!

That position I mentioned in New York? This was the second time it has been posted since September. So that only leads me to believe that either the first applicant hired just didn’t work out, or that they are still looking after months of recruiting. Either way, they could expand their field of applicants exponentially by opening up their search—and their minds—to remote applicants.

As someone with human resources experience, I am well aware that they might not be set up as an employer in my state. But perhaps it’s worth considering whether it would be cost-effective and appropriate within FLSA guidelines to have the company be set up as an employer in additional states—or even to consider if the position could be a contractor role.

But more importantly, there is a robust workforce out there of educated women who are interested in careers that fulfill them, but corporate America is missing out because an entrepreneur’s schedule can (sometimes) be more flexible. While I have always been a huge supporter of entrepreneurs and women starting their own small businesses, I also wish that employers—especially women-owned businesses—would start embracing more flexible work options.

If we are going to change the culture of our male-oriented workforce, it is going to have to come from women. Yes, there are a lot of men in leadership who are aware that our workforce needs have changed as women have become a bigger and bigger proportion of corporate America—and as men have stepped up like never before in sharing the parenting responsibilities at home.

But we still have a long, long way to go.

At least from where I stand.

And I’m looking at all you women-owned businesses to do your part in this cause. A cause–and responsibility—that will only benefit us all in the long run.

 

Image: Photo by Christy Williams