When you’re no longer working on-site, there are specific ways you can manage virtual team success

You’re making the leap from on-site manager to virtual manager, and while you’re excited about the big change—after all, you’ve heard that virtual teams are the future of work—you also don’t want to get started off on the wrong foot. You’ve always been praised for your firm but fair managerial skills, and you want to make sure your technique also translates into virtual team success.

The thing you’re most worried about? Keeping your team on track. You’re used to plenty of in-person meetings, stopping by cubicles, and on-the-fly progress reports. How can you be sure your team is hard at work, instead of hardly working?

“With remote work, you measure each employee’s output based on what they actually produce—not how long they spend in the office. This makes it very easy to determine who’s doing what on our team,” shared a representative of Collage.com. “…we measure results over appearances.”

The specific metrics you choose to track will depend on your business, industry, and team. There are two primary areas you’ll want to focus when beginning to measure virtual team success: work results and communication.

It’s all about the results

Sometimes in brick and mortar companies, it’s easy to slip into a routine where everyone is just working toward one big end goal. You’re all just running around in panic mode, hoping you’ll meet that looming deadline. With a virtual team, that kind of situation just doesn’t fly. You have to be incredibly organized and break projects down into bite-sized chunks.

Business communication platform Attentiv.com uses Basecamp and other project management tools to plan out goals and strategies. “If we’re checking off tasks on Basecamp in a timely manner, we’re hitting our productivity goals,” they said.

Project management platforms provide a central place to map out tasks, deadlines, and goals so that everyone on your team can see them. This helps remote employees understand how their daily work fits into the bigger picture and holds everyone accountable on a daily basis. And when employees are held accountable, they’re more likely to work to their fullest potential and produce quality deliverables.

Some general performance-related metrics you can track to ensure virtual team success include:

• Meeting deadlines
• Producing high-quality work
• Usage of the project management system
• Goals met

You’ll want to drill down in the areas listed above to create specific key performance indicators (KPIs), but they are the metrics you should be tracking. That way, you’ll never have to wonder if you’re managing a successful virtual team—you’ll know.

Learn to be the strong leader your virtual team needs. If you’re realizing that managerial success in the office doesn’t always translate remotely, don’t count yourself out yet. You just need a little training to learn how to tweak your style for the virtual world. Sign up for one or more of our online classes and become a top virtual leader.

Prioritize efficient and abundant communication

Another essential component of virtual team success is communication. When you’re working in an office, it’s just something you do without thinking. You can catch up with a team member by the Keurig, or stop by an employee’s desk to ask a quick question. In a virtual environment, communication skills are more important than ever because communication isn’t automatic—it takes work.

Before setting metrics, you need to determine how you expect your team to stay in touch. For example, you might create a few Slack channels specifically for real-time chatting about team projects, and then another one to serve as a “water cooler” for casual banter. Set regular, recurring one-on-one and group meetings that keep the lines of communication open.

At Collage.com, each employee has a weekly one-on-one meeting with her or her manager to ensure constant two-way communication and clear expectations. TNTP focuses on regular communication between managers and team members so they can see quickly if a project is getting off-track or if more resources are needed; it’s a way to address small problems before they become big ones.

You’ll play a fundamental role in your virtual team’s success by tracking:

• Attendance at required meetings
• Participation in required meetings
• Whether or not employees are utilizing the proper communication channels
• How clearly and effectively team members communicate

With remote teams, managers often think poor communication from a team member means that they are just avoiding doing their work. Many times, though, it’s the opposite—they’ve been working too hard, and now they’re suffering from burnout. Tracking communication metrics will help you stay on top of these behavior changes and nip them in the bud before they become unfixable.

Now set those KPIs!

You know the metrics you need to track to verify that your virtual team is on the road to success. Now, whittle them down into KPIs that align with your company, team, and management style. Each KPI you create should embody these seven characteristics:

• Simplicity
• Alignment with organizational goals
• Relevance
• Measurability
• Achievability
• Timeliness
• Visibility

Establishing clear KPIs lets you closely manage the output of your team, without micromanaging their day-to-day work habits. And when teams feel like they’re contributing to a common goal, and you’re trusting them to do so, everyone wins.

Which metrics have been essential to the success of your virtual team?

Learn to be the strong leader your virtual team needs. If you’re realizing that managerial success in the office doesn’t always translate remotely, don’t count yourself out yet. You just need a little training to learn how to tweak your style for the virtual world. Sign up for one or more of our online classes and become a top virtual leader.

Photo by Lukas Blazek on Unsplash