Even though remote working sounds awesome, it’s not an option you can switch to and expect to see positive results. Remote working is not without its downsides, and there are many challenges to overcome, as well. Every company can use a range of tools and strategies to solve these problems and reap the rewards associated with remote working. LMS is one such tool that ensures remote working is smooth and your employees are interacting with each other. Companies use LMS such as the Paylocity App, Absorb, Litmos LMS to make their employee onboarding, learning, and other things easy. 

Let’s look at the challenges teams face when working remotely. By understanding these challenges you will understand how to deal with them.

Project Management

As you move up into management, handling projects when your team is scattered throughout the globe is one of the biggest problems with remote working. No matter what mix of internal and remote staff you have. Or how many employees you have in your office, it is the responsibility of managers to fulfill deadlines and targets.

If physical presence isn’t established. It’s challenging to communicate and keep track of individual tasks, especially for large teams and complex projects.

Remote Teamwork

Collaboration across different time zones is the most common challenge reported in studies involving remote teams. How to work on the same project when every team member is in a different corner of the map. When team members are on the same floor under the same roof, they can discuss, have meetings, share documents, and do other things. There are no limitations that can hold up the team from working together. But, remote teams encounter several challenges. Even interacting with the same document is difficult.

There are a lot of collaboration tools available nowadays, like project management software. These tools can be useful for different types of tasks and teams. By utilizing them, you will be able to drop the barriers that prevent remote co-working.

Tracking Team productivity

You must take care of all the smaller tasks as well if you want to hit your big targets. Many remote workers can make it difficult to track their progress daily.

You have to balance and keep track of individual tasks as well as project progress. You can do that with project management tools in a reactive manner. The system will show you when team members have begun work and when they have completed it. There is no real way to get live feedback or to know how productive members of your team are while they are working on tasks.

Diverse locations, time zones, etc.

Businesses can hire talent from around the globe, which is one of the greatest advantages of remote working. But the downside is, a lot of these talent pools may be located in different time zones, rendering your team inefficient. In some cases, members of your team may be dozing rather than working, while others are trying to do tasks.

Give this freedom to your remote workers of working when they like. Some may prefer working late at night while others prefer regular time.

Ethnicities and cultural diversity

Remote teams consist of multi-national members. Additionally, there will likely be a wide diversity of cultural and linguistic backgrounds. They all will be working on the same project together. There are obvious effects from this, such as variations in the English language. Cultural differences are also subtle and should also be considered.

For example, other cities or countries have different workplace expectations than the UK. If you are aware of the cultural background of the people on your team. It will be easier for you to identify the challenges of remote working and help your team members overcome them. The differences between cultures can be complex. 

Building/maintaining trust

Since there is no way to see what people are doing, trust issues can arise among remote teams. Some teammates may never have met face-to-face, and such an experience can have unintended consequences for their trust.

Some of these issues can be addressed with the use of tools. By doing this, managers can track what their team members are working on and what their progress is.

Conclusion

Having the option to work remotely has many advantages. Yet you won’t be able to take full advantage of them. To do that, you must meet a level of efficiency and discipline that allows you to balance work and life. Remote working doesn’t make much sense if it interferes with your personal life and vice versa. So, set it up properly to ensure the best results.