If you are a remote worker and work with a remote team, here are some tips to help motivate everyone to do their best work

Remote Team — With many teams working remotely due to the pandemic, it can be hard to keep them motivated. Here are a few tips to implement to make sure your team happily does their best work.

Create a Remote Company Culture

You can’t replace the water cooler talk or hang out with your colleagues at lunch, but you can reward their success through incentives.  This in turn helps you retain top talent, boost engagement, and encourage high performance.

You can do this by:

• Send them a handwritten thank you note or gift
• Extending your company’s culture remotely with team-wide recognition  
• Have positively reinforced contests among teammates

Help Them Solve Time Management Problems

Not everyone is cut out for remote work. It may have been forced upon them during the pandemic. When you struggle in this area, you aren’t producing your best work, are more likely to miss deadlines, and you’re unable to maintain a healthy work-life balance. Try using these techniques:

• Stress the importance and benefits of time management to them
• Set goals together
• Focus on quality, not quantity
• Help them identify what’s causing their time management problems so that you can come up with solutions
• Offer training on programs being used by the company 
• Provide resources for time management tools (Focus Keeper, MyOrganizedLife, Trello, etc.)

Trust Them

Allow them the flexibility they need to work at home. Many are juggling their children who are learning from home and they’re trying their best to get it all done.

That doesn’t mean that you don’t need to clearly define responsibilities, expectations, and deadlines, as well as check in on them, but there’s no need to micromanage them. 

Emphasize what is produced instead of focusing on when and how much.

Collaborate with Them Frequently

Working remotely can take a social and psychological toll on some. Not having that human connection can affect their work. Use technology (Like Zoom and Slack) to touch base with them often. This will allow for team interaction and make them not feel isolated and alone.

Digital Nomad vs. Remote Worker

By Leslie Radford