Connecting the dots: How to manage remote teams

According to a study by KPMG, managers had a harder time transitioning to remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic. They’re more likely than individual contributors to find that their jobs are more demanding and work-life balance is difficult when working from home.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. As a manager, you can use collaboration tools like Asana to connect the dots and create a clear and productive work environment for your team.

What’s in this ebook?

Explore tested strategies to manage remote employees across teams and time zones.

Understand the basics of remote teamwork

Learn how to tackle the three C’s of remote team management: communication, content, and coordination. While apps like Zoom and Slack are important for maintaining and building context, they’re not the end-all-be-all. You also need a place to save and share content—plus a way to coordinate who’s doing what by when.

Coordinate your virtual team with work management

While project management looks at the tree, work management considers the entire forest. It includes all the initiatives, planning, and task management that team members use to accomplish their goals. As a manager, work management lets you see how your remote workforce is organized, plus keep tabs on what’s happening across the organization. Instead of pinging remote team members for an update or relying on them to flag overwork or burnout, you can see everything that’s happening in real-time and course-correct when needed.

Learn to work asynchronously

Rather than relying on endless video calls to get things done, teach remote workers how to collaborate asynchronously—with time and space between responses in a conversation. As a manager, this allows you to follow along and track progress on your own time—without micromanaging or being looped into every meeting. As a result, you’ll have more autonomy and more time to focus on work when you need to.

Optimize your 1:1 check-ins

1:1 meetings should be a top priority to build trust and maintain employee well-being in a remote environment. Gone are the days when you could chat face-to-face at the company water cooler—instead, you need to consciously dedicate time for team building and social interaction. Learn how to structure your 1:1 meetings so employees can get the most out of that time.