Remote or Hybrid Teams: Best Practices for Project Managers
How to project manage remote or hybrid teams.
By Lenka Davis
Companies are continuing to adjust to the flexible work models and figure out how to manage projects and people successfully.
“Project management is the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities to meet project requirements”
Project managers, whose job it is to help move the project forward to completion are having to adjust how they do their jobs. Project managers' main goal is to make sure the people on the team are able to do what they need to do.
We are in a hybrid work era.
“According to EY’s Future Workplace Index, approximately 60% of companies are operating in a hybrid model, with about 20% adopting fully-remote work and the other 20% in-office full-time.”
In order to be successful in this hybrid environment project managers have new challenges in communication, collaboration, and productivity.
Challenges in managing remote or hybrid projects.
Time zone differences
Teams working asynchronously
Building team culture
Measuring performance and productivity
Time Zone Differences
With the ability to hire employees from different time zones there is more complexity to scheduling meetings, team building and other time dependent activities. Not just employees but consultants and vendors may be in different time zones. Being sensitive to what works for everyone is important to keeping your teams engaged and showing up to conversations or participating in online meetings.
Teams Working Asynchronously
With the time zone differences also comes more work being done asynchronously. This may be helpful when projects need one part to be completed before work can begin on another. Or it may add anywhere from an additional 12 hours to several days depending on where in the world the team members are working. And, also what their standard and cultural work week looks like. Friday is a holy day in Islam so the weekend is Friday and Saturday with the first work day of the week then being Sunday.
Building Team Culture
Team culture is important because it helps teams understand each other and how to work with one another. Local groups of employees can form in person gatherings or even online get togethers to get to know each other. Some key benefits to work culture include positive employee morale, employee retention and engagement, and performance quality.
Measuring Performance
Outcome is still the best indicator of good performance for teams, however with the move towards hybrid and remote teams making sure that goals are clearly defined. With regular communication, documentation, and using collaborative tools then completing projects and deliverables can be achieved with hybrid teams.
Millennials, Generation X and Baby Boomers prefer a hybrid work environment, however, Generation Z has the highest share of preference to work in a hybrid environment.
“Nearly two-thirds (65%) of remote-capable Gen Z employees reported they preferred to work in a hybrid environment. This is a higher share than their millennial (60%), Gen X (58%), and Baby Boomer (56%) counterparts.”
Fully Remote teams
Remote teams, also called virtual teams, were formed during or after the pandemic. Some have never met one another in person. For fully remote teams a project manager can no longer sit with the team and hear what is going on. Nor can the project manager walk to a local building to visit with other parts of the team so see how everyone is doing and what hurdles they are running into. These are ways to monitor the project without interrupting work.
For any fully remote team you have to interrupt them with either a text, message or phone call. Maybe there are Kanban or Agile boards to check, but generally those show what is being done tactically and not so much for detecting any underlying issues. Nor do they completely allow for people to get to know each other.
Fully hybrid teams are reliant on the tools that they share. These are tools such as Kanban boards in Monday.com or Trello.com and agile boards in Jira are used to track work. And team collaboration applications such as Slack and Teams are needed to keep the team organized, efficient and communicating.
Strategies for keeping remote teams engaged
Regular meetings, either by video or a voice call
Offering a minute to catch up with each other at the beginning or end of appropriate meetings
Email updates to the team frequently
Having a company chat group in the collaboration tool for company wide communication and for groups working together
Meeting co-workers in person, if anyone is traveling near where a co-worker lives
Having Virtual team building events that help people feel connected
Trying to keep a connection between employees can be a challenge. It turns out that Gen Z employees prefer a hybrid environment.
Fun Fact
Information on remote teams has grown since Slack has become popular and the pandemic has ushered us into the hybrid work era. Many new web sites are dedicated to the topic of remote or hybrid work, teams and life. A few that are worth looking at are:
https://www.collaborationsuperpowers.com
Along with articles on Remote Team Building:
https://skima.ai/blog/culture/best-remote-team-building-activities
https://www.scavify.com/blog/virtual-team-building-activities
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