The need for more organisations to work remotely and virtually was necessitated by the pandemic which led to a lockdown in most countries globally. So, as an administrator, there is a dire need for you to learn the skill of managing your remote or virtual team and ensuring that they stay productive, while also considering the various challenges and distractions they encounter while they work from home.

How do you ensure your team members are actually delivering on their job when you are not there to watch what they do and to supervise them physically?

Whilst this is a rather brief one, I think the following will be useful to you as a manger or an administrator:

Firstly, ensure you have a proper orientation for all team members as you make a shift from working in the physical office to working remotely. Communicate effectively and frequently about the way you will operate as a team. Do not in any way assume that everyone will understand this immediately.

Please ensure to provide tips to enable them to work effectively from home. Usually, having a designated place in the house for work really helps to set the tone for work. It also helps to reduce distractions. Have laid down policies but allow for flexibility. Being stiff with a remote team will only serve to frustrate you.

Demonstrate empathy. There may be a need to remind you that your staff members will most likely be juggling between homeschooling their children and performing their job responsibilities from home. It’s a lot tougher for them now.

In your communication, ensure you let them know the preferred modes of communication for the team. How often will you be having meetings? How will you sign in to work in the morning?

From the onset, let the team members know the parameters for their evaluation, and ensure these are documented for each person. As a manager, be available to give assistance and support to the team members when they need it. They need this boost from you, especially at such a time as this.

Have regular feedback sessions with the team and with each member of your team. Praise them when they do well, and talk to each individual about his performance regularly even if they are performing well. As managers, we tend usually to focus and give more attention to improving the performance of the staff members who are not impressing us, that we sometimes forget the ones who are performing excellently. Or we tend to remember them when they need to perform extra tasks for us.

Document the feedback sessions and give each staff the opportunity to evaluate himself, just like you would do in a physical appraisal or evaluation session. And always keep in mind that performance evaluations are not meant to intimidate your subordinates but to enable evaluation of your processes also, and provide learning opportunities for each staff member and for you as a manager. Ultimately, it should give indicators of what has worked and what needs to improve in your organisation.

There's a whole lot I'll be covering in subsequent posts on performance management. Please look out for my posts, so you do not miss it.