Issues regarding the effective management of remote employees are especially relevant for international companies,
In February of this year, Moscow entered the top five.European cities with the largest number of software developers (160,900 people). Let’s figure out how to work with remote programmers so that it is as efficient as possible and brings success to the company.
Choose the right leader
Developers should be managed by a person whocombines the skills of a professional programmer and a talented manager. It is better to hire an IT specialist, rather than a manager, for such a position - then he will enjoy authority among his subordinates. Technical skills will allow him to have an excellent understanding of all processes and delve into the tasks of each developer. According to Harvard Business Review experts, a smart leader knows how to correctly formulate interesting and difficult tasks for the team and build a strategy for solving them. Such a person sees the strengths of employees and knows how to develop them; he spends time educating the entire team and has high emotional intelligence.
It's a good idea to assign a mentor who willHelp new remote employees get started without unnecessary stress. The mentor inspires and educates the students assigned to him, shares with them career experience, advice, knowledge and motivation. It's like a professional older brother or sister who will initially help employees navigate the beginning of their journey. There are even special platforms that help you find an online mentor for your team, for example, SCORE and Million Women Mentors. A more experienced colleague can also act as a mentor.
Decompose tasks
Deadlines for remote employees need to be setno longer than two or three days. Use slicing, or decomposition: replace the execution of one large project with solving a series of smaller and simpler problems. This method will help a specialist receive prompt feedback while working, quickly test hypotheses and better manage time. You will be aware of the progress of the project and will be able to mitigate risks.
On average, a person can hold in his mind 3-5elements of information simultaneously. Anything beyond that will most likely simply fall out of your head. If you rely only on your memory, you will have to stop at every stage of the task and think: what should I do next? Without a step-by-step division of the task, there is a high probability of getting lost and missing some important step.
Many are probably familiar with feelingthe satisfaction that you get when you can delete something from the to-do list. But what happens in the body when a person writes “done” next to a completed task - the brain releases dopamine, a neurotransmitter associated with a sense of pleasure and motivation.
That's the problem: a person likes what he feels, so do everything possible to repeat this success. This is what neurologists call self-study, and this is the main reason why dividing large projects is so useful. By breaking long-term assignments, the employee receives more frequent rewards (and a rush of dopamine), which inspires him to continue to take steps forward.
Use scrum
Originally Agile, a variety of whichis Scrum, arose precisely among IT professionals. Each developer should bear personal responsibility for his task, while the team leader evaluates the results and controls a common understanding of the projects. Efficiency is measured by the time during which the task has moved from the To do list to the Done list. The less time has passed, the better. If the task took too much time, it means that the leader needs to react and optimize the processes. Scrum fosters independence: each team has its own role and its own work pool.
Scrum technologies can be learned. According to Scrum Alliance statistics, more than 725 thousand people around the world have already become certified Scrum specialists.
Spend daily stand-ups
Know your team during your researchasked 1,745 employees from 702 companies, “Is there anything you don’t know about the company that you think you should know?” 55% of respondents gave a positive answer to this question.
Information sharing has a strong impact onteam performance. This is why Agile methodology includes short morning meetings of 15–20 minutes. At them, the manager discusses with the team what has already been done, what is planned to be done, what problems they encountered and how they were resolved. An important difference between such meetings and ordinary ones is that the agenda is prepared in advance, time is strictly limited, so meetings are as productive as possible and do not take up extra time, truly influencing the course of processes in the company.
Once a week, preferably on Fridays, hold longer meetings to summarize the week and plan for the next one.
It’s better to be in touch with programmers all the time:connect on Zoom or Slack to discuss operational issues, track everyone's tasks in Jira, evaluate tasks in poker planners. Already 135,711 companies from around the world use Slack, Zoom is now preferred by 29,058 organizations.
The right tools for communication
For organizations with multiple offices or withThe remote software staff will ensure that all employees are involved in the company's processes. The following software will help facilitate work:
Wunderlist is a smart scheduler that allows you to not only create to-do lists for the day, but also share them with your team.
Skitch - a tool through which you canTake notes in any document: be it a photo, map, text or PDF document. It is convenient for receiving feedback on a developed website or optimizing its conversion.
WorldTimeBuddy is an indispensable friend for quickly clarifying issues, for example, “Client A wants to call me at three in the afternoon in Florida, what time will be in Hong Kong, where am I now?”
Kickidler - employee control and accounting systemworking hours. Shows computer screens of all company employees in real time, records action videos. Allows you to analyze the efficiency of using time to perform a particular task.
Measure results statistics
It’s pretty hard for developers to set clearKPI, and many entrepreneurs do not know how to properly evaluate their work. An individual approach is important here, so it is important to speak with the employees themselves. For example, we have developed a cloud system that gives access to statistics on the activity of each employee, which allows us to understand what the developer is doing and what state he is in. We look at the statistics and see what exactly the programmer is doing: writing new code, refactoring, changing something or getting stuck on the task. The mechanism is transparent and allows you to evaluate the work and its absence for everyone, by analyzing whether the employee is moving in the right direction, what difficulties he experiences in the work. We plan to fully automate these processes by training the system to independently analyze statistics using Data Science.
Some companies use the Scrum-Focus method.Factor. It shows how much the task should ideally take time and how much came out in the end. But there are risks that programmers will knowingly overestimate time estimates, minimizing their own risks. Another popular Scrum method is Velocity. It allows you to predict how many tasks a team will be able to complete over a given period of time, depending on how much it completed in the previous one. But Velocity cannot be an exact criterion, because the team has already gained experience on how to solve specific problems. The metric may simply not work again.
Get ready to work with employees from different time zones
Of course, it is convenient to work with those who are having a dayIt starts at about the same time as yours. Otherwise, the CEO has to start working with some early in the morning, with others in the afternoon, and with others late in the evening. This regime is destructive both for a person and for his business, because quality work requires quality rest.
It’s especially important to be in nearby time zones withdevelopers: if some kind of error occurs in the program, you will quickly contact your specialist and quickly coordinate the necessary processes. For example, our head office is located in Singapore. Developers live in Thailand, Bali and in some regions of Russia and work seamlessly.
But there are times when talented employeeslive on the other side of the earth. Then you should try to make the time difference your advantage. If you carefully plan and distribute the load, then your company will work 24 hours a day. For example, you have a team writing a piece of program code during the day in one country. Another team in an excellent time zone is testing this code in the evening. And if you have customers all over the world, then you can offer real support services in each time zone.
An application like EveryTimeZone will help you manage employees from different countries and create convenient work schedules.
Support all team members
Research conducted by The Leadership Factor(TLF), found that more than half (55%) of freelancers surveyed suffer from depression due to their work. Among office workers, only 30% answered the same. You don't have to look far for reasons: nearly two-thirds (64%) of freelancers say this type of work makes them feel lonely on a daily basis, and 62% say they feel stressed about their work. In the office, these options were chosen by 29% and 55% of colleagues, respectively.
Therefore, it is important to organize personal meetings fortheir employees. This will help them to get to know each other better, build strong relationships and get rid of feelings of isolation. If you can’t personally meet with your colleagues, then video conferences or at least audio messages will come to the rescue. Also make sure that your employees take vacation days, because with the advent of remote work, they may think that this is not necessary, because they are already at home with their families. You can also encourage your team members to share personal news, funny memes, or articles in a separate chat, besides discussing work tasks.
Even if employees are thousandskilometers, feel free to tell them “Keep it up” for a job well done. Send them small gifts to boost their morale. Encouraging words can have a powerful effect on employees' self-esteem and encourage them to work harder in the future. The main goal is to show that you sincerely care and appreciate their efforts, despite the fact that you are far away.
Provide long-term business trips
For a month, send an employee to work in the officeyour company in another country. For him, this will be a unique opportunity to chat live with the team, exchange experiences and feel the new atmosphere.
According to a study conducted by the University of East London, 61% of employees who combined work travel with travel felt a significant increase in productivity when they returned home.
What's more, nearly 40% of millennial workers won't accept a job without travel, and 30% of workers are willing to accept lower wages in exchange for more travel.
Russia is in the top 15 countries for travel expenses. At the same time, the Global Business Travel Association estimated that by 2021 these expenses will be a record $ 23.5 billion.
Many entrepreneurs restrict communication withby remote employees up to the “task-result” format. However, the more you invest in your own team, no matter where in the world an employee is, the faster and better your business will grow.