How Automation Can Improve Remote Team Management

Today, more organizations have switched to remote work where necessary. Employees who can complete their tasks from home without supervision now either work fully remotely or hybrid. However, there are still some challenges in coordinating and managing remote workers.

This is where automation comes in. With automation, employers and employees can easily manage their time, focusing on essential tasks and boosting productivity. Multiple automation strategies are available to improve employee productivity, minimize errors, and increase business processes. This article will walk you through some automation processes to improve your remote team management.

1. Why Remote Team Management Matters?

Remote team management is crucial as it can help you retain high-quality employees and build an impressive team. Successful remote team management requires a deep understanding of people, working processes, and technology.

You are one step closer to building a result-driven remote team when you understand that a successful team doesn’t require daily face-to-face interactions. With a standard remote work policy to guide your team, the chances of a positive outcome increase even further. Research shows that 89% of companies are introducing a remote work policy or have already introduced one.

On the other hand, remote team management can be complex, with each employee working in their own space, timezone, and without monitoring. Remote workers and managers face challenges like time management, motivation and focus, etc. You may also face poor communication, team management, remote collaboration, trust building, and task tracking. These issues can affect employees' productivity and hinder business operations.

However, you can easily avoid these common issues with effective team management strategies and improve overall business success. You could use your preferred systems and applications to ensure a centralized working process, easily monitor your remote workers, and manage your team.

You’ll find that collaboration, project and resource allocation, project management, tracking, and communication among all workers will improve significantly. You’ll be able to save costs, maintain project flow, and discard irrelevant tasks. For example, organizing a remote team management training session with team leaders ensures that employees understand the company's goals more easily.

2. 5 Ways Automation Empowers Remote Team Management

Automation tools help employees streamline tasks scope and speed up repetitive tasks. With mundane tasks out of the way, your employees can focus on more critical tasks and have a defined workflow.

Here are more ways automation benefits remote team management and improves long-term employee engagement. Let’s dive in!

2.1 Organized Resource Management

Resource management is essential in every remote, office-based, or hybrid organization. It requires you to distribute resources to each department when needed and without delay. Resource management is key to business success, and poor management of resources can lead to the failure of a project and a team.

In a remote organization, allocating resources where needed in time with employees sometimes working in different time zones might be difficult. You might also have challenges with assigning, documenting, and managing resources, among others.

You can easily bypass this issue with an effective project management automation tool. It becomes easy to control the allocation, ensuring that the resources are distributed when and where needed at the right time. You can also guarantee they’re properly documented, tracked, and managed.

You can have a waitlist to keep the resources under control as well as save cost and time. This lets you successfully manage multiple projects at a time and establish their success.

2.2 Boosted Employee Productivity

There are numerous administrative tasks like creating invoices and filling out timesheets that employees carry out that can hinder their overall productivity at work. Some of these tasks are mundane, getting in the way of employees focusing on more important tasks. These tasks, while simple and vital, can be time-consuming. They require an in-depth amount of concentration and can drain employees' energy.

In a remote setting where workers can’t be physically monitored, it is easy to lose motivation for work after spending hours on repetitive tasks, which can significantly reduce productivity. This is why it is best to automate such tasks. Employees who focus more on high-priority work achieve more in less time. This is because they’ll spend more time on what they’ve been hired for and what they’re good at rather than unlimited and draining simple tasks.

Additionally, automation tools that track time, priorities, and employee states allow you to see how your employees spend their time. You can see your employees' daily habits, monitor their tasks and workflows, record processes, gather employee feedback via an online survey tool, and learn their time-management skills.

When workers know they’re being monitored, they can spend more time on their job and not slack off, improving overall productivity.

2.3 Clearer Performance Analysis

When your organization uses project management automation tools, all your daily tasks and performances are recorded. This makes it easier to learn and understand the overall performance of your employees. You can see:

• how long it takes to complete different tasks
• how much time each employee spends on their tasks
• how much time is required to complete a project

With this information, you can analyze each employee's performance and progress within the company. You can see if they meet your expectations and if their goals align with your company goals.

With all the repetitive tasks out of the way, you are guaranteed accurate information on each employee’s performance. You will know each employee’s strengths and how to utilize them to benefit your organization and the employee. By knowing your employees’ strengths, you can commend them when deserved, boosting their performance, motivation, satisfaction, and mood.

There are various automation tools for performance analysis. These tools allow you to make the most out of all company and employee data gathered over time. For instance, you can gather records from project and task management apps and blend data in Looker Studio. Utilizing this or a similar approach gives you an in-depth view of the performance of your company and employees through data visualization means.

Sales team performance dashboard example. Source: Coupler.io 

2.4 Streamlined Communication and Collaboration

In an organization, it is important to communicate effectively and adequately to avoid errors and mistrust. This is even more so in remote settings where workers may feel detached from one another due to distance and lack of physical communication. This makes it essential to adopt an effective communication software that allows everyone to communicate with each other easily without disruptions. Team automation can help to avoid miscommunication and lack of trust.

Collaboration tools allow you to be on the same page, simplify collaboration, and encourage team bonding. It can be challenging for workers to bond with each other without physical communication. However, when allowed to collaborate, they spend time working on tasks together and can build a bond.

These tools also allow the team to work on projects together by enabling easy access, editing, and sharing among themselves. Beyond building bonds, they can also complete tasks quickly, save time, avoid missed deadlines, and ensure project success.

2.5 Polished Employee Onboarding

With automation, you can make the employee onboarding process of your organization polished and seamless. It is easy for new hires in a remote organization to get lost, especially when your organization has a big system. New employees might need help navigating through with someone to guide them.

However, an adequate automation tool can prevent this. You can easily get your new workers on track with the company system, allowing them to understand your company goals, working processes, rules, communication processes, and other relevant information. It will ensure that they’re well-informed, motivated, and focused. With an automated onboarding process, they can easily fit in with the rest of the team and understand their role in the company and your expectations of them.

Your onboarding process can include direct video communication with HR and files for new hires to use as a guide. You can also have a remote team management training session that lets employees understand how your company operates. This will help to save time, reduce errors, maintain efficiency, and improve business organization.

3. Conclusion

Some business managers may question the need for automation when they have employees for these tasks. On the contrary, automation helps to enhance employees' productivity.

When you allocate simple, mundane tasks to automated tools, your employees can focus on more complex and relevant tasks. This is even especially so for remote workers. It makes it easy to manage your work in a structured way and simplifies your work routine.

You’ll find that automation will improve your business processes and allow you to achieve your business goals.

4. FAQs

4.1 What is remote team management?

Remote team management is overseeing and coordinating a group of individuals working from different locations, ensuring productivity, communication, and collaboration through digital tools and strategies.