Remote working is the new normal, yet that does not preclude it from presenting a unique set of challenges.
Managing a remote SME team requires concentration, a well-resourced strategy, and consistent monitoring to make it work efficiently. As a business leader, your vision must be all-encompassing and wholly focused on the wider outputs.
This guide has five useful thoughts for managing a remote SME team successfully.
Table of Contents
Focus on Employee Engagement
Keeping employees engaged will be one of the biggest challenges to overcome. Given the crucial links between engagement and retention, it should be at the forefront of any business mindset. Managing a remote team makes this even more difficult. Here are some helpful tips.
- Regular one-to-ones and whole team check-ins
- Clear goals for each individual person
- Performance incentives and rewards
- In-person meet-up options on key occasions
Think About IT Support
The lesser acknowledged part of remote working is the ongoing necessity to properly manage the company’s IT systems. Whether there is an office or everyone works from home, there will be a call for tech support for various reasons.
Security, for example, is one of the biggest considerations. How do operations stay safe from cybercrime and hackers if everyone is working on their home networks? Therefore, IT support London options become an essential thing to search for.
Outsourcing this task is the only viable option when everything is considered. IT support and security services for London businesses are thankfully easy to find and filled to the brim with great services that cover a wide scope of necessary features.
Daily Wrap-Ups Are Key
Daily wrap-ups are not always team-wide meetings. The point here is for you, as the head of operations, to stay in touch with what’s happening in the company. Are the goals being met? If not, what’s the plan for rectifying this?
There will be slow days and some that bring great advances, and it is up to you to be in the loop with every movement so you can adapt the outputs for the workdays still to come.
Stay Mindful of the Challenges
There are undeniable challenges to working at home. People are attracted to it for its flexibility and convenience. However, with that, there are still obstacles to work around. Parents, for instance, will still have days where children disrupt their work patterns for reasons outside of their control.
Connection problems will also play a role. As management, it is important to stay mindful of these roadblocks and respond mindfully to employees.
Helping your team stay on track and meet KPIs is, of course, the main objective, but now more than ever the world is keen to focus on the human aspect of employment as well.
Don’t Neglect the Marketing Strategy
What is the main role of marketing? To show people what you can do, and why you do it, and entice them into the B2C funnel. Marketing will always play a relevant role regardless of the format of a company.
Companies are only able to thrive when all aspects of marketing are put on the table and worked through. Whether small or big, representing your brand and services to the world is the only way to bring in clients and establish a reputation.
A single-element approach is no longer sufficient in the current climate, as the most successful manifestations are multi-faceted and take a branched approach making roots in different areas.
Email Marketing
Email marketing firmly remains a solid investment. The goal is to create an engagement and draw the customer in by signing up for promotional content straight to their inbox. This can be achieved through promotional offers or exclusive content dangling.
The customer then receives regular updates regarding the company, operations, deals, and more. It is a highly successful method.
Further Content Strategies
Alongside emails are other content options to explore and implement too. SEO, for example, is one of the biggest movements in commerce over the last decade.
It has proven time and again how effective it can be when executed expertly. SEO and general content posting help engage a wider demographic, boost your profile by promoting your site through search engine rankings and create connections that yield bigger potential for completed sales.
PPC Factors
Pay-per-click advertisements are also still relevant. These complement a budget as you are in control of how much you spend, and where your money goes.
The premise revolves around presenting adverts in key areas of the internet in order to create a client connection. When the advert is clicked on, it leads through to your site or a promotional page and you pay for the privilege.
Remote businesses are the way of the future. Recent innovations have lent a helpful hand towards facilitating virtual operations on a global scale, and businesses are surely leaning on these advantages.
Finding success in this context means engaging fully with what’s on offer, and working on a strategy that considers everything from the start to the end of the current goal.
