Employing and managing the right team ensures that your digital marketing agency achieves its goals, maintains its culture, and retains its competitive advantage. Part of this process is to consider how to manage a remote team. The most significant concern is building and maintaining a healthy relationship with the workforce even when you don’t physically meet. 

How Do You Successfully Employ and Manage Remote Teams in a Digital Marketing Agency?

It all starts by bringing the right talent onboard and communicating your expectations and demands clearly and concisely.

Hire the Right Talent

Understand what problems you want to solve by hiring new talent. Do you want to fill a specific position in your firm, such as a front-end developer or customer service manager? Think about the particular goals you want to achieve with this new hire and bring the right talent on board.

You can always research online for what to look for in a perfect CV. Doing so will let you know what to check in the CVs and what you ask the candidates. For example, this site focuses on CFO CV  and how a perfect CFO’s resume should look like.

 Note that it’s not just about the skill set needed but additional traits such as:

• The ability to work and communicate with a remote team
• Team-orientated and able to work independently
• Curiosity and open-mindedness
• Punctuality and discipline 
• A high work ethic, both in quantity and quality
• Motivation and passion for the job at hand
• Comfortable using modern tech 

Understand Why You Need a Remote Team

It’s essential to lay down the current needs and issues you’d like to solve with a remote team. Do you want to cut costs, start a new agency, try new strategies, or hire more talent? Whatever the case, lay down your initial expectations, making the management process smoother.

There are numerous benefits to working with a remote team. As an entrepreneur, you understand how costly it is to maintain full-time employees in the office space. By hiring remotely, you reduce the costs of staffing and office maintenance. 

Remote employees achieve lots of benefits as well. They can earn more cash by holding more than one job. It’s also easier to balance personal life with a job that doesn’t require you to be in the office for 8 hours each day. You also make savings on commute time and costs.

How Do You Set Up and Manage the Remote Team?

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Setting up and managing the remote team is the next step after you’ve brought the right talent on board. Set and communicate your expectations to keep your team productive and up-to-date with what they are expected to do.

Recruit a Project Manager

Project managers ensure a smooth workflow, achievable daily goals, and that the remote team is in line with the company’s strategies. As a digital marketing agency, you will be strategizing about keeping your clients happy and working on new projects. 

A good project manager moderates meetings, assigns tasks to employees, tracks work progress, ensures everyone stays updated about decisions made by the company and more. Project managers create a rapport with remote workers and can be an invaluable resource when you need advice on the go.

Time Tracking Software

This software enables you to track the amount of time spent on various tasks by your employees. Time tracking can be done manually in a spreadsheet or with specialized apps. Employees should also record what they worked on and any challenges they faced during each session.A convenient and straightforward way to track time is with a Timesheet Calculator. The benefit of using a calculator form to track time, is the extreme flexibility they provide. The software makes it really easy to add or subtract input fields, to create the perfect calculator form for your company and team’s needs.

Narrow Down Your Goals and Communicate Them with Your Team 

Once you understand your goals, it’s time to relay that information to the remote unit. It will ensure everyone is on the same page and has a clear idea of what to work on.

Communication is crucial to a remote team working together. You can communicate your expectations with weekly or monthly check-in meetings, ensuring everyone is up to speed with the digital marketing agency’s ongoing projects and activities.

It also helps you keep a consistent culture across the entire team since every member has a clear understanding of the expectations.

Enforce Workplace Rules

Clearly define the rules for your agency or company, promote them, and ensure everyone knows what’s expected of them. Additionally, hold virtual meetings where employees report their progress and raise any challenges faced during each project stage.

Avail Team Collaboration Tools

Collaborating with every individual in the company is vital to maintaining good relationships, improving overall teamwork, producing higher quality results, and encouraging knowledge sharing. Many tools exist that allow employees to work on projects or tasks regardless of their geographic location. 

Assign Each New Recruit a Mentor

Assigning mentors is an efficient way to delegate responsibilities to new employees without overwhelming them. They can learn from experienced workers with helpful tips and suggestions on how they can improve their work. It also makes the mentors feel empowered to take part in your recruitment process by providing guidance.

Understand and Prepare for the Challenges

Like any other work arrangement, you have to conquer challenges to achieve your goals and keep the workforce productive and motivated. The challenges include:

Social Isolation

Remote workers are more prone to experiencing isolation since building camaraderie in an online space is challenging. It’s essential to take steps to ensure your team is motivated and content with their job instead of feeling neglected. It includes hiring the right self-motivated individuals, encouraging social activities, and providing the tools to remain in touch with their co-workers.

A physical office setup enables employees to establish relationships that grow into a support system. When working remotely, it’s harder to create on-the-job friendships and maintain relationships outside of work hours.

A network is essential in the digital marketing agency world so ensure you set up a support system for your team with weekly meetups or organize off-site activities. When meetings are not possible, organize

• Virtual lunch meetings
• Virtual games nights
• Regular live webinars 

Adequately Equipping the Remote Team

Each individual has unique needs that have to be met to maintain a smooth workflow. The team needs customized tools, IT networks, and software to work more efficiently and perform well.

It’s essential to invest in various tools that allow employees to complete their daily tasks from any location. These tools can include:

Virtual Private Networks

The VPN will enable remote workers to access your company-wide network any time of the day from any location. Doing so increases productivity as you don’t have to wait for an employee to visit the office or relocate before contributing to the business.

Time Tracking Software

This software enables you to track the amount of time spent on various tasks by your employees. Time tracking can be done manually or with specialized apps, which are convenient and straightforward. Employees should also record what they worked on and any challenges they faced during each session.

Remote Access Software

This software allows employees to remotely access the company’s intranet from anywhere in the world. It also enables them to work on company documents, upload or download files, transfer data from devices, use any of their computer’s programs, send messages with built-in chat tools, and connect to the internet.

Project Management Tools

Project management tools ensure your team stays on track as it allows you to create a step-by-step plan for each project you work on. It also provides employees with a list of daily tasks they have to complete, deadlines, milestones, and statistics.

Provide a Flexible Work Schedule

A flexible work schedule enables employees to decide what’s best for them and their families while still meeting company goals. They can achieve flexible working hours by having unlimited vacation days or telecommuting on specific days of the week. 

Meeting Logistic Demands

Because of the freedom of keeping flexible work schedules, logistics can be an issue. Before holding meetings or planning tasks, you must consider time zones, employees’ convenience, and other demands. Organize the logistic needs by setting a regular meeting schedule, holding meetings at a specific time of the day, and abiding by strict rules.

Benefits of Having a Remote Team in a Digital Marketing Agency

Pricing and Cost Savings

Hiring remote workers will decrease your costs since you don’t have to provide them with office space or expensive equipment. You can hire talented individuals even if they reside in faraway locations. You can also have a team working from more than one location, which will save you from the hassle of relocating employees to an office space.

Cultural Diversity and Workplace Edification

Your digital marketing agency’s workforce will be diverse. You can hire people with different backgrounds, knowledge, and experiences who live in other countries. It’s important to understand that not everyone has the same education or upbringing. Employees will bring different personalities, styles, and ideas to the table.

Flexible Recruitment Process

Your agency can recruit employees through job boards, recruitment agencies, social media, referrals from other employees, and digital marketing agencies. Naturally, remote workers are more likely to join companies that offer flexible hours as they can balance both work and personal commitments.

Take Away

Understand that managing remote workers requires patience and careful planning. Employees should be well-equipped with the right tools necessary for their tasks. Doing so will make them feel like they are part of one big team. 

Set clear goals at the beginning of each project or task so that employees know what they have to achieve by the end of the day. Encouraging a team spirit and adequately meeting the remote employees’ needs keeps them motivated, productive and decreases employee turnover.