Building a Remote Team for an International Project: Hire Happy People!
Tags: Effectiveness, Skyeng Global, Motivation, Business Development

by Evgeniya Golikova, Сo-founder & Chief Operations Officer at skyeng.es

For me, launching an international start-up in a new market demonstrated one thing very clearly: the success of a remote team comes from testing, flexibility, and balancing creativity and control. Our experience will be useful to anyone who, whether voluntarily or due to circumstances, has to hire a remote team and manage processes knowing that they will be separated from their employees by thousands of kilometers.

Why are remote workers more productive?

I want to say it upfront: remote work is the best kind of teamwork I have ever experienced. It is certainly not to be feared. If you do everything right, a remote team will work even faster and more effectively than one sharing an office.

We worked remotely, but no one felt as if they were doing it alone. The corporate messenger Slack preserved a you-are-there effect: we communicated so much that it felt as if we all knew each other personally and were sitting next to one another. Plus, we didn’t waste time on overlong tea, coffee, and smoking breaks, which are common in an office.

The opportunity to work in a comfortable environment, whether at home, in a café, or in a coworking space, had an even greater impact on the employees’ efficiency. A comfortable environment increases productivity and helps preserve a healthy work-life balance. People who are happy and content get even more satisfaction out of their work.

That goes for me as well as my employees. During the entire journey, I was incredibly inspired by the feedback I received from my team; I get an amazing charge out of knowing that my employees take pleasure in their work. Laziness, apathy, or attempts to avoid performing certain tasks are not the problems we have to deal with. Recently we measured eNPS and loyalty: they were above average compared to the company and the market at large. It’s nice to know that, in the world of EdTech, there is a team of like-minded people who begin their every workday with joy.

How to build a remote team?

Online interviews do not at all prevent you from finding the right people. What’s more, it is necessary to conduct such interviews and go beyond the checklist in order to hire new employees. First and foremost, listen to your gut and take note of what impressions you get when talking to a person.

Relevant experience is one thing; trust, quite another. Sometimes it is better to hire someone who is less experienced but more motivated and engaged. Such candidates are more loyal towards the company and team leader, less likely to abandon a project at the worst time possible, and will be motivated by an opportunity to learn and grow.

By the way, an extensive interview will help you see if a candidate is good at either arranging processes or achieving results. Both types of employees are important to a project, but they fit different roles.

Besides, not even the most complete skill set can tell if a person is going to match your team’s vibe. It is important to hire only those who will fit in. If you make your choice based solely on what the position demands, you risk hiring someone who will find it hard to adapt and will remain an outsider.

And most importantly: hire happy people. They will not carry their personal problems over into their work.

How to arrange remote work?

The tools I use to work with a remote team are also suitable for an offline one but were originally developed specifically for putting a remote team’s work on the right track.

Thoughtful communication is the most significant tool. You will have to do a lot of it, and not every meeting will be dedicated to work problems. Case in point: we would regularly have “anti-briefings,” inspirational get-togethers where we praised those who’d done well over the preceding week, supported those working on complex and vital tasks, played intellectual games to take our minds off work, shared interesting facts about ourselves, and laughed a lot.

This is not time being wasted on chit-chat. Such meetings help us break up the routine, look at our tasks from a different angle and find unexpected solutions. They inspire us and fill us with energy, making everyone feel a part of the team. And the meetings are not mandatory; everyone genuinely looks forward to these “anti-briefings.”

When you’re establishing communication with your team, don’t forget those who joined it only recently. Right from the start, the HR manager and the team leader have to pay a great deal of attention to every new employee. Free up your time to include one-on-one meetings and encourage the new hire to ask questions, share pressing issues, and discuss growth areas, achievements and mistakes.

Communication lets the manager be aware of the context and not be stuck in a position of an outside observer. In a remote team, it is particularly important to understand all the key activities, interview people for line positions from time to time, onboard new hires and personally supervise the quality of the work. And don’t forget about transparency when you report the results: everyone should know where, when, and to whom they have to report what worked and what didn’t and why.

For effective work, it is also very important to supervise how forecasting, intermediate, and resultant metrics are being met, and systematically screen how every person in the team is doing with regards to their goals. It is important for people to know what they need to achieve and how their work is being evaluated. Otherwise, they may feel like they are working for nothing.

So, the leader of a remote team has to establish a clearly functioning system on every level along with a motivation system of KPIs. Everyone should know the goals of the team and the project as a whole, and understand what we aim for. And, of course, everyone must be aware that if they don’t give a 100%, it will affect the team and the project. Each employee is very important. This is another thing to keep in mind to build a team that works well even without being constantly supervised.

Six tips for remote team leaders

What did I learn from my experience of building a remote team for an international project? Here are a few key principles:

Hire happy people. The whole team should be on the same wavelength. Enthusiasm and energy are often more important than hard skills: one can develop skills but not the passion for work.

Build a comprehensive system of checklists, business processes and rules. When problems arise, everyone will know what to do, and the work won’t come to a screeching halt. But also give people an opportunity to take initiative, work independently, and make decisions outside the framework.

Constantly check if the system is working. Fix it promptly if something goes wrong, forgive the mistakes you and your team made, and learn to rectify them quickly.

Automate and optimize. Select tools and procedures that cut down on “manual labor.”

Make trust and respect the foundation of all your communication with your employees — with no stress, fear, or excuses. This makes supervision even easier than in an office. Ideally, such a relationship will make your employees want to keep you up to date on their achievements, stick to deadlines, and work without being prodded.

Take care of your employees. Give them advice on how to manage the work-life balance during remote work so they wouldn’t sit in front of a computer 24/7 but find time to go in for sports, eat healthy and get well-rested.

I am sure that every manager will find useful insights in our experience that can be applied to their own projects, whether online or offline.