The fusionSpan Blog

Keys To Ensure Growth For Your Remote Team

By Meghan Durbin |May 28, 2020

Best Practices

While working remotely was a sudden adjustment for many, organizations have been able to make teleworking the new normal and catch their breath. In fact, the COVID-19 pandemic might have accelerated remote teams by years!

As each business adjusts procedures and processes to ensure productivity while staff works from home, there is a great opportunity for virtual teams to evaluate themselves on a personal and organizational level. If you find a day with a lighter workload, consider undertaking some of these tasks:

Prioritize Your Customer’s Needs

remote work Despite not being in an office, it is still your responsibility to ensure you are meeting your customers needs. Maybe some more ambitious projects or goals are not logistically or financially realistic at this time, but that does not mean there is no work to be done. Make sure you are still evaluating the pain points of your customers and taking the necessary steps to meet their goals.

We must also do our best to stay connected, as newly virtual teams continue to miss the face-to-face interaction that comes with a physical office. Take steps for your remote team to succeed. Don’t let the absence of hallway conversations and water cooler talk prevent tasks from being completed on time. Consider some points from our Director of Digital Strategy Becky Breeden (such as more team meetings and project management tools) to keep your clients happy.

Review Organizational Procedures and Tools

remote work Use this extra time to review your Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and tools used by the organization. It is important to evaluate your current processes and determine where improvements can be made. This could prove to be very helpful when organizations return to the physical workplace, as the implementation of new SOPs and tools can often be overlooked during busier times.

It is also important to give attention to processes such as onboarding and off-boarding. With most of us still away from the physical office, consider creating orientation and training videos to prepare for new hires. These can even be used to enhance a new employee’s first few days in the office when we return to work.

This time can also be spent to evaluate new features and updates in systems. With most tools rolling out constant updates to ensure privacy and performance, it is important to have a good working knowledge of them. Consider extra training or notifications for your team to fully grasp organization-wide tools used.

Personal Development

Most of us were probably eager to take advantage of the time not spent commuting to an office at first, but quickly found that extra time filled with adjusting to quarantine. Now that working from home has become more normal, consider implementing some professional development time into your daily routine:

Courses on Udemy and PluralSight offer relevant training sessions for every line of work
Attend a Webinar! Check out your LinkedIn feed to see sessions for every industry
Salesforce Trailhead: this free-to-use tool walks users through various courses to learn more about the Salesforce platform

While it can be hard to squeeze in personal time during the workday, it is always important to continually develop one’s self professionally. The extra time spent learning a new tool, system, or process could prove to be invaluable for your organization down the road.

Remember – This Is An Opportunity!

In these uncertain times, it is important to remain positive and use this time as an opportunity. These are just some examples of tasks you can tackle while adjusting to a new norm of working remotely. Use this time to address work that usually gets put off for a later date, and help set your organization up for future success.

Meghan Durbin

Meghan joined fusionSpan in August 2019. Meghan works with multiple non-profits to implement customer facing systems. Meghan has five years of experience working in associations. Meghan graduated from Radford University, with a B.S. in Journalism, and also holds a Paralegal Certification from George Mason University.