How to motivate a big team remotely
Standard remote work procedure recommends weekly (or biweekly) 1:1s with everyone on your team. Standard in-office recommendations include daily standups at the beginning of the day. But this is not a standard situation. Here are some practical ideas on how to lead and motivate a big team suddenly working from home, while taking into account that many of these team members might be struggling with much more than just a remote setup.
Remember: Your goal is awareness and solution-oriented action. Focus on finding out what is going on so you can decide if and where you need to act.
Quarterly 1:1s combined with office hours
Not having (bi)weekly 1:1s doesn’t mean you can’t meet with your team members. Set up personal video calls at a lower cadence, for example, once every month/quarter. Combine these preset meetings with the option to book ad-hoc calls with you for those who feel the need for more connection. If your company is using Google Suite, you can choose the appointment slot option to open up your calendar for office hours.
Combining a 1:1 every six weeks with the option to talk to you on any Friday afternoon, should someone need it, sends a powerful message of availability without blocking 20 hours of your week.
Daily virtual stand-us as an accountability tool
Many communication tools allow for regular questions to be sent to all members. At Klaus we use Geekbot in combination with different Slack channels. In Basecamp you could use the built-in check-in feature. Search for “daily standup + [your tool]” on your favourite search engine (may I recommend duckduckgo for privacy reasons), and see what comes up. You are looking for a way to get daily low-effort info on how everyone is doing while helping each team member to plan their day.
I like to ask the following questions:
What have you accomplished since your last check-in?
Did you do anything awesome in your off-hours?
What do you plan to do today?
In our case, the replies are sent to public channels, so everyone can see the replies and comment in threads if needed.
For your employees, the first and the third question help with accountability (did I accomplish what I set out to do?). For you, it allows to spot possible problems before they manifest: Who is planning on doing too much (and mostly like overwhelming themselves)? Who is consistently trying to do the same thing (and may be stuck)? Who’s planning post and summary post wildly differ (so they might be troubleshooting a lot and not getting their own stuff done)?
Skim through the responses every other day and you get a pretty accurate feeling about what is going on and who is doing what. And then reach out to those who you feel are overburdening themselves or having trouble focussing.
If your team is new to remote and/or suddenly they are not alone at home, make extra sure to check those updates to get a feeling for how disrupted they feel. Entertaining young kids or sharing your workspace with a partner/housemate/parent can all be highly stressful situations.
You can’t be everywhere, but you can empower others to be there
Create mastermind groups among your employees, 3-4 people at a time. They should meet once a week for about 30 min to share ideas. Depending on how independent your team is, you might have to create an initial list of topics so they focus on the positive, e.g.: What has worked specifically well this week? What small change have you done that improved your situation? Whom have you helped this week?
If you just started the quarantine/work-from-home phase, you’ll want to pair people with similar challenges - or allow them to self-organize based on their challenges. Parents might enjoy sharing ideas with other parents. People being completely alone in quarantine might want to share tips with others in the same situation. Or maybe they want to hear from the other end of the spectrum - there’s no right and wrong answer here. Make sure to be intentional in your setup though and let people know that these pairings aren’t forever and will be reshuffled next quarter.
Monthly summary between you and your team member
Even if you don’t have monthly 1:1s, you can still ask your team members to send you a monthly summary of what went well and what didn’t. Make it clear that you do not expect them to invest more than 30 min into this exercise. Your goal is to get the following questions answered:
What was noteworthy about this month?
Were there any challenges you overcame, big or small?
Is there anything you wished you’d known earlier?
Where do you see areas that I can make your work easier or more meaningful?
If your company does annual or biannual performance reviews, these monthly check-ins will also make the next review so much easier. You’ll already have some data to work with.
Pro tip: have them send this summary to you via email, indicating whether they need you to act on the email or whether it is “for your interest” only. Of course, the latter doesn’t mean you can’t react - but it lowers the pressure a bit on all sides and sets clear expectations.
Encourage spaces for non-work banter and venting
Talking about expectations: no one spends the day at the office only working and only talking about work. People bond over all kinds of topics, and this is also true in a remote environment. The best way to encourage venting and non-work banter without having it distract everyone in direct messages for the rest of the day is: building it into your official workspace.
My three favourite channels in our Klaus Slack are currently:
#random (for all non-work-related gifs, memes, ideas, links, and more memes, except those who are about...)
#covid19 (for all things coronavirus related, especially memes - so that those who do not want to be exposed can not join the channel)
#office (a place to complain about our imaginary coworker who ALWAYS changes the thermostat, to announce that there are cookies in the kitchen and all other office policies we suppose happen in colocated places).
There’s also #vent and #good-news, #fine-arts and #parenting, #productivity and #remote-tips. We acknowledge that not everything is about work, and by keeping it public, we help everyone to maintain a sane balance.