Picture this, there is a room filled with your staff, carrying on with their work, taking help from each other, some are sipping their morning coffee, some are stressing over deadlines. You walk into the room, and everybody greets you, come up to you for any queries. There is someone spending a little long time gazing; you go to him and snap him out of his daydream. That is an ordinary day for you as a team manager isn’t it? Now minus the physical presence of everybody in the room. That is what it looks like managing remote assistance. As per Wikipedia, Helpers offering remote assistance can open multiple simultaneous sessions—one for each remote computer.

With the help of remote assistance, a company can recruit the best candidates from a different location, save money on office overhead and manage staff based on their productivity rather than their check-in time. Managing the remote team is a whole different challenge than managing the team working with you side by side. The flow of work that worked in an office will work differently to the remote assistant.

TIPS TO SUCCESSFULLY MANAGE REMOTE ASSISTANCE

To help, here are few tips for successfully managing the remote assistance you get.

1. Prioritize Productivity:

It is easy to judge a staff from their reporting time, the time they leave, the way they communicate, their relationship with other employees, the way they present themselves, But these are not a proper indication of their productivity. You should judge productivity based on how efficiently they perform their job. You should judge productivity by the quality of work and how efficiently they perform their job. To evaluate the benefits of your remote team, consistently monitor the status, timeline, and goals of the company projects.

2. Rapport Building:

When dealing with remote assistance, conversations are short and to the point. This makes sense during tight deadlines, but if this is always practiced, it results in slow output through remote assistance. Rapport building is essential for all the member of the remote team. Through rapport building, one gets to know about a person completely Talking only about work will create a weak bond between you and your remote team.

3. Choose Video over Audio call:

Most people choose nonverbal communication to direct communication. A drawback of these nonverbal communications is an absence of visual clue to understanding the tone of the message. A message such as “Come quickly” means both Come quick, I am in danger or Come quick, I can’t wait to see you. With the remote assistant, it is crucial to use video calling apps such as Skype, Google hangouts, etc. During video conferencing, the nonverbal clue of disagreements or dissatisfaction is a chance to fix problems affecting your remote assistant.

4. Never cancel a One on One meeting:

When it’s difficult to make time for connecting with your team individually, schedule a One on One meeting. This meeting is helpful to communicate with your team on another level. For remote assistant, you need to provide at least an hour weekly for one on one. The meetings can be called off due to the difference in time zone or unavailability.  But always remember one of the fastest ways to build resentment is canceling one on one with your remote assistance team. This gives a sense of power dynamic between the report team and manager. Hence, if due to some unavoidable reason you need to cancel the meeting, never cancel, always reschedule.

5. Arrange face to face meets at least once a year:

When you consider getting assistance for your company, you wish to connect with different talents globally. You can create an incredible bond with your  virtual assistant service staff with video conference and personal story sharing, but nothing beats face to face meeting with each other in a team. Meeting the team helps in building trust and develops a strong bond. It’s essential to arrange for face to face meet at least once a year. Even Though meeting with the team who are globally spread out may be expensive at times but the return you get is tremendous!