You can now live in one country and work in a different one. That’s thanks to the technological advances we have today. As a result, companies have realized that sometimes, the best way to run a business is by having distributed teams located in multiple places.
One of the main advantages of having remote teams is that it provides companies with the best talent regardless of where the professionals are located. But there are several challenges of managing remote teams that you should be aware of:
1. The Inability for Everyone to Be On the Same Page
When a company has a distributed workforce, then it has to deal with the challenge of having everyone on the same page.
For starters, the remote team may consist of members who speak different languages. The language barrier may make it difficult for you to communicate well with people. Some may have trouble fully understanding what’s expected of them.
If people don’t understand what they need to do, then they are less likely to work as they should. And that means your company will have low productivity.
Another challenge is timing. People who work from different corners of the world are less likely to be awake at the same time. The time zones are vastly different. So, you may have to hold two meetings to communicate the same message. If that doesn’t happen you will have people who struggle to stay updated with the most recent developments.
2. Lack of Supervision
When someone starts slacking in your workplace, you or other managers can keep calling them out on it. That’s not the case with remote teams.
When you are located far away from the rest of your work team, you cannot watch over them. You just have to trust that they will keep working when they should. If they don’t and fail to complete the tasks that your company needs them to do, then you won’t know until it’s too late. By then the damage may have been done already. And you may end up losing multiple deals because some of your people don’t work well without supervision. Your company’s bottom line will suffer for it.
3. Lack of Social Interactions
When people work together in one office, they will take the time to connect and build relationships. These social interactions help to improve team dynamics.
But there is no such thing where remote teams are concerned. When people work from different parts of the globe that have different time zones, establishing and maintaining connections may prove impossible for some.
The lack of social interactions may make it quite difficult for all team members to collaborate on group projects. And this may end up affecting the quality of those projects negatively.
The inability of remote teams to interact in person also makes it nearly impossible for team managers to spot problems in advance. Some signals get lost when people communicate online.
People can fake happiness for a time. So, you may not realize that some of your remote workers are unhappy and dissatisfied with how things are run in your business. You will only realize it when they start to leave for greener pastures.
Replacing good talent is always an expensive and time-consuming affair. So, your company may lose money while you struggle to do that.
A distributed workforce may work in some circumstances. But you should consider having multiple offices around the world where your managers can keep watch over international employees. And you can travel to these work centers regularly to supervise developments in person.
Should you decide to do this for your business branch in Russia, you need to get yourself a Russian visa. We provide visa application services for business travelers at https://visaexpress.com/visa-for-russia-from-us/. Feel free to reach out to us today.