Tag Archives: offshore team management

10 Best Remote Team Communication Tips for Efficient Management

Best Remote Team Communication Tips for Effective Team Management

A recent study informs that employee productivity improves by 25% when employees feel connected with their coworkers and the company. Such a connection can happen when a company has a strong and effective remote team communication mechanism in place. 

“Like a human being, a company has to have an internal communication mechanism, a ‘nervous system’ to coordinate its actions.” Bill Gates. 

Effective Communication is Key

Effective communication is a soft skill that has a tangible and measurable impact on business success. 

A study involving 195 leaders from 30 organizations across 15 countries rated communication skills as the most important element of business success. That’s from a report published in the Harvard Business Review. 

Remote team communication and management

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The scenario doesn’t change when you work with distributed offshore teams. You just need to be innovative in the way you handle communication. 

Top 10 Remote Team Communication Tips to Help You with Effective Team Management

Tip 1. Organize Regular Online Meetings For All The Teams

It is critical to ensure that communication breakdown does not become a staller when you work with offshore distributed teams. Regular and sustained remote team communication is the solution.

Creating a schedule of weekly online meetings with your offshore remote teams is a good practice. 

Prima facie, it seems to be a challenge when teams are in different timezones. However, it is not an insurmountable problem. All it needs is some adjustments on all sides. 

All the parties involved need to be ready to attend meetings beyond so-called regular office hours. It is possible to fix mutually agreeable timings then. 

Suppose you are in the U.S. in an EST zone and one of your remote teams is in India. That’s 10.5 hours of difference in summer and 11.5 in winter. In summer, 9 am EST is 6.30 pm IST. That’s workable, right?

There’s no dearth of tools for online conferencing. Skype continues to be the most popular with 1.33 million users globally in 2017. Utilizing Unified Communication Solutions can significantly bridge the gap, enabling seamless collaboration regardless of geographical differences.

Tip 2. Adopt A Project Management Tool

There are several online remote team management tools to choose from. Jira, Proofhub, Slack, and Trello are some of the popular ones. 

When you work across time zones, the use of these technologies improves remote team communication and team functioning. The important thing, however, is to stick to the platform once you’ve chosen it. 

The proliferating remote working culture is coordinated with some popular remote team communication tools like Skype and Zoom.

Adopt A Project Management Tool

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Insist on the use of the platform for all project-related communications. Discourage your remote team project managers from picking up the intercom to instruct their colleagues next door.

Tip 3. Introduce Agile

The Agile approach originally emerged for software development teams to collaborate. However, it has since been adapted for use across diverse businesses.

Lonely Planet, for example, is a renowned publisher of travel books. The company’s legal team has adopted an Agile approach. In 2019, they reported a 25% productivity hike.

The Agile approach is particularly suitable for managing remote teams as the focus is on distributing project deliverables across the project timeline. That facilitates the immediate identification of bottlenecks and time-lags. 

Adopt the part of Agile that suits your project. Do not worry about the processes. 

Tip 4. Share the Vision

“Few, if any, forces in human affairs are as powerful as a shared vision.” That is what celebrated Systems Scientist Professor Peter Senge says. 

When working on managing remote teams effectively, getting the team on board about the project deliverables is critical. Sharing the larger vision is what works best, experts say.

Share the Vision

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Tip 5. Connect Each Team Leader With One In-house Team Person

Depending on the number of remote teams you have, make one in-house person connect with the team leaders/ project managers of one, two, or three teams. 

Let your offshore team leader know that X is the person to approach with all the questions, and for all clarifications. Inform your in-house team members that they are responsible for the overall performance of the team/s they are in charge of. 

Foster a buddy culture between the two team leads – offshore and in-house. 

The typical application of the buddy system is for the onboarding of new employees. However, it is a structured approach flexible enough to be adapted for longer-term use. 

Read more about the buddy system here. 

 

Managed Offshore Teams

Tip 6. Be Culture-sensitive

To be culture-sensitive is to recognize, acknowledge, and respect the diversity of cultures. When you work with offshore remote teams, it is of paramount importance to be aware of cultural differences. 

The key is to ask polite questions, inform experts, when you don’t understand something. That minimizes the chances of misunderstandings resulting from cultural variations and makes remote team communication effective.

Tip 7. Clarify That Asking Questions Is Fine

This is a cultural issue particularly applicable to the Asia-Pacific region. Asking questions, especially to people considered senior or superior, is considered a mark of immodesty. 

In case you have offshore distributed teams in countries in this region, it is critical to clearly state that asking questions for clarification is alright. 

It is also a good practice to state it clearly to all your remote teams, wherever they are. 

This is an area where the buddy program works especially well. That helps reduce the inhibitions people might have about raising questions. They feel easier to pose those questions to the buddy they have in your company.  

Tip 8. Be Inclusive In Your Approach

“You have to be run by ideas, not hierarchy.” That’s what Steve Jobs said in his last interview in 2010 during All Things Digital’s D8 Conference. He died next year. 

Be inclusive in dealing with your offshore distributed teams. Discourage hierarchy in your teams and do not practice it yourself. You will get greater productivity.  

Not to be hierarchical is not to lose authority. It has more to do with working together with a team on the basis of a shared vision. 

If you are openly trusting and inclusive in your approach, you won’t have to watch over your teams. They will deliver.

Tip 9. Treat Offshore Teams Like Partners

If you actually practise everything we have been saying so far, this will happen naturally. 

Working together is a partnership that extends beyond the client-vendor relationship. Remember the costs that your distributed teams save you and the value additions they bring. 

That will help you treat them as long-term business partners, rather than as short-term suppliers of some services. Moreover, the partnership approach adds for effective and transparent remote team communication. 

Tip 10. Do Not Micromanage

Provide oversight and guidance by all means. Set up monitoring systems to ensure that things are on track. Utilize your remote team management tool optimally for that. 

But resist the temptation to micromanage when effectively managing remote employees. If you allow your teams to function in their own styles, the chances of project success are considerably higher. 

Do Not Micromanage

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Remember that micromanaging remote teams is also a waste of time for you.

Fine Print

What we have presented here doesn’t contain euphemisms from management textbooks or blogs. We have based our research on interviews by business icons like Bill Gates, and Steve Jobs. On publications by eminent scientists and academics like Peter Senge.

And on employee reviews of Google, ranked the best employer in the world for the second consecutive year by Reputation Institute’s 2019 Global Workplace 100 study. 

These are all real-life doable tips. Follow them to manage your offshore distributed teams effectively.

Getting The Best From Your Offshore Team

7 Proven Ways to Manage Team Performance for Offshore Teams

If there’s one word that most people would think of when asked about how a business has changed, it would be “outsourcing.”

In the last few decades, this has had a significant impact on operations. In 2019, the global market size of this activity was a staggering USD 92.5 billion.

According to a recent study:

  • Over 50% of companies use third-party support teams for customer outreach.
  • 78% of businesses all over the world feel positive about their outsourcing partners.
  • In the United States alone, about 300,000 jobs get outsourced out of the country every year.
  • 71% of financial service executives outsource or offshore some of their services.

Global Market Size Of Outsourcing Activity

Global market size of outsourcing activity. Source

As you must know, a large part of this is offshoring, or, moving internal operations to a third party in another country. This can be advantageous because of cost differentials as well as the availability of skills and expertise.

Many companies have reaped huge benefits of offshoring.

  • For Ikea, having a single offshore software provider helped to lower the work to run the stores and led to significant cost reduction.
  • Alibaba’s Jack Ma has written about how he initially outsourced web development, helping the business to take off.
  • Basecamp, one of the most sought-after project management software companies, outsourced app development, and this made them more organized focused on business priorities.

Many small and medium-sized companies, too, have been quick to seize offshoring opportunities.

In the digital industry, the practice of offshoring is widely accepted. In a 2010 survey, about 15% of all firms and 40% of technology firms engaged in some offshore outsourcing activity, with about 30% offshoring digital workers. The figures have only grown since.

Once you’ve taken the decision to outsource activities, the question that naturally arises is: how do you get the best results and productivity from an offshore remote team? Or, how to manage team performance?

7 Tried & Tested Methods for Offshore Team Performance Management

1. Share Your Vision from the Start

If you are really concerned about how to motivate your team to improve performance, you should treat your remote partners as key allies who will help you meet your final goals. At the first few interactions, outline broad, long-term objectives and needs. That is key to smooth onboarding.

Once the offshore team is clear about the overall direction and the role they play within it, they will be even more motivated and focused. Your offshore team management success is defined early with the way you plan your on-boarding process.

Of course, there will always be a need to discuss specific, day-to-day tasks. But painting the big picture is an effective first step.

 

Managed Offshore Teams

2. Define Expectations and Results

How will one analyze the offshore team and manage team performance? What steps need to be taken for progress? What should be done if course-correction is required?

These are important questions to raise in any discussion with an offshore team. You should be clear about what exactly is expected, and the yardstick for measurement.

In fact, a recent survey showed that for software development projects that missed deadlines or were over-budget, the primary reasons were:

  • Lack of user input.
  • Incomplete requirements and specifications.
  • Changing needs and requirements.

This can be avoided if benchmarks and measuring standards are defined in advance. Then, at any point in the progress of a project, you can easily survey the current status.

3. Handle Time Zone Differences

One of the questions that you must have asked is: how to handle offshore team management while it works in a different time zone? This can seem like a challenge. However, with a few actionable steps, it can become an opportunity to be seized.

First of all, there will be working hours that overlap. These should be profitably used for face-to-face communication via videoconferencing, or even phone calls.

manage team performance

With shared calendars, specific requirements, and prioritized tasks, you can easily overcome the time difference. Look at it this way: once you’ve communicated feedback, you’re actually getting the advantage of work that’s progressing around the clock, without a pause.

4. Use Effective Communication Tools

If there’s one thing the Internet has given us, it’s the ability to connect in different ways and at different levels. Such communication is a prerequisite if you wish to manage team performance effectively.

One report says that, on average, one out of five projects fail due to lack of communication between the project manager, team members, and stakeholders.

Use Effective Communication Tools

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To avoid this, here are some remote team communication tools and their uses.

  • There is, of course, e-mail. This is best used to sum up the proceedings of minutes and for action points. It’s also perfect for official communications and schedules.
  • If you keep a live chat window always open, you can seek clarifications, get updates, and ask and answer short questions.
  • Videoconferencing is great for group meetings, for getting to know the team better, and for discussions that involve all members. It’s best if such meetings were held at fixed times so that everyone is prepared.
  • Some popular branded tools that have the above and more features are Slack, HipChat, Zoom, and Skype. Do check with your team what the most effective one would be.

5. Share Detailed Feedback and Actionable Points

We’ve already touched upon the necessity of outlining steps to progress at the very start. As work continues, it’s important that the feedback not be vague and unstructured.

In the field of education, it’s said that the best feedback is:

  • Targeted
  • Specific
  • Timely

The feedback on the work of offshore team members should be targeted at certain actionable issues, and not general. It should be specific to a concern or a point of action. Such two-way feedback based on mutual trust will go a long way in building a great relationship and boosting team performance. And it should be on time so that the team can act on it without delaying deadlines.

Of course, the concerns of the team should also be heard. Resolving concerns is an unavoidable responsibility when it comes to offshore team management.

6. Create Project Milestones to Manage Team Performance

Breaking the overall task down into small chunks and reviewing these pieces periodically helps with team performance management and is a great way to ensure that projects are on track.

This is a form of continuous development that allows for frequent reviews. It will contain smaller deliverables and give you a chance to revise the project in stages. Progress thus occurs in parts, each of which is well-defined and with its own deadline.

In this way, with regular feedback and manageable revisions, you can watch the project grow to completion step by step.

Also Read: Top 5 Things To Consider Before You Hire Offshore Developers

7. Treat the Team as Partners

It can happen that offshore teams are seen as something separate from the company. They are looked on as vendors who are tasked with specific issues.

However, a much better way of working is to see the offshore agency as integral to business efforts. Everyone works towards the same goal, and success is common to all.

With this unified culture of belonging, motivation levels are higher, and productivity goes up. There is mutual respect for each other’s point of view, and this leads to a friction-free working environment.

The Uplers Advantage

At Uplers, we have the experience of working across time zones, across sectors, and across business models. When it comes to offshore operations, we have skilled digital teams ready and waiting to deliver great results.

If you’d like to know more about how you can use our expertise to your advantage, do get in touch today.

5 Best Practices for Managing Your Offshore Team Efficiently

5 Best Practices for Managing Offshore Teams Effectively

The proliferation of the digital outsourcing industry in the last ten years itself intensifies the urge to use the outsourcing model as a business development strategy. On average, 300,000 jobs are outsourced by U.S. businesses each year and the global outsourcing industry amounted to $86.6 billion in 2018. Making a headway, businesses, and agencies, today, establish their offshore teams in preferred outsourcing locations like India, Philippines, and China.

In fact, 43% of US IT businesses, today outsource through offshore teams. But, managing offshore teams isn’t an easy sail. Instead, it requires experience and profound project management skills. Furthermore, unorganized management is most likely to result in reduced work productivity and project failure.

The Challenges in Managing Offshore Teams

  • Scattered Communication Strings
  • Distributed Business Culture
  • Lower Project Control
  • Lack of Well Grounded Trust
  • Possible Breach in Security
Download: Guide to Bridge Cultural Gaps For Indian Employees

Though offshore outsourcing offers capacious benefits, you need to have the right expertise to tap into this world of opportunities. Here is how to manage teams when outsourcing offshore –

5 Best Practices for Managing Your Offshore Team

1. Know Your Team & Their Capabilities

Lack of face-to-face communication in teams remains a colossal challenge when working with offshore teams. That is where research comes into the picture.

  • Practice due diligence: Stop being reluctant and do your due diligence. You need to find the best offshore outsourcing location for your business and drill-down to the pros and cons of each location. Drill-down to devise a coherent project scope and screen through quotes to establish a realistic project budget.
  • Research the right vendor: Connect strings with your preferred target location to scrutinize through recommendations and possible offshore team providers. Assess the technical competency through previous client feedbacks, portfolios and case studies.
  • Know the staff assigned for your project: Akin to hiring resources in-house you can look at the profiles of the offshore resources assigned for your project. The dedicated team model can be a good idea to establish a better look at your team structure.
  • Use outsourcing capabilities smartly: Develop a better skill understanding of the individual members when working with offshore teams and utilize it judiciously to gain in work productivity. Defined project scope can further help you plan the availability of your team prudently.

2. Build Partnership and Make it Two-way

Comparable to any partnership, the efforts in the outsourcing world can only be multiplied when they are made from both ends. And to make efforts reciprocate, bonds need to be made two-way.

  • Focus on communication in teams: Communication is the key when it comes to making bonds two-way. Frequent communications in teams build understanding among your inhouse and offshore resources and help align everyone’s efforts. Don’t limit communications to chats or email channels, instead use voice calls and video calls to bring better clarity over tasks and share ideas.
  • Share your vision and goals effectively: Share goals, challenges, and vision with your offshore team. Develop trust and brainstorm together to bring your remote team on the same page with your in-house team. Building a sense of ownership among your offshore team will motivate them to work hard for you.
  • Drop the idea of a one-time deal, instead build partnerships: Unlike the project-based outsourcing, a dedicated offshore team acts as an extension of your in-house team. As you utilize the offshore team for your tasks, you pass over your processes and culture to them and this builds partnership. Working with a team over long-term projects helps build a trust value and understanding which can be utilized to bring recurring projects to success.

 

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3. Sprint Approvals on Your Side

When you outsource a project to your offshore team you are still liable to manage the project and that involves a sense of commitment to the project. The project needs inputs from stakeholders in the form of feedbacks, paths, and approvals.

  • Faster client-side approvals: A fact seldom spoken is that delays on the client-side are one of the major reasons for poor progress in the project cycle. You can assign dedicated project managers for managing offshore teams, so as to make the project cycle more efficient.
  • Align stakeholders with project scope: The project scope needs to be comprehensive and detailed. Every query or misunderstanding related to the project scope should be resolved in advance to align all the stakeholders. Moreover, clients need to streamline the decision-making so to eliminate any possible delays on the client-side.
  • Bring realistic timelines in the picture: On account of drawing a larger margin between project deadlines, businesses push unrealistic timelines for their offshore teams. This hampers the structured project cycle and the quality of solutions. Clients need to do their due diligence to create realistic timelines for managing teams effectively.

4. Make the Right Choice of Engagement Model

The outsourcing model works on three types of engagement models – Fixed Price, Time & Material and the Dedicated Team model. Each model has its own perks and limitations, which suit different businesses differently.

  • Fixed Price Model: This model suits the best for short-term projects. The service provider quotes a fixed price for the project and the client gets the project delivered according to the clearly defined project scope. This engagement model is less flexible and no major changes in the project scope are entertained. In the case of any additions in the project scope, the extra cost is added and the overall project budget is likely to exceed.
  • Time & Material Model: The fixed time & material model involves hiring a shared or part-time resource team from an outsourcing provider on cost per hour basis. The client can add new features to the project scope and pay for added hours on an hourly basis. This model is more flexible but has partial control over resource availability.
  • Dedicated Team Model: For long-term projects requiring the utmost level of commitment and reliability, the dedicated team model is the right choice. The client can build his dedicated offshore team of developers or marketers through the outsourcing partner. Resources are bound by a contract and are liable to serve the client dedicatedly. Be it changing project scope or anytime resource availability this model fits the best.

Engagement Models Comparison

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5. Make Security A Priority

One of the crucial aspects of managing offshore teams is protecting the IP and the project against any security breach. A PWC survey reported that 31% of the total businesses surveyed witnessed some kind of breach attempt while they utilized offshore teams.

Some important security precautions while working with remote teams include:

  • Sign a strict NDA that is notified by an attorney
  • Check the networking monitoring settings
  • Authorized access to systems and project data
  • No off-site access to critical client data
  • Sign and seal standard data protection policies

Conclusion

The perks offshore development offers in terms of cost, scalability, global talent, and reliability are without peer, but only if a business pays efforts in managing teams effectively.

The top ways for managing offshore teams include:

  • Define the detailed project scope and prepare realistic timelines
  • Research the right outsourcing partner and build a capable offshore team
  • Know your offshore team and their capabilities
  • Share your vision and motivate your offshore team to fight for you
  • Streamline decision-making and sprint approvals on your side
  • Choose the right engagement model from fixed price, time & material model, and dedicated model
  • Protect your IP, sign NDAs and establish proper data protection policies