Tech teams work best when they are collaborative, clear about roles and responsibilities, and can easily share data and resources between team members. Maintaining this cooperative spirit can be difficult under the best of circumstances, especially when the team is decentralized. Decentralization is becoming increasingly common in the era of hybrid work, with more tech personnel working remotely. For business owners managing a remote team that is aligned to the same goals and values, several notable obstacles must be identified and avoided.

How Common are Remote Tech Teams?

Having a decentralized or distributed tech team is more common than you might think. Factors such as the COVID-19 pandemic, plus the steady advance of remote work technology, have made it much more feasible for tech professionals to complete their jobs from home. There is plenty of survey data to demonstrate that the remote work option enhances employee satisfaction and boosts morale.

Exactly how common is remote work in the tech industry? Reports from Stack Overflow show that, since 2022, the number of employees opting into remote work has gone up by around 24 percent. And in the tech industry, the rate of remote workers is even higher. More than 80 percent of tech developers say that their teams are either partially or fully remote.

Benefits of Having a Remote Tech Team

Certainly, there are several reasons why a business owner might elect to have a fully remote tech team. Some of the primary advantages of this model include:

• By opting into a fully decentralized team, business owners can potentially access a broad talent pool spanning the entire globe.
• Remote work provides flexibility for employees to work during the hours that best accommodate their schedules, which can be a major selling point for working parents and employees pursuing degree programs part-time.
• Business owners who choose the remote work model can control costs, specifically curbing many of the expenses associated with office space and other forms of overhead.
• A remote work model can provide employees with improved work-life balance, something that can be a significant benefit for attracting new recruits.
• Having fewer office distractions can often make remote employees more productive and more efficient.

These are just some of the reasons why it might make sense to choose a remote model for tech personnel.

Read Also: The Future of Remote Work

What are the Most Common Mistakes When Managing Remote Teams?

While employing a remote tech team can be good for business, it’s important to have the right strategy in place to manage remote teams, ensuring they continue to collaborate well despite being in dispersed locations. A good place to begin is by acknowledging some of the potential pitfalls and potholes that business owners might encounter.

1) Failing to Have Clear Communication Channels

Communication is the lifeblood of any team. That’s doubly true when you’re managing a team of remote employees. Your tech team members need to know where to turn when they have a question, and which channels they should monitor for official directives or updates. Failure to clarify a couple of agreed-upon communication channels means team members might feel disconnected, while important information gets lost in the shuffle.

2) Having an Inadequate Onboarding Process

When you bring new members onto your tech team, it’s important to provide them with all the information they need about your internal policies and procedures, as well as the resources they need to do their jobs well.

In the absence of a comprehensive onboarding process, your employees may feel disoriented, or like they have not been set up to succeed. These feelings can drain your tech team’s satisfaction and morale.

3) Choosing the Wrong Legal Structure for Your Business

Believe it or not, the decision about how to structure your small business from a legal perspective can have a direct impact on how you manage remote team. 

For most small businesses, the best approach is to register as a Limited Liability Company, or LLC. This format makes it easy to bring new employees into the fold and also ensures the legal protections you and your employees need to mediate the effects of litigation.

Note that the steps for registering an LLC can vary from state to state. Always check specific guidelines with your Secretary of State. When forming an LLC in California, for instance, you will need to explore state-specific requirements, fees, and taxes.

4) Failing to Set Clear Expectations

For remote team members, few things are more critical than knowing what kind of work is expected of them, on what timeline, and according to what standard.

For each role on your team, make sure you provide clear expectations about the duties and responsibilities, as well as the timeframe for key deliverables. Along the same lines, make sure you provide the entire team with clarity about the goals you all share, both for the short-term and the long-term. This is critical for keeping everyone in full alignment.

5) Not Providing Adequate Project Management

Another common mistake is providing your tech team with an insufficient framework for project management.

Inadequate project management practices can lead to missed deadlines, scope creep, and overall project disorganization. Using project management tools can help ensure organization, but it’s also important to exercise human judgment when taking on big projects and determining the timeline for completion.

6) Ignoring Time Zone Differences

Here’s one that might seem obvious, but is surprisingly easy to miss: If you’re hiring tech professionals who span multiple time zones, it’s important to be sensitive to those time differences when scheduling meetings or huddles. Not accounting for different time zones when scheduling meetings or deadlines can lead to frustration and inefficiency.

Of course, one way to avoid this altogether is to keep your talent pool more localized, though this means you sacrifice the ability to cast a wide, international net for new tech recruits.

Learn More: Most Common Misconceptions about Hiring Remote Developers

7) Not Providing the Right Tools

Your tech team requires the right collaboration and communication tools to do their jobs effectively, to say nothing of a robust, reliable, and secure network. Providing these tools can be extra challenging when your team members aren’t all occupying the same workspace.

And yet, failing to provide the tools your team members need is a surefire way to drain their efficiency and make them feel like you are not fully supporting them. Make sure you position new employees for lasting success, and that you check in regularly to see if any additional resources are needed.

8) Being Remiss in Check-Ins

Speaking of regular check-ins, leaders need to reach out to their team members with consistency, whether that’s via a regularly scheduled phone call or a weekly connection on Zoom. Full-team huddles are important, but one-on-ones provide an even better opportunity for leaders to foster positive relationships.

Simply put, neglecting regular one-on-one and team check-ins can result in disengagement and a lack of support for team members. Make regular communication a key part of your business leadership style.

9) Not Offering Appropriate Feedback

Your remote team members need to be affirmed when they are on the right track and offered constructive criticism when they fall short of the mark. But without clear feedback from their supervisor, team members simply won’t know how to understand or improve their performance.

An essential part of leading any remote team is creating regular opportunities for feedback. Don’t wait until annual performance reviews; guide on a more routine basis.

10) Ignoring Work-Life Balance

Still, another way in which leaders can fall short is by failing to acknowledge the importance of work-life balance. This balance can be even more challenging to preserve with team members who work remotely, and whose home and work lives are closely intertwined.

11) Failing to Address Conflicts Between Team Members

Personalities can clash in any workplace environment, even when your team members are only interacting with one another via email or Skype.

Ignoring interpersonal conflicts or issues can lead to a toxic work environment and impact team dynamics, which makes it imperative that leaders put a conflict resolution process in place. Ensure that team members know the appropriate channel for seeking resolution.

12) Overlooking Security

Hopefully, the members of your tech team will be committed to maintaining robust cybersecurity practices. As a leader, though, it’s important that you not only set expectations but provide any software needed for your employees to maintain maximum security.

Not enforcing proper security measures can expose sensitive information to risk, especially when team members are working from various locations. This can compromise your entire company, creating headaches for everyone.

Additional Tips for Supporting Your Tech Team

Clearly, several obstacles can impede your efforts at creating a thriving, fully managed remote tech team. Thankfully, there are also some proactive steps you can take to position your team for success. Consider a few suggestions.

1) Take Stock of Your IT Needs:

Begin by ensuring that you have a clear sense of the software and other tech tools needed to facilitate teamwork and collaboration. Invest in the kinds of applications that will position your tech team for everyday efficiency and long-lasting success.

2) Clearly define Roles and Responsibilities.

Having clear job descriptions is also important. Ensure that every member of your tech team has a sense of what their role is, what is expected of them, who they report to, and how their work contributes to the big picture.

3) Establish Rhythms and Routines.

A big part of effective team leadership is creating a basic structure for communication. Create a schedule denoting when you will hold team meetings and one-on-ones, specifically noting opportunities for providing your employees with feedback.

4) Have written Policies and Procedures.

It is also wise to create a handbook, or some comparable document, for your team members to reference. Your handbook should cover things like cybersecurity expectations, processes for conflict resolution, and beyond.

5) Ensure the Right Business Structure.

It’s critical to establish your business, or some comparable format, to ensure that you have the right legal provisions for onboarding new employees.

6) Prioritize your Work-Life Balance.

As you seek to cultivate an appropriate kind of balance in your tech team, make sure you’re leading by example. Get out of the habit of sending after-hours emails and texts. Log off at a reasonable time each day. Use those PTO hours!

7) Create a compelling Catalog of Benefits.

Speaking of benefits, one of the best ways to recruit and engage top talents is by providing an attractive array of benefits. Be as competitive and as creative as you can with your PTO policies, mental health provisions, and more.

8) Establish Channels for Feedback.

You must develop the skills needed to provide employees with constructive feedback. Also, remember that feedback is a two-way street! Ensure your team members know how they can weigh in with questions or concerns of their own.

By following these basic steps, you’ll be well on your way toward a successful dynamic with your remote team.

Position Your Tech Team for Optimal Efficiency

As a business leader, there are many benefits to hiring a remote tech team… and many challenges, as well. An important first step is simply knowing what the biggest obstacles are, and creating a plan for addressing them head-on.