How to Avoid Compromising on Team Alignment with Your Remote Workforce

While the trend of remote workforces is growing larger by the day, many business leaders are unsatisfied with strategies that frequently compromise on business fundamentals to the detriment of their companies. Team alignment is one such issue; time and time again, managers and business owners see communication and alignment break down between teams, thanks to the huge distances separating them.

You shouldn’t have to accept anything below your in-person standards when it comes to a remote workforce. Here’s how you can avoid compromising on such issues as team alignment, and how to forge the right workforce that can endure any challenge.

Distance doesn’t have to be insurmountable

Despite the astonishing nature of modern technology, many business owners and managers have thrown in the towel when it comes to running multiple teams across vast distances. The idea that geography itself is an insurmountable foe to your company is hopelessly outdated, however; if you properly leverage recent technological innovations like widespread video chat features and easy to use digital software, you can actually maintain clear and concise lanes of communication regardless of how far apart your teams are.

The organizational health of your remote workforce can only be maintained with the help of technology. Thus, you need to consider how you’re investing in your IT infrastructure: does your team have the tools it needs to communicate with another team across the country? What kind of software are you running, and are your employees effectively trained to use it to the fullest extent possible? If you’re not asking yourself these kinds of IT-based questions, your remote workforce is probably shambling in the IT department and could use a makeover.

If you don’t have clearly established channels for digital communication, such as online learning, your teams will quickly grow unaligned; unless team leaders can talk to each other daily and review progress, and unless rank-and-file workers can access the talent and insights offered by employees based elsewhere, alignment is totally out of reach for any business team. If you’re still struggling with keeping your workers in touch, you should review some of the ways you can keep a remote workforce from growing distant, primarily by learning what tech you should rely on and what strategies need to be shunned.

Managers and business owners dealing with a remote workforce on top of a traditional workforce have their work cut out for them, too. When it comes to dealing with both worlds, you need to make sure you’re paying enough attention to your remote workforce, given that they’re often neglected and lacking in the resources they need to thrive.

Getting your workers on the same page

If you really want to avoid compromising on team alignment with your remote workforce, you need to get your workers on the same page to guarantee everyone is working towards a common goal. Learn how to stop neglecting your remote workforce and begin treating them as equal members of the corporate family, and you’ll see instantaneous results in the morale and efficacy of your remote workers who have thus far felt like the black sheep of the company.

Ultimately, you can only avoid compromise if you’re unwilling to take no for an answer when it comes to certain things. Company principles and your office work ethic and culture should never be compromised on, even if it means you can expand the team with an additional remote workforce. It’s imperative to remember that team alignment is compromised more easily when your team is expanding too rapidly for your management officials to keep up with it.

It’s worth considering a managerial retreat for some training, too, if you’re really set on maintaining leadership alignment in your company. After all, if your team leaders aren’t on the same page, your teams will be hopelessly disorganized in their daily efforts. If the company is to be functioning like a fluid machine, with each team fulfilling their duties, then you absolutely must get your leadership running like a well-oiled machine that sees managers working in tandem with one another. If your workers see that their bosses aren’t aligned, they can never effectively become a team themselves.

Finally, business owners and managers need to understand that not all remote workforces are the same, and that a one-size-fits-all approach will only doom your remote workforce efforts. If you’re cautious about foraying into the usage of a remote workforce, understand that they’re effective, but require extraordinarily strong leadership and extensive investment in your IT capabilities.

Without the right tools for the job and wise managers to keep them on track and aligned, the disparate teams that currently make up your remote workforce will never be able to function effectively as one single unit in the market.