How to Build a Strong Team of Remote Workers

When forming a team of remote workers for your business, you as a manager or business owner, need to take a lot of matters into consideration.

It will require a great deal of personal involvement, communication and leadership as well as truly understanding how to integrate these outsourced staff and make them a part of your business team.

Start with integration. Outsourcing a task is not the same as outsourcing a job [Tweet this]. When you outsource a task, you can give it to freelancers who work per project and in whom you are only invested in for a limited period of time.

But when you are outsourcing a job, always remember that you are adding someone to your team. They may not be physically present, but that does not mean that they are any less important or should be kept out of the loop in terms of daily operations and long-term planning.

This will also mean a greater deal of involvement from your end. During the recruitment stage,you will need to conduct interviews. Because they will be integrated into your team you will need to appraise not just the quality of a candidate's portfolio or work history,  but also how well the candidates are as team players.

Once you have chosen those who you think are the right fit for your company, you will need to train them. Online training is easy if you’re prepared.

Introduce the company first. Prepare a brief presentation explaining the company's mission, vision, goals and business philosophy.

Then introduce the team. It’s important that you have a chart ready showing the different departments, who are in charge and who are involved and what their responsibilities are.

Take note that responsibilities are different from tasks. Responsibilities are one’s contributions to the overall goal of the company, while tasks are the little steps the help one achieve those responsibilities. Because of the nature of outsourcing offshore, you will need to strike a balance between autonomy and accountability.

You will need to plan by breaking down projects into sets of tasks, and putting due dates on these tasks. You don’t need to monitor each task as it is being done (which is how  it would be at a traditional office ), but you will see the results and make decisions based on these results.

Aside from these, you will also need to ensure that your offshore staff are compensated properly. Yes, the labor costs are significantly lower. But if you don’t pay on time and in the right amount, your staff will simply move on to the next company. That is why you need a prompt and accurate payroll system.

Does it all seem like a lot of work right now? It is.

That is why it is best that you don’t do all these by yourself. What you should do is acquire the services of a reliable outsourcing company, with a deep pool of readily available talent, but also capable of seeking out talent that suits your specific needs.

They should help do the screening for you as well, ensuring that they are able to work for you professionally. And when you’ve found the right people for the job, they can  help monitor attendance and compute and distribute payroll.

But remember that it still starts with you. You will need to examine your company first and determine its strengths and weaknesses, finding the right work philosophy and finding just the right kind of people who are willing to share in that philosophy and grow with your business.

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