Post-COVID Landscape
The COVID era was a life-changing event for many people globally. The pandemic rendered it impossible for the workplace to be normal. Where possible organizations shifted to remote work for their staff with heavy reliance on digital tools. The post-COVID period took a few years to get back to normal, and companies initially started with a hybrid model having their staff in the office a few days a week. Later, they either made the decision to bring all their workers back into offices permanently or continued to embrace a fully remote environment. The post-COVID landscape, however shifted to greater flexibility, and rethinking office space was a change that was here to stay. In the previous 2-3 years, normality gradually resumed, but fast forward to 2025, and some organizations have preserved a hybrid model or have stayed fully remote.
A distributed or remote team is a group of people who work together from different geographical locations. This is a delicate balance. Let’s analyze how we can effectively manage teams from different environments.
Digitalization
We are certainly no strangers to digital tools—we’ve been using them for years. In education, consulting and IT sectors specifically, collaboration tools for communication were widely being used pre-COVID. Nothing has changed in the current landscape.
The chances are that if you’re here reading this blog, you are already in an industry where the reliance on digital tools is paramount. And you’re probably already using customer experience platforms like Sitecore XM Cloud, so how you access them, whether you’re on-site or remote, doesn’t change.
Collaboration Tools
While managing remote teams, we need to collaborate effectively, and communication tools such Google Meet, Microsoft Teams and Slack are the bridge that connects us all. These tools facilitate video meetings, and support project management across teams in different locations.
There is a wide array of project management tools out there that are used for task management. In order to track tools such as Trello, Jira, and Microsoft DevOps boards. These are central tools that are essential for remote team collaboration. Additionally, clients (who may also be remote) can access the same tools.
Communication
Communicate. Communicate. Communicate.
Sounds like overkill, but sometimes over communicating is harmless yet effective. If anything reiterating requirements ensures every person understands them. We should encourage the team to provide regular daily updates in communication channels. Here they can not only raise challenges and questions but this dialogue elicits conversation, and that conversation spawns new aspects which may not have been discovered before. It also reflects their daily and weekly progress for managers to refer to outside of the kanban boards. If communication channels aren’t working, feel free to switch them up.
Using techniques for brainstorming and solutioning are vital. Encourage people to use online whiteboards to visually represent their thinking and task people with creating user flows to put themselves in the shoes of the end user.
Regular meetings ensure the team is conversing with each other, and visibly seeing each other in video calls. It’s important to be on camera and allow people to see you. Not only does it show that you are actually listening in the meetings, but you need to see the people you work with.
Define Clear Expectations
When people are in an office environment, they can always walk up to their coworkers or manager and converse about the expectations required of them. That’s not possible in a remote team. Occasionally remote workers may not fully understand the tasks assigned to them, so a quick call often clears that up. In a remote culture it’s imperative that roles and responsibilities are clearly defined.
What are the Project Deliverables?
In a remote work environment, project managers need to be clear in laying out the project charter. Basically, what are we doing, why are we doing it, and how do we measure success. By defining the deliverables and assigning them to each person so they are accountable for them, team members understand the vision of the project. One of the biggest pain points of remote workers is not knowing what they should prioritize. This should never be the case. It will just lead to confusion and wasted precious time on a project. Always ensure you have a detailed project plan and how it fits into the vision of the end goal.
Roles and Responsibilities
Once a team is formed, explaining roles and responsibilities is critical in remote teams. If there are three developers and one is to perform the role of a leader and mentor the other two project managers need to set those expectations. They also need to ensure the tasks are being assigned to the right people—essentially matching their skills to tasks. Productivity can only be optimized if everyone understands their role and exactly what is required of them.
Working Hours
In my job, I am managing remote teams on every project. I just completed a project a few months ago where the entire team was remote, and in one person’s case, they were 3 hours ahead of me. That is just enough of a time difference to make it challenging with working hours. It’s important to establish the core working hours for the team from day one. Everyone should work within those core hours and make themselves available for meetings.
Establish Trust
Trust is a 2-way street.
Organizations must be able to trust their employees, and employees must be able to trust their organizations. In remote environments, we cannot see people most of the time, but we’ve empowered workers with trust, knowing they will get the job done and not work dishonestly. Although we track weekly hours, it’s the quality of work and deliverables that really matter in project teams.
With this trust empowered on them individuals must act with integrity and meet their deadlines and deliverables. However, as managers, we must not micromanage them. Just trust them to do their jobs and give them the flexibility to manage their tasks accordingly. However, ensure they are present and hands-on.
Wrap Up
So—how can a manager define success to call themself a great remote manager?
Well, in order to effectively manage your remote team, managers need to be as organized and structured as possible to extract the best performance out of their teams. In doing so—motivate them to excel in performance.
The key is to embrace the benefits of remote work while addressing its challenges. In terms of measurable metrics for efficiency nothing changes—deadlines, milestones and deliverables. The work breakdown of a project doesn’t change. Access to tools and environments don’t change. What changes is how we can all work together effectively in a remote environment and get the best out of the team. The what stays the same, and it’s the how that changes.
