Managing remote teams is the new normal, and it will continue to be like that as many companies are least interested in returning to regular office spaces.
According to research, 97.6 percent of remote workers would prefer working remotely, at least some of the time, for the rest of their careers.
Now, as companies hire remote workers from different countries, keeping them all on a common platform and tracking their progress can be overwhelming for managers.
Yes, remote work is flexible and convenient, but it does present a formidable set of challenges too.
Without a top-rated remote work management system, you will likely find yourself juggling multiple tasks manually without yielding substantial results.
Let us dig deeper and find out some of the biggest challenges that can threaten your productivity level and general well-being.
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Prime challenges plaguing remote workers
1. Collaboration challenges
Lack of collaboration is one of the first issues most teams face when transitioning to remote work.
Lack of coordination and communication with other remote team members is the main culprit.
Unanswered calls, texts, and unchecked email messages can make managers mad (literally) as you cannot keep every remote team member in the loop.
2. Unorganized work
An unorganized work structure can be a huge problem for managers handling remote teams. Different deadlines, tasks, communication styles, and keeping projects on track without significant hiccups can often be overwhelming factors.
How are you supposed to view all tasks in progress, completed, or due across all projects?
It would help if you had a central hub where you could have a Bird’s eye view of all of your team’s activities, assigned tasks, achieved milestones, posted comments, and contributions to notes.
3. Task prioritization
Without using a good task management tool, prioritizing tasks is something that many remote teams are not good at.
It’s not uncommon for remote workers to dedicate their time to low-priority tasks, which can divert your projects off the track as your urgent/high-priority tasks are left incomplete, and deadlines are missed.
This happens because you have not “labeled” assigned tasks and your remote workers do not know which tasks to work on first and which ones can wait.
4. Time management
Remote work means that your widely dispersed team members will be responsible for managing their time. It’s easy to spend more than unnecessary time on some tasks, which further delays the progress of other tasks.
Owing to the lack of precise time estimates and time tracking for tasks, remote team members can lose track of things and be less productive as they have no explicit time goals to achieve.
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5. Scattered files
One of project managers’ most critical challenges is giving widely dispersed team members easy access to essential documents to complete their tasks.
Can you imagine the painstakingly long process of scanning documents, attaching them to emails, and forwarding them?
Or worse, jotting down lengthy emails describing tasks and projects?
Time to digitize your records!
Resolving remote work challenges with ProofHub
As a manager handling remote teams, are you facing the same challenges as listed above?
Do you often struggle to meet deadlines, and your quality of work has deteriorated?
If yes, then it’s likely that you are not using a powerful work management and team collaboration platform like ProofHub yet.
ProofHub is an easy-to-use, intuitive, and feature-rich SaaS tool that can help project managers have greater control over projects and remote teams from any device and location.
1. Resolving collaboration challenges with a range of features
Say goodbye to collaboration issues with the all-in-one work management tool – ProofHub.
Here are some valuable features that help widely distributed remote teams stay connected on a single platform to ensure better communication flow and transparency.
- Chat. Why send emails or texts when you need to exchange quick information with your remote team members? ProofHub chat allows you to send direct messages and quick replies within seconds. You can add GIFs, images, emojis, and attach documents to make your conversations more expressive and descriptive.
- Discussions. Say goodbye to long, messy email threads with the ProofHub discussions. Create discussion topics, add comments, mention people, and bring all your team and client discussions to one place.
- Announcements. ProofHub offers you a dedicated space to make company-wide announcements to recognize team’s/company’s achievements, celebrate birthdays, wedding anniversaries, work anniversaries, or share any other formal information.
- Events. Ensure your remote team members never miss out on critical forthcoming events and dates. You can add events and milestones to your ProofHub account and keep your team updated.
- Notes. Quickly jot down creative ideas, minutes of meetings, or any other information in notes. You can attach files, add comments, and collaborate effortlessly in one place.
- Proofing and review. Collaborating on all your files and documents cannot be easier with the ProofHub online proofing tool. Remote workers can easily access and collaborate on your designs and documents by simply sharing a link with others. Collaborators can review, proof, and annotate files with markup tools.
- @mentions. @mention people in comments to catch their attention immediately to highlight essential things in tasks or loop them in discussions easily.
2. Resolving unorganized work with multiple views
Remote team managers have many individual and group tasks to do, assign, and track. Monitoring every individual’s task is far from easy when you are connected virtually.
Thanks to ProofHub, you get multiple views to gain more clarity on work and see every little detail.
- Table view. The Table view is perhaps the easiest way for managers to plan and organize projects in a way that’s best suitable for your team. You get the list view of all tasks. You can assign, label, and categorize them, and keep essential details front and center.
- Gantt view. Gantt view in ProofHub allows managers to track the progress of all projects in one place. You can adjust your plans as work changes and deadlines shift with task dependencies.
- Board view. Board view allows remote team managers to see the current status of every task and identify potential bottlenecks. You can divide tasks into workflow stages of your choice and choose who works on what part.
- Calendar view. The Calendar view allows project managers to merge their ProofHub calendar with the ones you and your remote team already use. You can see the milestones, tasks, and events from all the projects in one place.
3. Resolving scrambled tasks with task management
Who will be working on what and deliver it by when?
It is a common question for both managers and remote team workers as vagueness can surround job roles and responsibilities, which also results in the loss of job accountability.
Relax. With the ProofHub task management solution, project managers can quickly end scrambled tasks and unclear job roles.
- Allocate group or individual tasks. Project managers can assign group or individual tasks from a centralized location by assigning specific team members to each task.
- Set deadlines. Once you allocate tasks, you can set time estimates, start and end dates to be specific about deadlines. This allows your remote team members to clearly understand which tasks to complete first.
- Track progress. Once project managers are done with assigning tasks and setting deadlines, they can easily track tasks’ progress through the Profile view of every remote team member. You can see an individual’s activities, assignments, and projects all in one place.
4. Resolving time management issues with time tracking
Remote teams can struggle with time management due to the lack of a dedicated time-tracking system.
Smart time management is a must for every remote team, and ProofHub helps you achieve this goal without breaking a sweat!
- Add timesheets. Remote team managers can add multiple timesheets to record the time data of every team member across all projects. Use them for payroll, client billing, tracking, estimation, and time management.
- Set time estimates. Set time estimates for each task to define the amount of time it should take to complete. It will give your remote team members a clear timeframe in which they have to complete their tasks. Managers can find out if the time taken exceeds the estimated time.
- Track time manually/using a timer. Another accurate way of tracking task time is by using manual/automatic timers. Record the time taken to complete the task and save it in timesheets.
- Time reports. Remote team managers can create custom time reports of people and projects. See logged hours of every team member from your timesheets.
5. Resolving scattered files with digital file management
Wouldn’t it be great if you could digitize and organize all your files and documents and collaborate on them in one place? Of course. Remote team managers and their teams can’t ask for anything better!
The good news is that ProofHub offers you a dedicated file management tool, so you can easily store, access, and collaborate on all your files and documents with your widely distributed team members.
- Store and organize files in folders. Remote teams can easily access, store, and keep files and documents organized in folders and subfolders in one central place.
- Upload and attach files. ProofHub offers integrations with apps like Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, and Box. Remote teams can easily upload files and documents from their devices and third-party applications and attach them to tasks, discussions, chats, and notes whenever needed.
- Preview and proof files. Remote teams can use the ProofHub online proofing tool for easy and quick review, proofing, and approval of files in one place and share immediate feedback through comments and mark-up tools.
- File versioning. You can store multiple versions of the same file, access version history, compare with the older versions available, and restore if needed.
- Advanced search. Finding the files and documents is quick and easy with ProofHub. Use relevant keywords and phrases with advanced search and find required files within minutes.
The final thought
Whether you are a seasoned project manager or just started in this domain, you should use a good work management and team collaboration software like ProofHub for a successful management of your remote teams.
ProofHub offers you just the right tools in one place so you can have a comprehensive view of what every team member is working on and what is the project progress.
Ease of usage, high functionality, a simple learning curve, and fixed pricing plans make ProofHub an ideal tool in times when remote work has become a new normal.
What are you thinking about? Start your free trial today and discover how ProofHub helps you up your remote team management game!
