How To Create A Perfect Work Schedule For Your Remote Team?

Remote work is growing in popularity as it offers a number of attractive advantages to companies and employees. Having full control over your own schedule, working from home or anywhere else that a laptop will take you, being able to set the tone of your company's office space – there are many pros to working remotely.

Having a schedule to maximize a remote team’s productivity seems like common sense and a no big deal. However, it is one of the things that many companies overlook. Not only does having a schedule make sure everyone is on the same page, but it also helps streamline your business. Your employees know what is expected of them and can work more productively. If you are managing a remote team for a while, by now you probably have already realized that there is a lot of time management and scheduling work involved in being the manager of a remote team. 

To help managers like you increase your team’s productivity and make your team more efficient, we have put together some tips to create a perfect schedule for your remote team.

6 Tips To Create A Work Schedule To Maximize Remote Team’s Productivity.

1. Understand The Team's Work Style

To create an effective work schedule for your remote team, you first need to understand the team's work style and preferences.

Ask your team questions like:

• What tasks do they like to do alone?
• What tasks do they prefer to collaborate on?
• Do they prefer to work early in the morning or late at night?
• Do they have any non-negotiable commitments that should be worked around?

By asking these questions, you'll get a better idea of how your team prefers to work as well as their personal needs. Then you can create a work schedule that is aligned with your team needs.

2. Set Clear Guidelines

Every company needs to have its own standard workday hours, but it's also important to understand that these won't always be perfect for every single person on your team. Someone might need to take care of kids after school, or maybe someone has a long commute. Letting people know what the expectation is will help them figure out what works best for their schedules and maintain work-life balance without stress.

Must read: 4 Negative Emotions Prevalent In Remote Employees That Need To Be Addressed Immediately

3. Use Online Scheduling Tools To Keep Everyone On Track

The good news is that there are plenty of apps and services available to help you manage your time and communicate with co-workers more effectively. Scheduling tools such as Google Calendar or TimeTree can help you organize and share due dates, tasks and availability among your team members. Setting up an online calendar can also enable you to see when your workers are busy or free, which will make it easier to schedule meetings or calls.

When creating a work schedule, you should also consider using time tracking software such as Toggl. This software will allow you to see how long certain projects take your team members to complete, which will help you better manage their time in the future. This is especially helpful if you have deadlines on certain projects, as the data collected through this software can show whether or not you need to reallocate resources for more efficiency.

4. Be Flexible With Your Team's Working Hours.

When you're building a work schedule for your remote team, remember to aim for flexibility and adaptability—and get input from your team! Create a shared document where teammates can contribute their ideas of what would make their best working hours. Consult with them about what a reasonable workload might be, then ask them to propose some possible schedules based on the one that makes the most sense for the entire team.

Make sure you also ask everyone to share when they are most productive during the day and least productive. Working around those times will help ensure people are at their peak when they need to be available or engaged in important tasks. And most importantly, don't penalize employees for their schedules.

5. Set Short-term Goals And Targets

We're all familiar with the "SMART" approach to goal setting: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely. But this method doesn't help when it comes to creating a perfect work schedule for yourself. Instead, use the OKR (Objectives and Key Results) method to set both company-wide and personal goals at the start of each quarter.

OKRs are essentially a way to keep your team motivated in the long run. They help define the objectives that the entire organization wants to achieve, along with the metrics that team members will use to measure progress toward those goals.

Must Read: 5 Things Startups Misunderstand About Work Culture 

6. Encourage Transparency And Accountability From Your Employees

One great way to encourage transparency is by creating a common chat room where everyone can see what the rest of their team members are working on. This helps keep projects moving along at a good pace because it keeps your team accountable and gives them a motivation to get their work done on time.

Next, in order to create accountability in a remote team, you must start by creating a culture of accountability. This means making it clear to your team that they are responsible for their actions and decisions, and that it’s not okay to blame others for their mistakes or slacking off.

If your employees know that they will be held accountable for their work, then they will be more inclined to complete their tasks on time. When creating your schedule, make sure it includes due dates, deadlines and specific times when things should be done by. This might seem like a lot of pressure for your employees, but it is actually helpful because it allows them to better plan out their time and not get behind or forget about assignments or projects.

Here are some tips on how to encourage accountability and transparency  in your remote team:

• Create expectations

• Require regular reporting

• Provide feedback

• Have employees keep track of their time

Takeaway: It is very important to create a perfect work schedule for your remote team so that you can maximize your productivity and efficiency. But make sure you prioritize productivity over time spent working. And whatever schedule you come up with, be sure it's one that works well both in theory and in practice. Don't just try out a new schedule because it looks good on paper; actually put it into action and see how things go! You'll find that there are always going to be changes needed as you go along—you don't want to have to start from scratch every time.

Bonus:  Looking to improve your team collaboration and maximize productivity ? We have a wide range of virtual team building activities designed to help your employees build relationships, trust and ultimately increase your team’s performance through the power of fun experiences.