Holding Your Remote Team Highly Accountable

When the pandemic hit in March 2020, nearly every aspect of life changed. From how people work, travel, and socialize, to how children and adults learn. In 2019, the U.S. Department of Labor reported that less than 6 percent of employees worked fully remote and approximately 25 percent worked partially remote or in a hybrid arrangement.

By 2022, 58 percent of employees now work a hybrid model or fully remote. Economics are also playing a role in organizations moving to a remote model of work, at least for some positions. It has been estimated that an organization can save approximately $11,000 a year by moving employees to a hybrid or fully remote work model.

With the Great Reshuffling to keep from losing more staff, employers began to offer hybrid working assignments (both working in the office and working remotely) or full-time remote work. Some of our clients are 100 percent remote for all management and employees. Since then, we have seen new and seasoned leaders be challenged in holding their remote team members accountable in the coaching side of our business.

Some of the specific challenges these managers have referenced include decreased communication among team members; cross-departmental teamwork struggles; decreased communication with the manager; team members not being responsive to emails, texts, or calls; and team members missing deadlines for tasks and projects.
The good news for leaders is that their remote team can be just as productive as an in-house team… as long as you hold your team accountable. Below are eight tips that leaders can implement to ensure accountability and raise the bar on productivity, communication, and collaboration.

Communicate a clear vision and measurable goals. Let team members know that your vision for the remote team is team members who are: highly engaged, communicate at a level where there are no negative surprises, collaborate well with each other and cross-departmental team members, meet deadlines as well as exceed their goals. If everyone lives this vision, the team will fulfill its mission and win.

Schedule consistent team video meetings. The best leaders we coach hold weekly team meetings. The challenge with bi-weekly or monthly scheduled meetings is if you miss one, it can easily become a bi-monthly or quarterly meeting. Let team members know you have three expectations for them in attending this meeting. Each team member is well prepared, engaged, and has their video on throughout the meeting.

Encourage strong communication, collaboration, and teamwork among team members. When communication and collaboration is strong, almost always your team will meet their goals and provide an even higher level of service to internal and external customers. Have team members talk to each other about what they are working on and if they can support each other to advance their work.

Utilize project management tracking software. This type of software allows employees to report daily or weekly workflow. If team members are accountable for logging their task updates into the software, it makes it easier for the team and the leader to see if the team member is productive and meeting their goals.

Have daily or weekly one-on-one check-ins. Check-in with each direct report often to see how they are doing, both personally and professionally, and to find out if there is any support you can provide them to help them advance their work. Most times, employees have their routine tasks down and do not need any support. These calls are a great time to have a dialogue with employees on strategic thinking or creative types of projects or activities.

Encourage employees to set work-life boundaries. I was coaching a leader who was complaining she was crazy busy and was feeling burned out. She could only set the coaching call at 6 pm and proceeded to be coached while she was making dinner for her family. When I commented not scheduling appointments after 5, she said, “My workday no longer stops. I am often on a call while I make dinner, and I find myself doing emails until late in the evening.” Leaders need to help their team members set boundaries so they can be productive during business hours and still have quality personal time.

Measure the hard, tangible results. Most organizations we work with need more qualified staff who want to work. When teams are short-staffed, it makes it harder for team members to feel fulfilled because they feel they are never going to get caught up and ahead of the workload. The challenge is that we all have too much to do and not enough time to get it done. As a leader, it is important that you clarify the most important goals you need the team member to accomplish and the timeframe to do it. Do not focus on what people are doing or how they spend their time since it is almost impossible to do when remote. If team members have clear goals, expectations, and timeframes for accomplishment, it will be much easier to maintain accountability by focusing on results and meeting their goals. It is difficult to measure morale, but team members tend to be engaged and have high morale when the hard tangible results are met or exceeded.

Recognize team member’s contributions. The research shows that team members can be even more productive working remotely than a team member in the office. With clear goals and timelines, team members will be motivated to tell their boss what they are working on and what they have accomplished. Be grateful for your team members and recognize their contributions to the team’s success.

For some cynical people, accountability is a negative word. But, when a leader holds team members accountable, there are many benefits. At the beginning of the blog, we said that one of the benefits is cost savings per employee by not needing such a large office space. A second benefit is that many employees love working from home. They feel they are more productive because they no longer have a commute. One of our clients in Los Angeles had team members that were driving two hours a day each way in rush hour traffic. Employees now even have more flexibility where they live. A third would be trust. When each team member is accountable and responsible, the leader trusts her team, and team members trust the leader. But we feel the biggest benefit of having an accountable team is highly engaged employees see lack of accountability a demotivator. With a highly accountable team, you will give them the opportunity to soar to even higher heights.