Looking for a surefire way to improve your remote team’s productivity? Focus on your goals.
Spending time on remote team goals is one of the best ways to ensure everyone is aligned and motivated — even when they’re not in the same physical location.
Let’s look at this important management strategy, along with proven steps for creating meaningful, actionable goals for your remote team.
Why remote team goals are important
Establishing clear goals is vital for any team, but it’s particularly significant for remote work environments. Why? Because remote team members face unique challenges that impact productivity in ways in-office work doesn’t. Well-defined goals help them stay on track.
Here’s why:
Goals serve as a roadmap for remote teams, providing direction and clarity. They help remote workers understand how their work contributes to business success and foster a sense of accomplishment.
Achieving milestones, even small ones, boosts motivation for remote workers who might otherwise feel isolated. This sense of accomplishment is particularly important in remote settings, where the lack of in-person interaction leads to feelings of disconnection and disengagement.
Benefits of setting goals for remote teams
Setting clear goals for your remote employees leads to numerous benefits. These include:
- Open communication: Remote team members are more likely to engage with one another when they know they’re working toward a common goal. This daily collaboration is crucial for overcoming the silos that often surface in remote environments.
- Stronger collaboration: Shared goals keep everyone on the same page even when they’re coordinating across time zones and different working hours.
- More camaraderie: Unifying remote workers around goals is a great way to bond teams and foster a sense of belonging.
- Data-driven decisions: Setting clear goals allows you to measure progress more effectively. This is especially important in remote environments with limited visibility.
Steps to setting remote team goals
Not sure where to start? Follow these five steps to set meaningful, measurable goals for your remote team.
1. Define your team’s purpose
Start by defining your team's purpose. What value do your remote employees bring to the organization? How do they contribute to success? Crafting a clear statement of purpose helps remote employees understand the significance of their work.
This process helps ensure remote employees feel connected to the bigger picture, even from a distance. Involve your entire team in this process, and invite them to contribute different insights and perspectives. This collaborative approach not only strengthens the sense of ownership but also fosters a deeper emotional connection to the team's mission.
2. Align individual and team objectives
Once you’ve established your team’s purpose, the next step is aligning individual objectives with team goals. This alignment not only enhances focus but also fosters a sense of shared responsibility.
Start by setting SMART goals — goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. Then encourage team members to discuss these goals during a dedicated team meeting to ensure everyone’s on the same page. It’s also a good idea to track progress with regular check-ins. This helps prevent the communication barriers that often arise in remote settings, saving you from misunderstandings or misalignment of goals further down the road.
3. Identify KPIs
Next, set clear expectations by determining how you’ll measure success. For some objectives, this is easy. If the goal is to boost sales by 10%, your KPI is sales revenue. But not every team goal is clearcut. For this reason, it’s important to monitor other metrics such as performance and productivity levels.
Monitoring specific metrics tied to team goals makes it easy for remote employees to track their performance and make adjustments. This ongoing assessment not only helps you identify areas for improvement but also reinforces remote team accountability.
4. Find the right tools
To streamline the goal-setting process, you need the right remote management software. Project management tools like Trello, Asana and Monday.com significantly enhance goal-setting capabilities. These platforms make it easy to break larger goals into manageable tasks, assign responsibilities and track progress in real-time. They’re also a great way to keep remote teams connected, since they offer features for commenting and discussion.
5. Regularly review and adjust
The process of goal setting doesn’t stop just because you’ve established your initial goals. As any experienced manager knows, objectives change frequently — and roadblocks can appear at any moment. For this reason, it’s important to regularly assess your team’s progress and make adjustments as needed. One easy way to do this is with remote workforce management software that automatically tracks daily progress for you. Whether you analyze productivity data or schedule monthly check-ins, keep the lines of communication open at all times.
Set remote team goals with ActivTrak
Following the steps above is a great way to set measurable goals for your remote workforce. But you don’t have to stop there. Employees face different challenges when working remotely, and it’s your job to ensure they have everything they need to be as productive as possible — and meet goals with ease.
This is where ActivTrak comes in. Our remote workforce management software makes it easy to see how, when and where employees are most productive. In fact, more than 9,500 hybrid and remote organizations use it to track progress and keep an eye on well-being.
Ready to get started?
Contact our sales team to learn how ActivTrak helps unlock your remote team's potential.
