Are Remote Teams Less Effective Than Onsite Teams?

Remote teams are not necessarily less effective than onsite teams, but there are unique challenges to managing or being in a remote team.

Before we talk about those unique challenges, it is important to point out that most research on remote workers seem to indicate that they are much more productive than workers coming to an office everyday. Here are a couple links to studies that point to that evidence:

To Raise Productivity, Let More Employees Work from Home

Are Remote Workers Happier And More Productive? New Survey Offers Answers

You can google more but an overwhelming amount of evidence points to greater levels of satisfaction and productivity of remote workers.

The downside or challenges of this stem from creating a common culture and creating a sense that you are part of a team. The isolation of working remote can be a challenge to building relationships that are critical to building team trust and establishing a commitment to the larger mission of the team / organization.

Communication technology (Slack, MS Teams, Skype and Zoom) can help keep the flow of communication working well but oftentimes establishing relationships with others occurs in the day to day interactions had around the proverbial water cooler. It is face to face or across the cube that you learn about the unique challenges that people are faced with on a day to day basis in their personal lives or the meaningful relationships they have outside of work. This helps build empathy and understanding that working remote doesn’t often afford.

To see the original Quora question and answer you can click here.

To see more about how Cloverleaf can help you build empathy, understanding and trust in remote teams click here.