4 Tips For Managing Remote Teams

Remote teams offer great talent at the right price, but managing these workers can be tricky. These tips can help.

Location can work against you, whether you are far from a major city, or in a city flush with hospitals, and academic teaching centers.

If your hospital is in a rural area, you've probably fantasized about having a vast candidate pool from which to draw employees. And if you work in an urban area, you've probably struggled to find top talent within your hiring budget—which is a challenging proposition when your candidates are paying big-city rents.

A potential answer to both of these geographical problems is to hire remote workers—making location a non-issue, and allowing for broader applicant pools, cost savings, and greater flexibility in available hours.

As telehealth continues to be adopted by providers large and small, chances are that your organization will launch at least a few remote teams—if they haven't already.

Since 42% of hospitals already offer some sort of telehealth services—a number that doesn't take into account other remote workers, including patient relations staff, collections teams, triage nurses and other remote employees, you'll certainly be in good company.

But managing workers remotely—especially clinicians—is not easy. Beware these potential pitfalls.

1. Don't Start Too Big
"The best practice is to start small, with a pilot," says Bruce Carothers, vice president of telehealth solutions at AMN Healthcare, a healthcare recruiting firm. "Learn from that, make adjustments, and scale up from there."

Start with one remote team in one department. Learn from each implementation—what do you wish you had done differently? How were you ill-prepared? Was the leadership the right choice? How would you hire if you could do it over again?

Listen closely to managers and other leaders from departments that are going remote. What issues are they hearing about? Have there been patient complaints? Are remote customer service employees delivering the same quality as on-site workers?

Keep in mind is that every implementation and every team will be different. It's vital to coordinate with each team leader at the start of the remote team implementation. Ask what they will need, what their goals are and to watch for fresh problems and concerns as the project unfolds.

2. Build Comradery
Promoting coworker relations is tough when the coworkers are miles away from each other. "This is an area telehealth has struggled with," says Carothers. "It's a challenge that has to be overcome."

There are many different ways to bridge the gap between remote workers. A popular option is an employee chat portal where remote workers can ask their peers questions, discuss work-related matters, or even socialize and get to know each other a bit— A sort of virtual water cooler.

Team building exercises aren't only possible remotely, but can also be a lot of fun. Instruct managers to host a brief trivia game at the start of every conference call. The non-work related interests of team members will come out as they find out who the sports fans, movie buffs and music lovers in the group are. This will help build rapport and relationships that are important for any team—but especially a distributed one.

Additionally, services like Skype, FaceTime, and Google Hangouts are all great ways to help employees get to know each other that give a sense of "face-to-face" communication.

3. Don't Get Lost in Translation
There will be miscommunications—but you can work to keep them to a bare minimum.

"Make sure the remote [employee's] schedule and availability is clear and understood by all parties," warns Carothers, adding that scheduling mix-ups are a frequent complaint of both hospitals and remote employees.

Another challenge can be caused by lack of body language and facial expressions when reading an email or talking on the phone. Tell managers not to just guess at what the employee said or meant—they need to ask for clarification, additional information, or for the employee to explain what they meant.

At the end of every phone or online conversation, recap what was discussed (which is not a bad idea for in-person conversations as well) to ensure that you're all on the same page.

4. Hire With Care
"The local team needs to have trust and confidence in the remote [employees]," advises Carothers. Remote employees should be seasoned veterans in their fields—it's a bit much to ask someone to come up to speed in a new profession remotely.

For some clinicians, a remote role is the last step in a gradual wind-down before retirement. While many remote employees won't be anywhere near retirement age, they should come to a remote role with several years of experience.

Ask potential remote employees how they prioritize tasks and stay organized, about their daily work rituals and how they feel about not physically going to an office or hospital every day.

Remote work isn't for everybody—some employees need the direction of a manager nearby, others need to be surrounded by colleagues to feel satisfied in a job. Make sure potential new hires know what they're getting into—it's better for them to find out it's not their cup of tea now rather than later, after they've realized they're feeling isolated and miserable.

Another important interview step that will help determine preparedness for a remote position: Ask the potential employee to either show you their dedicated workspace during a video interview, or take a picture of it and send it via smartphone or email.

Any serious remote employee should have a home office, or, at very least, an office nook where they can focus on their tasks.

Remote teams can benefit all parties involved, allowing convenience and flexibility to the employee, cost savings and a broader candidate pool to healthcare systems. Just don't forget that, even in this virtual business world, distance can always be an obstacle.