Don’t make it a guessing game with your team.
Expecting your remote staff to complete tasks satisfactorily, without first letting them know exactly what needs to be done and making sure they have the skills and the tools to manage it, is unrealistic and can be very expensive in terms of lost time and money.
That’s where a suite of remote communication tools helps, so that if your VAs are working off a sand dune they at least have clear instructions what needs to be done!
Here are 3 of the top reasons to get yourself and your remote staff communicating better:
Better Job Descriptions
Better staff communication allows you to more clearly detail what the task is and exactly how you would like it done. Sometimes the task is self-explanatory or a repetition of something your remote worker has done before, in which case it’s relatively simple to proceed along the right lines; when there is something new or non-standard to be done it needs clear instructions.
For example if you are recruiting someone new to handle the blog posts that you can no longer manage yourself you will need to detail things like the lengths of articles, the style you are looking for, subject matter, keywords, titles, language and structure you like to use as well as types of images you like to include.
There are so many variables with a job like this – or in a web design job, to cite another example – that being general in your guidelines may result in your landscape gardening blog getting articles posted about wheat farming on the American Prairies!
Using remote staff communication tools like video and audio will help you be more specific.
Communicate Better Feedback
Remote communication tools also allow you to give more regular and more useful feedback to your remote workers, steering them along the right path if they go astray and offering encouragement. This means that the staff member is happier because they are getting positive, creative and/or constructive feedback and you’re less frustrated if the job isn’t proceeding how you’d hoped.
Reduced Time on a Task = Lower Cost
Because you are able to steer the job and feed back to avoid mistakes that take a long time to fix, the job has more chance of being completed in a timely fashion – which saves you money, as most of your remote staff will be paid hourly. It’s unfair to dock their pay for making mistakes if the job wasn’t communicated effectively from the start. Using communication tools will help avoid that happening.
There are several types of remote communication tools available including screen annotation tools and screen video capture tools.
These specific aids will be the subject of another post but, in the meantime, if you want to know more about communicating better with your remote staff and outsourcing in general then click here to find out how we do it here at Melbourne SEO Services.