With the consolidation of remote work, the dominant model in many companies since virtual assistant services in the Philippines became a thing, managing remote teams has emerged as a new challenge for managers. Today, remote work is no longer an option, but a strategic reality adopted by organisations of various sectors and sizes.
The challenge today is no longer whether working from home works, but how to maintain productivity, engagement, and fluid communication when each team member is in a different location.
If you lead or participate in a distributed team and want to discover how to effectively manage a remote team efficiently, keep reading. Below, you’ll find the 9 best practices applied in the most innovative companies in the country on how to manage a remote team.
They can transform your team’s performance and make your day-to-day life as a manager easier.
1. Track deliveries without micromanaging.
In managing a remote team, the biggest mistake is trying to replicate office methods in a virtual environment. Tools that only track attendance or capture screenshots don’t solve the real challenge: visibility with autonomy.
We need to find a modern alternative to micromanagement. Invest in a remote management monitoring solution that allows you to track the time invested per project, organize deliverables by priority, and provide automatic reports that eliminate rework for the manager.
With this, leaders can see if deadlines are being met, which tasks are behind schedule, and how to redistribute the workload more intelligently. All this without invading privacy or interrupting the team’s workflow.
The big advantage? The team is evaluated based on results, not just on being online. This creates more trust and engagement , two fundamental pillars for the success of remote work.
2. Establish clear and visible routines.
The absence of commuting and the flexibility of working from home can give a false sense of freedom. But without a well-defined routine, productivity tends to decrease.
Managing a remote team requires more predictability. Fixed schedules for meetings, deadlines, and daily or weekly check-ins prevent misunderstandings and reduce collective anxiety.
A good practice is to use visual methods, such as Kanban or Scrum Board. These boards organize tasks into columns such as “to do,” “in progress,” and “done,” allowing everyone to see the status of projects in real time.
In this context, routine functions as a path that guides the team, even when everyone is in a different location.
3. Focus on deliverables, not hours.
In the office, it was common to see those who “arrived early and left late” being considered productive. But in a remote environment, this logic completely loses its meaning.
Effective managers know that the quality of deliverables speaks louder than the number of hours spent online. By adopting a model based on goals and results, you encourage a focus on what really matters: generating value for the company and the customer.
This also allows for more flexibility for employees to adapt their routines according to their peak productivity times. Some are more efficient in the morning; others, at night. The important thing is to create clear agreements regarding deadlines, priorities, and responsibilities.
This approach also reduces the stress associated with excessive control. Employees feel more valued for their skills and less pressured by being “online all the time”.
4. Invest in communication rituals.
Remote communication requires more than just random meetings on the calendar. It’s necessary to create consistent rituals that keep the team aligned, even with different time zones or decentralized routines.
Short daily meetings, for example, help to understand where each person is in the workflow and what is hindering their progress. Weekly check-ins, on the other hand, allow you to track the progress of goals and adjust priorities in real time.
Bi-weekly feedback sessions, planning meetings, and even informal conversations are part of this system. The important thing is that these rituals don’t become bureaucracy. They should facilitate, not hinder.
Another essential point is to vary the channel: not everything needs to be video. Often, a short audio message or a well-written message works better than a long meeting. Balancing these formats avoids communication fatigue and keeps the team more productive.
5. Offer continuous feedback.
Remote feedback needs to be more frequent, more informal, and more contextualized. Since there’s no daily face-to-face contact, small adjustments that would previously have been made naturally need to be communicated with more intention.
A McKinsey study shows that teams that receive consistent feedback are up to 39% more likely to maintain high performance. This reinforces the importance of cultivating the habit of commenting on deliverables, pointing out improvements, and recognizing good results.
Don’t wait for fixed dates or semester reviews. Use tools, emails, or task comments to record observations quickly, naturally, and transparently.
And remember: positive feedback is just as important as corrective feedback. Authentically acknowledging effort generates more motivation and engagement, especially in remote environments where loneliness can undermine professionals’ self-esteem.
6. Map productivity and well-being indicators.
The pressure to deliver results while working remotely can create distortions. Focusing solely on deliverables without considering the team’s well-being compromises performance in the medium term.
Therefore, it’s important to track productivity metrics with an analytical eye. Tasks delivered on time, work quality, number of revisions, and meeting participation are good starting points. But it’s the intersection with well-being indicators that reveals the true warning signs.
Absenteeism, decreased participation, frequent lateness, or low interaction are symptoms that should be taken seriously. Organizational climate tools, quick surveys, and even one-on-one conversations help to understand how the team is feeling beyond the numbers.
With this data at hand, remote management becomes simpler, and managers can act proactively, preventing turnover, burnout, and silent conflicts.
7. Promote integration and team culture.
One of the biggest risks of managing remote teams is isolation. Without informal hallway meetings or shared lunches, the feeling of belonging can quickly disappear. Preserving company culture in a remote environment requires deliberate effort. It’s necessary to create non-operational spaces for interaction, where people can connect as human beings, not just as project colleagues.
Weekly virtual coffee breaks, creativity challenges, quizzes, and even online celebratory events are simple and effective strategies. They help build connections, relieve tension, and reinforce desired values and behaviors.
More than just entertainment, these actions shape the team’s identity. When employees feel part of something bigger, there is more cooperation, empathy, and motivation to achieve goals together .
8. Encourage autonomy with clear alignment.
Autonomy doesn’t mean abandonment. In remote work, giving total freedom without clear direction leads to disorganisation. Ideally, autonomy should be combined with structure, creating an environment where each person knows what they should do, when it’s due, and what the expected impact is.
This begins with sharing the company’s overall goals and unfolds into specific objectives for each area and professional. When employees understand the “why” behind their tasks, they make decisions with more confidence and purpose.
Another important point is to reduce dependence on constant approvals. Creating well-defined workflows, with clear responsibilities and objective criteria, speeds up deliveries and increases the sense of individual responsibility. Ultimately, you gain in speed, quality, and motivation.
9. Have reliable technology by your team’s side.
Nothing frustrates a remote team more than frequent technical glitches. Loss of connection during important meetings, missing files, or tools crashing lead to delays, stress, and loss of productivity.
Therefore, investing in reliable solutions is not a luxury, it’s a strategy. Ideally, you should have a technology ecosystem that offers stability, integration between tools, and readily available technical support.
In areas such as customer service, internal communication, and task management, choosing the right technology can be the difference between chaos and operational fluidity.
It’s also important to consider the scalability of the solution . As the team grows, the infrastructure needs to keep up. Avoiding limited solutions from the start prevents complex migrations in the future.
Time to take the next step with experts.
Managing remote teams requires more than just good intentions. It demands strategy, well-defined processes, and tailored technology to ensure that remote work truly functions productively, seamlessly, and sustainably.
Many companies face difficulties not due to a lack of talent or team commitment, but due to the absence of adequate structure. Communication failures, task overload, poorly aligned goals, and the use of generic tools end up hindering team performance.
If your organization is currently in transition or wants to scale its remote work model securely, it’s important to have expert guidance. Well-managed teams, with the right technological support, can deliver more, with higher quality and less burnout.