According to UpWork's "Future Workforce Report", by 2028 73% of all departments are expected to have remote workers.

Remote work is more inclusive as it provides flexibility to employees to combine their work with parental responsibilities and other family duties. It allows some kind of specialists on-the-job travel around the world. Finally, it enables team members to be on equal footing as other teammates globally and avoids an unhealthy organizational model with 'major' office players and 'minor' remote workers who feel overboard the boat of company life.

In this article, we want to tell you how to manage a remote team efficiently and benefit from embracing an agile future.

The first point in your to-do list is setting up a work environment for remote employees. It includes specific infrastructural stuff as well as digital workspace software.

Mindset matters. Knowledge pool matters. Expertize exchange is vital too. Putting it all together is a high art of management.

We at Freshcode organize an ever-increasing pool of knowledge in the structured comprehensive system, including code repositories, release checklists, ideas lists, market research, internal training programs, etc.

Advanced tools for managing remote teams replaced a lot of the benefits of the traditional office workspace. Confluence and Notion are some of the management platforms we use daily.

Communication is the backbone of any type of team management, and in terms of remote managing across the globe it takes on new importance. Communication is what makes teams strong. And, at the same time, effective communication is one of the most difficult tasks for companies.

All the decisions, discussions, brainstorms, interviews, and training take place online, so they should be maintained via handy and powerful pieces of software.

Let's highlight the next couple of our favorites among team management tools: Slack and Google Meet.

Your success depends on your ability to work well together and to analyze the state of progress to improve processes and implement required changes.

Jira and Trello help us to deal with it!

In today's world dictated by schedules, calendars, and work plans, people are conditioned to perform in synchronicity — a collaborating model where 2+ parties exert effort to be in the same place (physically or virtually) simultaneously.

But if you want to build a more smart and productive workplace, it's time to embrace asynchronous communication.

Asynchronous (async) work communication is the art of moving projects forward faster. Organizations mistakenly associate constant connectivity with quality collaboration. But in fact, asynchronous communication often leads to better collaboration and improved productivity.

Asynch communication cannot be implemented without the digital tools we've described above. It's about...

It helps your employees to keep the conversation going on their own time and provide plenty of advantages:

• No need for additional stakeholders to be available at the same time
• Fewer interruptions in employee's workday
• More time to do deep work
• Accommodating different communication styles and expressing yourself in more effective ways

With remote team management, keeping a close eye on quality becomes more challenging. Make it a habit to record updates, work progress, and any project changes. Handing over outdated documentation to your team is not the best practice.

We ate Freshcode use Trello dashboard for tracking work progress. Our team leads and managers create the following core lists to prioritize and manage tasks properly and fast:

• EVERGREEN - the core description of the onboarding process and long-term overall company's goals. It's the crucial column in the management template.
  
• TODO - section with cards representing tasks and ideas
  
• IN PROGRESS - this progress bar contains cards with tasks that are currently being performed. It ensures the team concentrates on finishing old work, rather than starting new work.
• DONE - probably the most pleasant section with a list of completed tasks

Such structure represents just basic principles and can be customized according to the needs of your company. It prevents work from piling up and streamlines workflow in a great way.

And remember, aim for progress, not perfection: done is better than perfect.