How to Effectively Organize Work in a Team of Digital Nomads?

With the shift to remote work, many people have chosen the lifestyle of a digital nomad: they constantly relocate to new countries and change time zones regularly. Previously we discussed how this helps employees find their work-life balance and avoid burnout. But not every manager can restructure and effectively organize the work of his digital nomad team.

We would like to present to you a successful case study of the Customer Success Department (CSD) of Social Discovery Group.

The Gray Areas of Digital Nomadism

The main issue with the remote work format is the loss of place and context for discussing topics rarely touched on in work meetings. During a meeting, you’re unlikely to ask an employee about his or her career plans for the next year.

In the past, when you worked in the office, you could talk to each other on breaks, during lunch, or just at work. But now it has become much more difficult to understand your employee’s mood or their plans for personal development in the company.

It becomes even more difficult for a manager to keep track not only of the emotional state of employees and to notice “crisis” moments, but also to notice their strengths, to understand their advantages. Especially if the specific character of work involves communication with customers and constant focus on their problems.

When we switched to working remotely I realized that we had to immediately look for a tool that would help us communicate with our employees. Together with HR, we revised the training and adaptation process to improve the experience of new employees and make it as comfortable as possible.

We built clear communication with our team members on current tasks and launched regular departmental news updates, yet something was still missing. We had to find a way for employees to communicate more deeply with each other. It wasn’t long until I found the one-to-one format, which proved to be rather effective.

What are the benefits of One-to-One meetings?

It helps the employee to realize the value of his or her work on their own.

For example, by answering the question “What of all the competencies of working with clients is the easiest for you?” The employee understands his superpower, and the supervisor understands how to help his employee use this skill as much as possible to the benefit of the business.

For example, if his strength is empathy and ability to develop a dialogue, he can be assigned to call important clients, and if his logical thinking is strongly developed, he can be assigned to solve complicated or unusual cases.

Set the direction of the dialogue.

For your first one-to-one meeting experience, the structure is very important, so for inspiration, you can search the web for questions that will maximize your current request. Some of the questions I use are:

• What do you think was your biggest achievement during the past week? Share a specific case.
• What caused the difficulty? Tell about that case in detail.
• Which of your tasks keep you engaged and inspire you? Is there a way to make your tasks more engaging? What are the major bottlenecks in your current workflow? Can I help you in any way to move it along? Do you feel that you learn enough at work? What areas of the department’s work would you like to be more involved in?
• Thinking back over the past week, can you think of a time when you felt like you were learning new things and developing new skills at work?

Take notes from the meeting so you can review them at any time.

Organize them in a way that when you select a candidate for a new task, you can quickly see who is best suited to handle it by checking through the notes.

What do the employees think?

Here are the opinions of employees who regularly participate in one-to-one meetings.

Leading Customer Success Manager at SDV (CSD):

“One-to-one meetings really help to share feedback and get useful advice from a supervisor who is more experienced in many issues.

With their introduction, I began to feel more comfortable and confident. This is especially important in situations where we all work remotely and don’t see each other. During one of the meetings, we discussed how to focus and prioritizethe most important tasks. Since then, it has become much easier for me to make these decisions and generally act as a lead manager”.

Recruiting and Retention Manager at SDV (CSD):

“One-to-one meetings help me to share feedback with management and also provide an opportunity to discuss ongoing work processes. The manager finds it easier to understand employees and their needs/abilities/problems. It also helps to come to a common language, which is vital not only with clients ;)

Our one-to-one meetings during the relocation helped me stay as motivated and sane as possible. In difficult moments, it is very important to feel supported not only by the company as a whole (which is also very important), but personally by your manager. I think one-to-one meetings develop a positive sense of involvement in a common cause!”

Junior Customer Success Manager at SDV (CSD):

“One to one meetings are like a breath of fresh air. This is the opportunity to get feedback, figure out difficult cases, and simply discuss pressing issues with a person who has tremendous experience inspires you and gives you motivation.

During one of our meetings we discussed cases that were bottlenecks for me at that point. After getting feedback, I figured out why they seemed insurmountably difficult to me and how to resolve them. Fear of difficult tasks vanished and the work became much more comfortable and productive.”

Leading Customer Success Manager at SDV (CSD):

“Meetings like this make you feel that you are treated as a living, unique person, rather than as one of many work units performing your tasks at all costs. It’s an investment that works both ways-the more I experience this kind of personalized, human attitude, the more I want to contribute to the company. It helps me to deal with dead ends in my tasks, see the importance of my work, and value my input more.”

One-to-one meetings are by far not the only tool that allows you to build a process of getting feedback from employees and increase the effectiveness of teamwork. But it seems to me that face-to-face communication, even through a computer screen, has a much greater effect than various surveys and correspondence.

As long as you don’t use these meetings just for the record! Then they will definitely have zero impact. Only if you really listen to your employees and hear them, will you see the result in no time.

Written by Daria Gorelova

Special thanks to Tremis Skeete, Executive Editor at Product Coalition for the valuable input which contributed to the editing of this article.