Ideas for Managing Distributed Teams
Employee Motivation
Incentives are used to reward employees, sharpen thinking, and advance creativity, but in the experiment made by Karl Dunckerin and Sam, Glusburg shows that incentives work less if the goal is not meaningful and challenging. This experiment is replicated for nearly 50 years, despite these results many companies still follow the “Carrot-and-Stick” reward system.
If the task involved is mechanical skills and time-oriented, incentives worked as they would be expected: the higher the pay, the better the performance. On the other hand, when the task involves highly cognitive skills , a larger reward led to poor or neutral performance.
Productivity
The traditional time recording pushes people to go to the workplace from morning until afternoon. It is the only way to know that people are working — see them personally and their actual output. In the age of technological advancement, the former is negotiable.
If the company is output-focused, with less collaboration and cooperation then the company is a Results-Only Work Environment.
No matter what size or type of the company is, an employee in a distributed team is a knowledge worker, and they are paid for their ideas — solving problems.
Where do people get their ideas? majority NOT in the workplace. An important space of flexibility and control, where people feels comfortable that they have the best ideas should be given to an individual to maximize their full potential.
Work and Life Interface
Work and life has inseparable components — time, involvement and satisfaction. Several roles are interplaying. Here is a part of a very inspiring speech about Life by Coca Cola’s former CEO Bryan Dyson.
Imagine life as a game in which you are juggling five balls in the air. They are Work, Family, Health, Friends, and Spirit and you’re keeping all of these in the air. You will soon understand that Work is a rubber ball.
If you drop it, it will bounce back. But the other four balls — Family, Health, Friends, and Spirit — are made of glass.
If you drop one of these they will be irrevocably scuffed, marked, nicked, damaged, or even shattered. They will never be the same. You must understand that and strive for it.
Work efficiently during office hours and leave on time. Give the required time to your family, friends and have proper rest. Value has a value only if its value is valued.
Onboarding Employee
Like rearing a child, employees have an important milestone to keep track of. The table below shows the potential areas that we can look into as the employee move forward with the company.
Performance Evaluation
Identify performance factors that are important to the company and elaborate each factors by adding 2 to 3 observable actions. Each actions are aligned to the employee duty statements. These duty statements are generic to every team member, at the minimum, they are expected to perform these duties. Add these items in a google form and send it to invidivudal team members and managers.
Reward Strategy
Total Reward Strategy is a resource to create a successful plan to attract, motivate, retain and engage employees.
- Compensation: Fixed and variable pay in exchange for service rendered.
- Performance: The alignment of company goal with the work of employees
- Work-Life Effectiveness: Practices that actively help employees achieve success in a way that is energizing and brings clarity and focus.
- Benefits: Indirect and non-wage health, income protection, and retirement programs.
- Recognition: Reinforcement of employee behavior that supports organizational strategy
- Personal Development: Integrated processes to attract, motivate and retain productive, engaged employees
Compensation increase strategies:
- 3% to 5% increase from their base salary
- Allocate the amount and spread it across the team
- An absolute amount added to their monthly base salary
- Team-based merit system
- Differentiated salary increase
Compa-ratio is calculated as the employee’s current salary divided by the midpoint of the pay range.
Salary Grading
This process will help you identify the individual contributor and align them to the salary they deserve. The supervision and task guidelines came from Texas Job Classification Review Guide.
Salary decision guidelines:
- Salary range maximum: It is reserved for top performers. Such individuals are ready for promotion.
- Salary range midpoint: The most competitive point in a salary structure. This is where you pay your consistent performers.
- Salary range minimum: The entry-level salary for employees who are still learning and need a lot of assistance. Other employers use this entry point for any new employee joining the organization.
