Best Practices for managing your small business remotely

One of the many steps that we all must take amidst the coronavirus crisis is keeping social distance. Managing your small business remotely is key to containing the coronavirus pandemic. Working remotely is not as easy as it sounds. This is especially true when many small businesses have to figure out a system in a hurry. Here are a few tools and skills that will make this transition a lot easier.

Managing your small business remotely with smart tools

The great thing about today’s office tools is that they can be accessed from anywhere at any time. Make sure that your team has access to these tools for increased productivity.

• Office 365 and Teams: With the cloud version of Microsoft Office suite, along with conferencing tools like chat and video calls, you can work together from anywhere.
• Zoom Chats: Zoom chats are affordable and a great way to stay in touch with your team. Zoom chats can be between two individuals or up to 500 members. Participants can join a meeting from their phone, desktop, mobile and tablet devices.
• OpenForBusiness.org and Zoho Remotely are offering free tools right now to help your team work remotely.

Managing your small business remotely with soft skills

The most challenging part of working remotely is being able to manage your team. Working from home has its perks but can also be very challenging at first. Working remotely allows for more freedom and flexibility. Thus, this can be somewhat hard to manage.

• Communication is key. Stay in contact. Have regular check-ins. Share calendars. Call, text, or e-mail.
• Video chat. The face-to-face of a video call will give the feeling of being at the office. Group conference calls are essential in making sure everyone is on the same page.
• Set clear expectations with regard to projects, due-dates and deadlines.
• Stay informed. As a leader, it is important to stay on top of the latest coronavirus developments.

Carolina Macedo, the author, is Project Coordinator of Marketing Keys. Carolina enjoys working remotely but currently can't wait to get back into the office (when it's safe to do so).