The Best Ways to Set and Manage Remote Work Expectations for Employees

As a team leader or manager, you are responsible for setting remote work expectations. Individual skills and talents play a role, but they won’t translate into success if the team can’t work together.

But before anything else, ask yourself: do you know what you are expecting from your team?

Without clearly defined remote employee expectations, things can get complicated. There’s no easy way to measure success and evaluate employee performance on a good day, let alone without standards everyone has agreed on.

In this post, we’ll explore how remote work expectations benefit your business, the pitfalls to avoid, and the best ways to set and manage them.

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Why setting clear remote work expectations matters

Setting clear expectations for remote work ensures that employees and employers are aligned on goals, responsibilities, and performance metrics. Of course, there are benefits for employees and employers, but each faces challenges as well. Let’s take a closer look. 

Benefits of clear remote expectations for employees

• Increased clarity. Clear expectations ensure employees understand project plans, communication expectations, and other responsibilities.
  
• Reduced Stress. Increased transparency around remote expectations leads to reduced stress. A stress-free remote work environment leads to better job satisfaction and a reduced risk of physical health issues.
  
• Healthy work-life balance. When employers clearly articulate expectations, it creates a culture where employees feel more comfortable setting boundaries. This helps promote better work-life balance and reduces burnout. 

Benefits of clear remote expectations for employers

• Increased Productivity. More informed employees are more productive employees. Clear alignment on goals increases remote team productivity, ultimately positively impacting your bottom line.
  
• Stronger company culture. Clear expectations help create a culture of trust and transparency. By being more vocal about goals and expectations, you create an open dialogue for employees to share their successes and failures openly. 
  
• Improved retention. Open communication and clear goals and expectations also positively impact employee retention. The ability to retain top talent saves businesses money and helps them better reach broader goals and initiatives. 

Common challenges of setting expectations in a remote setting

Of course, like all things, setting expectations for remote teams has its fair share of challenges like: 

• Communication gaps. Working with different timezones, languages, and cultural barriers can lead to miscommunications even when expectations are seemingly clear.
  
• Overworking or burnout. Even with healthy expectations set, remote workers have been known to struggle with work-life balance. This leads to burnout and, ultimately, a net loss in productivity.
  
• Difficulty in monitoring performance. Expectations are one thing, but gauging whether or not employees are meeting them is more challenging for remote teams. Fortunately, the right technology can help.  

Key areas to address in remote work expectations

Now that you understand the benefits and challenges of setting remote expectations, there are a few other key areas to address like: 

• Availability and working hours. Scheduling is crucial for remote workers in different time zones. Make sure you align on work hours or set guidelines for asynchronous work.
  
• Communication standards. Establish communication standards that touch on the communication and project management tools you’ll use, response times, and other general remote communication etiquette.
  
• Team collaboration and engagement. To foster engagement, work to establish one-on-ones, virtual sprint meetings, and even informal chats like trivia, happy hours, or coffee breaks.

Ways to set and manage remote work expectations

Like any guidelines you create for your remote business, remote work expectations are malleable and can evolve over time. That’s why setting these expectations and maintaining and adjusting them is crucial. Here are some strategies to help you get started.

1. Communicate clearly and frequently

Whether you’re working in an office or a distributed team, you won’t be able to make progress without communicating with each other. Communication is key and where to begin when setting expectations with your team.

Communicate what you’re counting on them to do as early as during the onboarding process. Should they report every task they complete? Is there a set amount of time they should be able to reply to emails?

Having a plan makes communication much easier and saves a lot of time for both sides.

2. Create documents for roles and responsibilities

Everyone in your team should be fully aware of their responsibilities. Remember, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link.

One person in your team can trigger complications if they fail to deliver. Let your team know about their obligations, and ensure they understand their work’s importance to the whole organization.

A great way to do this is to create a document that describes their role in the company in detail. This is helpful when your team needs a quick refresher and when onboarding new people to the company.

3. Provide training and resources for success

It’s not enough to hand off documents, videos, job descriptions, or other documentation and expect your remote team members to become an overnight success. Outlining what you expect from remote employees is crucial, but it’s on you to help them get there. 

Set aside time for you to create videos and guides for specific job responsibilities (or delegate this to team leads). All team leads should set aside time to work with their team and ensure they grasp these job-specific skills. 

4. Explain the importance of being efficient with time

Showing up to work daily is one thing, but making good use of their time is another. Time at work should be dedicated to only work-related things.

Your team needs to know that every minute counts and that you will try to measure their productivity. The sooner your team understands how they use their time at work is important to you, the better.

One of the best ways to increase productivity is to track the total time they have worked, compare that against the tasks they have accomplished, and talk with them about improvements you think they can make.

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5. Create an inclusive team

Remote expectations extend beyond the work itself. It’s also important to convey your inclusivity expectations and stress the importance of how people are to be treated on your remote team. 

While remote teams tend to be comprised of a diverse group of team members around the globe, it doesn’t mean your DEI efforts are complete from the start. Make sure each member of your makes an effort to be inclusive. 

That said, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion starts with leadership. Lead by example by creating open feedback loops, creating transparency around salaries, and providing outlets for employees to share their feelings and experiences. 

When you set the tone for a culture of acceptance and openness, you’re not only objectively doing the right thing, but you’ll soon see your morals come to fruition in the form of better retention rates and a wider talent pool.

Boost team success with Hubstaff

One of the most reliable methods of measuring team productivity is using apps that can accurately track how they make use of their time. This is what Hubstaff can do, and much more.

Once your team starts using Hubstaff, it tracks the time your team spent working on tasks, monitors the apps they used and the sites they visited, and automates payroll so you can focus on growth instead of management.

Even better, Hubstaff’s reporting and invoicing features make billing clients hassle-free. You can either create invoices and send them to your clients manually, or let Hubstaff generate them automatically based on the bill rate and hours worked.

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What to expect when you’re expecting

Expectations often come with a bit of pressure. And while this may sound like a negative thing, it’s actually beneficial to business growth and your team’s performance.

After putting together a talented team, the next step is helping them make the most out of their own unique skills. The key is to make sure that you and your team are on the same page when it comes to these expectations so that you can all grow together.a

Confusion is often the first step toward disagreements, which very rarely does your business any good. If your team knows what you’re expecting from them, it will be easier for them to perform at their best.

What about you? How do you set employee expectations for your remote workforce? Do you create lists of performance goals and objectives? Perform weekly or monthly team meetings or check-ups?

We’d love to hear from you.

This post was originally published in February of 2017. It was updated by the Hubstaff blog team in December of 2024.