Do These To Lead Your Virtual Company

Since early in 2020, companies have had to make the switch to working completely virtual as a result of COVID-19. Now, successfully leading a virtual company is an essential core competency of leaders.

The Demand for Virtual Company Leadership

A study done by the Columbia Business School, found that many leaders think the virtual working environment has been positive. These individuals described that virtual work reinforces collaboration and communication between the members of their teams and encourages their commitment. They also offered tips to ensure success as a virtual leader. Let’s check out these four tips you can use to lead your virtual company, successfully. 

Reinforce values and purpose for employees

Quarantine due to COVID-19 affected people all over the world. Many employees found themselves self-reflecting and thinking about what is crucial to them – both in work and life. You want to make sure that your employees are seeing their work as both meaningful and connected to their personal values. Start by emphasizing a purpose in everyone’s job.  This communication will help them see the functions in their everyday role. 

Engage with colleagues

Switching to the virtual world has caused a lot of stress on employees. Consider checking in with your co-workers to ask them what is working well for them and what isn’t. Engage them on ideas they have for establishing norms for work from home, what feedback they have on meetings, their best communications methods, and ideas for improvement. It is also important to let your team know that you care for and support them in this virtual company environment. Be sure to create a culture of togetherness through intentional engagement. 

You also need to reinforce downtime so staff don’t burn themselves out. Encourage coffee breaks or lunch catch-ups between employees who are in different departments, enabling staff to get to know each other on a more personal level. For many people, not having that social interaction is hard. Employees can chat about non-work related topics  to feel more connected to one another. This creates a bond that extends into teamwork and how employees work together on projects.

Virtual meeting tips

The virtual meeting world is a lot different when you can’t see anyone and have that connection of all being together around a big table. Try to ensure that your team turns their camera on. Not only will this help people feel more connected but being able to read someone’s body language in a meeting can go a long way. 

Virtual company meetings can be intense and tiring no matter their size. Try to make meetings shorter, no longer than an hour. If you need to have a longer meeting, consider taking a quick five-minute break for people to use the restroom, grab a snack, or fill up their water bottle. For longer meetings, also give your team the opportunity to engage. It can be pretty boring to listen to someone talk to you for two straight hours. Let them ask questions and understand what you’re talking about to harness more engagement in the meeting. 

Define your work systems

When managing your team virtually, the risk of miscommunication and ineffective communications are heightened. It is important to address these risks by defining your work systems. Your work systems include – how tasks are assigned, how projects are tracked, and how work is shared or presented. Coordination is way more difficult when working remote, making it more important for leaders to have effective processes and systems for workflow. There is no need to micromanage your employees, but having clearly defined work systems will help track progress, results, and help you pinpoint key performance indicators (KPI)s. 

If your firm is struggling with keeping up with your companies work systems, Accounting Seed would be a great solution to make sure you are on top of all of them. With Accounting Seed’s flexible and customizable platform, track all your most important tasks, systems, projects, and other important finances in real-time. Define KPIs and track progress to ensure you remain on budget and meet target goals.  

Strong Accounting is Essential for Virtual Companies

All the above traits are very important for leaders to understand when having to guide their company through the new norm of working remotely. But, it’s also important that your company’s accounting and financial data are secure on an accounting platform like Accounting Seed. Accounting Seed is native to Salesforce making it easy to be able to get your data anytime, anywhere, from any device. Make things easier on your accountants with our easy click-no-code configuration as well as our flexible and customizable platform.