Don’t worry if you’re not familiar with the concept of a distributed team. The reference to a distributed team is just a team that doesn’t have to be physically located in the same room to work together, commonly referred to as remote employees.

With today’s technology, many barriers to distributed teams have been effectively removed. Something that once carried a stigma in many businesses is becoming more and more commonly accepted. Even with wider adoption, it seems that the first thought when mentioning that we work with a distributed team is often dismay that we can do it successfully. It seems that everyone has a story about someone they know, if not even them personally, that tried it and it just didn’t work out as desired.

Do They Actually Work?

Distributed teams can work very well and provide businesses the ability to grow outside of the constraints of their local market. What the internet has provided to the retail world via ecommerce has also been provided to organizational structure by allowing distributed teams to exist and flourish.

Typically, it seems that the reasons for it not working often falls upon the inherent differences in interaction between being onsite and remote. Not everyone is cut out for working remotely. If a business isn’t structured to support distributed teams then any shortcomings already associated with the stigma of remote employees is only magnified.

The most common question with remote employees is “how do you know if they’re working?” For some companies, the thought that you’re not able to physically supervise an employee means that the employee is not going to get anything done. While this could certainly be true for some employees, this issue should become immediately apparent once and actually provide quicker action on unproductive employees or for those that just don’t fit the company culture. When approaching it from this perspective, it can actually be a good thing to help weed out bad employees. Obviously, this isn’t what should be happening as these employees should be filtered out during the hiring stage, but all business owners know that deception can occur prior to an employee beginning their employment.

Finding the Right Fit

Being successful on a remote team requires many things. One of the strongest indicators of a remote employee’s ability to work remotely is their past performance. As mentioned above, it takes a special type of employee that can successfully manage working remotely. It requires discipline, focus, and knowledge to get the job done without being able to turn around and ask a coworker for help. This latter part is actually still possible, if not even easier, with distributed teams through virtual collaboration and communication tools such as Skype, Slack, Instant Messengers, and even good ol’ IRC.

As indicated above, success can often be determined by the tools and resources made available to your team. If you structure your distributed team as you would an on-site team, then there is no doubt that you’re heading for failure. Distributed teams lack the interaction made possible through sharing a physical location so its even more important to encourage the communication and collaboration mentioned above. Some teams go as far to have a water cooler channel so that employees can interact as they would in a physical office. Obviously, this isn’t an absolute requirement and not all employees may participate, but just having that option is huge in team building and morale.