Gauge Your Remote Team’s Pulse: Essential Metrics and Techniques
Measuring Remote Team Health
As distributed teams become increasingly common, measuring remote team health, connectivity, and engagement is crucial for managers striving to unite virtual employees. In my exclusive Software Spotlight interview with Oleg Danylenko, CEO and Co-Founder of virtual office platform Teemyco, he shares valuable insights on quantifying human relationships in remote environments.
Why Measurement Matters
With geographic dispersion posing challenges for team cohesion, Danylenko explains the rationale behind tracking engagement:
“Distributed teams perform best when people trust each other, understand how their work fits together, and feel comfortable being themselves.”
Without visibility into connectivity levels, leaders risk decreased collaboration, innovation, and productivity over time if remote workers feel isolated. Teemyco boosts remote team health through customizable spaces, visibility tools, games, and real-time communication features designed to unite distributed groups.
Key Metrics to Track
Teemyco analytics provide managers visibility into distributed team engagement levels, participation rates, and usage trends to inform efforts at nurturing virtual office culture. Teemyco enables managers to track participation, task completion rates, and productivity metrics to gauge engagement and alignment across dispersed teams. Danylenko outlines several metrics managers should monitor to gauge team unity:
Platform Interactions
- Hours spent in virtual office daily
- Frequency of communications
- Video call participation
As Danylenko notes:
“On average, users use Teemyco 7.8 hours a day…because if you think about it, when you want to talk to someone and you're, let's say you are remote…you have zero understanding of what is the context of the person you're calling to.”
Thus, tracking platform interactions provides complex data on spontaneous conversations indicative of solid relationships and alignment.
Surveys
Teemyco's real-time polls and surveys give leaders instant feedback from remote teams to pulse engagement levels, and connection needs regularly. In addition to behavioral analytics, collecting direct feedback is imperative. As Danylenko explains:
“We launched a survey that where after a few weeks of using Teemyco, people responded to a number of questions and rated how much certain aspects changed since they started using Teemyco. And there we actually got really exciting results. So 91% of people reported that they feel more connected to their team.”
Surveys should cover areas like:
- Sense of belonging
- Trust in colleagues
- Understanding of goals
Productivity
While connectivity enables innovation and output, quantifying productivity helps managers correlate engagement to crucial results. Relevant metrics include:
- Project velocity
- Individual work output
- Cycle time
Compare productivity before/after adopting strategies to improve virtual relationships.
When to Measure
To accurately track progress, Danylenko advises collecting engagement data during the following scenarios:
New Team Formation
Kick-off new teams or projects with icebreakers and team building, then analyze initial survey results as a baseline.
New Hires
During onboarding, gauge connectivity via behavioral analytics on platform interactions. Compare to team averages.
Ongoing
Survey periodically to spot trends. Review platform analytics to correlate interactions with productivity.
Major Changes
If changes like leadership switches or reorgs occur, quantify engagement to monitor the impact.
Sample Survey Questions
Here are sample survey questions to understand connectivity:
- How connected do you feel to your direct teammates on a personal level?
- How well do you understand your team's goals and direction?
- How comfortable do you feel voicing ideas or concerns openly?
- How helpful are your colleagues when you need support or input?
Leave room for open-ended feedback to surface challenges or opportunities.
Conclusion
Measuring virtual team connectivity enables leaders to nurture relationships, proactively heading off issues before engagement declines. With insights from Teemyco's virtual office platform, managers gain data-driven techniques to cultivate an inclusive “one team” culture even amongst remote employees dispersed globally.
As Danylenko aptly states:
“Distributed teams perform best when people trust each other, understand how their work fits together, and feel comfortable being themselves.”
Listen to the Software Spotlight Podcast with Teemyco: In this episode, host Michael Bernzweig interviews Co-founder Oleg Danylenko. The virtual office platform Teemyco aims to facilitate spontaneous interactions and relationship-building between distributed colleagues. Integrations with popular business tools allow users to collaborate in customized workspaces with visibility into team members' availability and status. Over 90% of survey respondents said Teemyco makes them feel more connected to colleagues. With simple per-user pricing, the platform helps unite hybrid and remote teams.
