Few of us were on the lookout for an oncoming pandemic. Most of us were too busy doing our jobs to keep an eye on health data. As the situation grew more urgent, many of us took comfort in the mindset that this would be like other seasonal flu outbreaks that were quickly contained or weren’t too great a threat. But COVID-19 isn’t like past viruses. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime event.
The impact COVID has had on society and the world’s economy has been so great it defies measurement. The tragedy has sent ripples in all directions and triggered that business continuity plan that many of us never thought we’d have to use. Today, the need to protect the safety of employees and teammates and recover quickly from this disruption is imperative.
Particularly for smaller businesses and midsized organizations, office closures proved to be highly disruptive and almost immediately surfaced three operational shortcomings significant enough to impact productivity. The first issue was a disorganized virtual workspace that created a lack of visibility into project status. Another was a lack of clarity on high-priority work during times of crisis. The last, and as significant as the other two, was infrequent and disjointed communication that left employees feeling isolated and managers in the dark.
The sudden need to manage remote teams has left some organizations scrambling to find ways to keep their projects on track and stay in sync with their geographically dispersed colleagues. Even companies with a longstanding and relatively efficient remote team workflow have found it challenging to maintain or scale their processes.
To put an end to the disorganized virtual workspace, the lack of clarity on high-priority work, and disjointed employee communication, Wrike has created a Remote Work Template to align your organization with the remote work best practices 2020.
The template gives managers a best practices framework for keeping projects on track while staying in sync with remote employees. Managers can use the template to automate recurring team and 1:1 meetings within Wrike. Additionally, the template includes a dashboard that gives visibility into a team member’s assigned tasks.
Its pre-built configuration takes little time to set up, is simple to use, and gives team managers the resources to support distributed teams, keep projects moving, and deliver projects on time.
Manage remote team work
This template provides a bird's-eye view of all active projects in one spreadsheet view, which includes title, start date, due date, duration, status, and assignee. Two views are available: Table view provides a quick look at the main deliverables in a spreadsheet, while Gantt Chart view allows managers to see the full scope of work, timelines, and critical milestones.
Standardize and facilitate meetings
Two templates are provided within a predefined folder structure for team meetings and 1:1 meetings. Both contain editable best practices agendas that can be adjusted to suit specific needs, structure meeting talking points ahead of time, and turn action items into tasks.
These templates ensure employees feel supported and projects are completed on time.
Personal work dashboard
This dashboard template provides users with a Board view of active tasks. Managers can focus on the right work and stay on top of current assignments and outstanding approvals, even outside the structure and routine of a physical office.
None of us can be sure how much longer we’ll be away from our teams or predict what permanent changes will result from this pandemic. The best we can do in the present is to take advantage of those solutions at our disposal like the Wrike Remote Work Template and keep our virtual offices as connected and productive as our physical offices were prior to the virus. Want to find out more about how Wrike can empower your remote teams to do their best work? Read about our flexible work management platform here.
