Building Strong Remote Team: A Guide to Learning and Development

You’ve heard it all before: employee development is a major factor in retaining top talent and improving overall organizational performance. But what if you’re in charge of managing a remote team?

If you’re thinking that it’s difficult to implement and optimize your Learning & Development program across borders, tools and time zones, then you’re not thinking about it in the most effective way. Employees face a number of challenges attached to remote work, but accessing L&D remotely is not what stands out. 

Learning culture

A learning culture is the way a company naturally embeds learning into all facets of its organization. The culture extends to all levels of seniority so that everyone has the skills they need to succeed in their field. If you want to make sure everyone is learning constantly, it’s important for this to be a strategic imperative for your company. A firm that values a learning culture puts continuous development at its core.

A learning culture can look very different from company to company, but the following are some common characteristics: supporting independent learning; encouraging all team members to share learnings; fostering a growth mindset and matching performance indicators; and providing pathways for learning to inform strategy and process.

Mindset

An all-remote team is ideally positioned to contribute to learning and development, rather than simply waiting for the L&D team to generate new material to ingest. This is powerful because it encourages team members to continually be conscious of new learnings they can share. In other words, all-remote teams are positioned to make the most of their ability to contribute directly to learning and development, rather than simply waiting for the L&D team to generate new material.

This creates a working environment where all team members are eager to learn from one another. Indeed, those in charge of learning and development in an all-remote company should look to colleagues across the organization to understand which areas are most misunderstood, and what modules would generate the most interest.

Documentation 

Whether you’re in one location or across the world, a successful remote team is one that is well-documented. Knowledge-sharing through documentation is fundamental because it streamlines collaboration across teams and functions. Where everything from interviewing to onboarding to career development takes place outside of a central office — regimented documentation is the only way to ensure future team members have access to the same information as past and current team members. It’s never too late to set up a documentation process that works for your team!

Ownership

When you create a learning culture that focuses on making sure that every team member feels a sense of ownership over their own learning journey, as well as that of their teammates’, it creates an environment where people feel safe and comfortable to ask questions and try new things. This will lead to better ideas being presented at meetings, which means more opportunities for innovation and improvement.

Make learning part of everyday life at work by encouraging people to learn from each other and from external sources (such as books or online courses). Create opportunities for experimentation by allowing employees to take risks on new ideas or processes without fear of being judged negatively by management if they fail—even if it means taking time away from normal work duties. And finally, encourage everyone on your team to give feedback regularly so that no one feels left out or excluded from discussions about how things could be done differently in order for them to feel like they’re contributing something valuable back into the company.

Asynchronous Communication

Record, save and file meetings and trainings for asynchronous learning purposes. Anyone on the team can lead trainings and meetings. A simple onboarding discussion about how a company publishes social media posts or conducts digital marketing campaigns can be added to an internal library of content that employees can access when it’s convenient for them. Cross-team and cross-functional Q&A sessions are also important to capture because they often present some of the most critical pathways to institutionalize and update firm-wide knowledge.  

One of the greatest advantages of remote L&D is that team members can review the concepts and information as many times as they want when it is most convenient for them. This inevitably leads to improved learning and knowledge retention. 

Expand your remote team and tap into diverse talent worldwide at Jobkast.