Warrens makes really good points.
Management of remote staff can be made so much easier by making use of tools out there to delegate work, monitor productivity and communicate with your staff. I find that email is not enough, and with staff, while its nice to have people who can work autonomously – schedule weekly meetings.
For me, I use skype, emails, use basecamphq.com to communicate and monitor productivity.
And then on a “lower” level – I use a todo list program to track my own progress and completion rate of things I do during the week. I used to think this was a waste of time and tedious, but you find that its a great motivator at the end of the week when you see how much, or little work you have done.
The programs / websites I use are :
- basecamphq.com to monitor and delegate work.
- IMs – skype.com … no need to say anything here!
- Emails – not to assign work, just to communicate points of interest and notifications, let basecamphq.com be your central work delegator.
- Task Management At Its Best With Wunderlist | 6Wunderkinder – my task list which i update on my mobile devices – they all sync together via the website. Best to do list I have come across.