With the rise of digital technology, we are now living in a borderless world. There are no more boundaries in every single aspect of life and everything can be done virtually. The company’s talents or teams also now work remotely, especially since the pandemic. On Friday, 8 July 2022 Our Chief-Geek, Silmyi M Sadek was sharing about how he manages the creative talent that works remotely.

In the discussion, Silmyi mentioned that branding is a very creative industry and it is essential to create a flexible and adaptive team of talents. The creative team requires a mixture of design, concept, ideas, arts, technology and analytics tools to drive brand identity, content, design, marketing and many things related to branding and marketing tech. The outstanding performance of Brand Geeks Inc’s first-ever remote full-time designer inspired them to build a fully remote team of creatives.

The most important formula in building a collaboration of remote talent is setting the standard for every talent and every work. This is the way Brand Geeks Inc trains its creative talents to learn new things every day. The second formula is the attitude of the remote talents. The remote team will only be effective with the right attitude, skills, discipline, communication and a stable internet connection, of course. The leader needs to be there to guide, help and answer any inquiries, on the other hand, the creative talents also should have self-motivation and self-discipline.

The third formula is about building the right and effective system. The remote team must embrace many collaborative tools and processes to work effectively, including Favro, Google Workspace, Calendly, daily Zoom meetings, etc. The fourth formula is about engagement and building positive vibes among the remote team. To foster a strong team spirit and company culture, the Brand Geeks Inc team have several engagement activities such as weekly huddle points, the awesome things of the week, games and creative days and the super-competitive zoom background competition.

When a company opens itself for remote talents, the opportunity to hire across borders automatically enlarges their potential talent pool. Qwork has been instrumental in assisting Brand Geeks Inc to build its remote team by consistently sourcing for talents from both Malaysia and Indonesia, that are multi-skilled, motivated and ready to work either for full-time positions or apprenticeships. Numerous apprentices have been absorbed as full-time team members after impressing during the apprenticeship.

It is true that a remote team is challenging because the team is not working from the same place and may not be working in close proximity. However, a remote team also has several benefits and is more effective in cost. To build a great collaboration among remote talents, it needs a combination of clear standards, good culture and behaviour, the right and effective system and great engagement. Managing a remote team is definitely challenging but done right, will be very rewarding for all parties.