During 2020 & 2021 being able to manage a remote team effectively has probably become the most important skill that every team lead and manager needs to develop.
As an Award-winning Digital Newsroom, we found that it easier to manage our remote teams effectively while helping the team members become more collaborative and productive.
Al Jazeera Digital Newsroom started building mote teams before the pandemic, it was part of production optimization & budget utilization
As well the rise of cloud technology and improved communication and collaboration tools have allowed more and more teams to join the remote work movement.
Objectives:
Strategy 3C
(Communicate, Connect, Collaboration)
Most of our time on ZOOM! With remote teams, it’s nearly impossible to over-communicate. Since we aren’t all working together in an office setting, we don’t have the opportunity to collaborate in person, check in at each other’s desks, or chat in the break room to stay up to date.
Our Team is working daily to produce completing multimedia content for digital consumption, almost 600 posts daily across Al Jazeera social media outlets,
We can summarize our strategy & mission here:
COMMUNICATION: Prioritize effective communication to streamline workflows, build trust, and ensure accountability across the board.
CONNECTION: Establish clear expectations and boundaries so everyone is on the same page and can take ownership of their work.
CALLOBRATION: team members contributing to the conversation at different times of the day or week and following up on the work later. Try different tools and channels to see what works for your specific team based on workflows, goals, preferences, and personalities.
Put Technology into action:
Frame.io, the cloud-based video collaboration platform to review video production process
Asana, & Trello: project management tool, to set strategic goals and track progress in one place, build video production calendars, and monitor workload across projects
StoryHunter to hire freelancers & collaborators around the globe
Slack/ WhatsApp to manage daily communications
Zoom for videoconferencing
Google drive for Storage & sharing
Al Jazeera Digital Newsroom build an amazing model to manage and sustain remote production for daily video production, our network is expanding to cover more talents & produce more meaningful content to our loyal audience, serving more than 100 million fans across social media platforms
36 Team Members in Turkey managing all Creative output
35 Team Members in Egypt to manage huge input for Al-Jazeera social media platforms
6 Team Members in Sudan to cover local news & create local inspiring stories
12 Team Members in Syria to cover local news & create local inspiring stories
5 Team Members in Jordan to cover local news & create local inspiring stories
6 Team Members in Palestine to cover local news & create local inspiring stories
+ 120 independent contributors around the globe for digital media production projects
