How to Integrate Remote Teams Across Cultures: 5 Tips for Success

In today’s world of working remotely, the key to integrate remote teams lies in promoting efficient teamwork between professionals from different countries. If you aim to make use of exceptional talent from around the world without any obstacles in multicultural collaboration, it is crucial to consider methods of fostering unity. Achieving success depends on your capability to identify the untapped abilities within your team and to actively create opportunities that allow those abilities to flourish and be utilized.

That’s why here I share five expert strategies for a successful integration, uncovering the secrets behind smooth collaboration, uncharted productivity, and global success. 

How to succeed at integrating cross-cultural remote developer teams in 5 key steps

1. Implement tailored onboarding for lasting success

Multicultural collaboration starts from the recruiting phase—the professional you’re onboarding into your team should understand the culture of your team and know how to navigate through the differences. This is a more likely scenario when you’re tapping into Latin America’s talent pool of developers, as these are usually more familiar with U.S. culture, customs, and even social trends. 

Having a strategy to assess the team members’ familiarity and experience with the culture from the recruiting phase is pivotal in guaranteeing a smooth integration. This includes the particular aspects of your company’s culture. These aspects are not easily assessed by the automated algorithms of staffing platforms. In fact, a recent study showed that evaluating cultural fit is the most challenging phase of recruitment, which is why at BEON we have a specialized team to assess each candidate’s cultural fit to the core before making a business-dev match.

Hot tip: When hiring a remote development team, include a unique assessment to see if candidates fit in with your company culture. Ask questions or present situations that are challenging yet common within your team to gauge their understanding and ability to adapt to different cultures. This helps you choose people who align well with your goal of managing cross-cultural remote teams effectively.

2. Create a career path strategy for a committed and motivated team

Knowing that their professional growth is valued and nurtured makes team members highly motivated. This motivation translates into increased engagement and dedication to their work, which is essential for team cohesion. Additionally, professionals are more likely to stay with an organization when they see a clear path for growth, and high retention rates are pivotal for a good team integration and long-term collaboration.

Finally, focusing on career paths provides an opportunity to identify skill gaps and areas for improvement. Skills development and training bridges knowledge gaps between teams and builds better coordination.

This is nicely exemplified by the Talent Experience Manager™ role, which are professionals that craft personalized growth plans aligned with the team members’ needs, strengths, and aspirations. This personalized approach is fundamental to career development within any organization.

 “Employees who believe that management is concerned about them as a whole person – not just an employee – are more productive, more satisfied, more fulfilled. Satisfied employees mean satisfied customers, which leads to profitability.” – Anne M. Mulcahy, former CEO of Xerox.

Hot tip: Improve your cross-cultural team’s performance by starting a mentorship program. Experienced team members will provide new members with clear guidance on potential career paths within the organization, creating a collaborative environment in cross-cultural teams.

3. Foster a strong work culture for powerful cross-cultural bonds 

When studying the most important challenges to integrate remote teams, a Statista survey found that 43% of respondents mentioned culture as one of the biggest difficulties. How can you foster strong multicultural collaboration based on good company culture? Let’s see three steps:

• Focus on values: Assess and define your company values, as these will vary depending on the nature of your business. These could be flexibility, visibility, proactiveness, or any other that represents what is expected of each professional on your team. Then, use all communication channels to help the team understand how they can manifest those values in their day-to-day work.
• Shared activities: Setting extracurricular activities is crucial to help team members know eachother better, learn to collaborate in a relaxed environment, and create long-lasting bonds that mitigate any differences that could’ve come up during work hours. 
• In-person activities: Having the remote team meet in-person can be extremely beneficial to foster a strong culture, high motivation, and commitment from each member. Also, it creates a sense of belonging and special shared memories that make teamwork performance increase exponentially. A good example of taking the lead on this matter is the creation of the Ambassadors’ Week—a special event where we gather our collaborators from across Latin America in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to enjoy tours, games, and bonding activities together, fostering motivation and teamwork. 

Hot tip: Promote cross-cultural learning with monthly “Culture Exchange” sessions. Team members share their culture, fostering understanding and camaraderie. This initiative builds stronger connections among team members, going beyond extracurricular activities.

4. Optimize communication channels for united cross-cultural teams

This can be achieved through a combination of instant messaging apps, video conferences, and collaboration tools. Going a step further, one strategy you may have not encountered before is the need to strike a balance between having enough channels to achieve effective communication and having a high number of tools that confuse and even create a learning curve for all new onboardings. 

The key to integrate remote teams in communication is in the consistency of processes, so that everyone knows what channel they will use at all times. For example, one team could consistently use Trello for tracking tasks, Google meets for conferencing, and Slack for questions and day-to-day interactions. While another team could use Jira for task tracing and voice calls for day-to-day communication. The importance is in the cohesion and stability of use of these tools. 

Hot tip: Create a clear plan for how your remote development team will communicate. Designate different tools for different tasks. For example, use Slack for quick questions and updates, and schedule Zoom meetings for longer discussions. Through this method, you will be managing software development teams clearly and efficiently.

5. Prioritize data security for robust multicultural collaboration

Security may not be the first thing that comes to mind when it comes to cross cultural team integration and multicultural collaboration. However, this step is crucial and overseeing it could bring unexpected issues. Different cultures and geographical areas have different norms when it comes to the protection of data and the importance they give to cyber security. Which is why it’s a vital step to make sure everyone on each team is on the same page when it comes to the protection and confidentiality of data. 

If your team comes from a staff augmentation partner, a good start is to assess their compliance with HIPAA and other data protection normatives that help you prevent any data breaches. As well as defining cyber security strategies that will be applied to your project from all endpoints of your team. A good company should prioritize compliance with the highest international standards of data protection policies by educating their team first, which is why data protection workshops like this one are so effective. Another useful tool is compliance support communication channels to provide immediate guidance to all professionals when any complex data security questions arise.

Hot tip: Improve your software team’s data security with regular cybersecurity coaching sessions. Teach the team about protecting data and make sure they understand security measures. This proactive approach lowers the chance of data breaches in your projects.

How to integrate remote teams for multicultural collaboration: key takeaways

In today’s globalized tech landscape, to integrate remote teams is an essential skill for companies looking to tap into a world of talent. Whether it’s about acquisitions, expanding to new markets, or fostering collaboration across borders, making remote teams work together seamlessly is a top priority. 

Starting the cultural match from the onboarding phase, focusing on the career path of developers, fostering a strong culture and prioritizing good communication and data security are key features when it comes to a strong team integration. 

Damian Wasserman

Damian is a passionate Computer Science Major who has worked on the development of state-of-the-art technology throughout his whole life. In 2018, Damian founded BEON.tech in partnership with Michel Cohen to provide elite Latin American talent to US businesses exclusively.