BLOG |
HR Insight
Published:
June 9, 2026
Last updated:
June 8, 2026
Over the past few years, the working location landscape has changed. The growing remote workforce has enabled distributed workforce to emerge. From the Gallup 2022 survey, 8 out of 10 people work remotely or in hybrid mode, while only 2 out of 10 work full-time on-site.
Distributed workforce achieves revenue growth and gains market share quicker than competitors who do not do so. However, building a distributed team can be very challenging without a proper approach and best practices in place.
AYP is a leading example of future work. We have assisted our clients in expanding to over 17 countries compliantly, we also allow our employees to work from anywhere with candidates from multiple cities and countries joining our company every month.
In this article, we’ll discuss how we set goals and expectations with clear communication channels that help us all stay united and build trust in reaching the same vision while upholding a strong team culture that encourages our employees to feel connected and take ownership in various locations.
One of the greatest concerns in managing a distributed team will be performance measurement and evaluating all team members’ contributions fairly.
Since a distributed workforce operates in various locations and could work separately in a remote work setting, evaluating employee performance without micromanaging can be challenging.
AYP will suggest setting a clear, transparent, focused, and flexible performance measurement metric system. In AYP, we practice the OKR (objective key results) setting.
According to Harvard Business Review, instead of emphasizing the tasks delivering value, the strength of OKRs lies in de-emphasizing specific tasks.
Objectives are given by the company to provide qualitative and high-level inspirational goals. However, employees will determine the key results to measure the quantifiable outcomes, often used to measure their success in reaching the company’s objectives.
In such a way, employees take ownership of setting the stretch goals they want to achieve instead of being managed passively.
Interested to know more about how we measure performance effectively? Speak to our HR experts to learn more.
Virtual collaboration tools:
Online collaboration tools must be in place to allow employees in different time zones to access information, interact, leave notes, and find documents quickly. In AYP, we are using Confluence along with Google Drive.
Google Drive is a valuable tool for external sharing and storing documents in folders. On the other hand, Confluence is useful in creating pages and organizing documentation as the office’s intranet:
Apart from project management tools, communication tools are essential to keep the team connected worldwide. In AYP, we use Slack as a communication platform:
Working from home or even work from anywhere job description advertising headlines have gained substantial traction in recent years.
One example is Airbnb’s announcement about working from anywhere, including other countries, which led the company’s career page to be viewed more than 800,000 times after the announcement.
According to a pulse survey in 2022, with 10,646 knowledge workers across 6 countries, 94% want more flexibility in “when” compared to 80% in “where” they work.
In AYP, apart from the flexible work culture of letting employees work from anywhere during their WFH days, we encourage our employees to embrace a growth mindset and view challenges as opportunities for growth and improvement, as shared by Jolin, the Managing Director of AYP.
Although clear expectations and goals are set, we allow our remote team members to be flexible and take ownership of how they want to achieve instead of how many work hours they have worked, promoting innovation and creativity.
As shared in our approach in setting OKR earlier, they are given the autonomy to set the key results they intend to achieve by the end of each quarter.
By working out an individual 13th week plan, remote workers can stay focused on their action plan, take the initiative, become the leader of their work, and evaluate their achievements every quarter, regardless of where they are located.
“Stay committed to your decisions, but stay flexible in your approach,” Tony Robbins.
Although AYP’s employees work all over different countries, we understand a great team culture can only be complete with human interaction.
Therefore, we have organized regional gatherings and team-building activities where our management team will make an effort to visit all our employees in different cities from time to time.
Regional gatherings enable face-to-face interactions, fostering a sense of belonging and camaraderie. Team building activities promote collaboration, trust, and communication among remote team members, enhancing engagement and morale.
Distributed workforce can often feel disconnected, leading to reduced engagement and productivity. By creating opportunities for personal connections and team bonding, we can cultivate a sense of unity, improve collaboration, and ultimately boost engagement within the distributed workforce, shared Jolin.
We practice one-on-one meetings with our direct reports to let them share ideas, concerns, and feedback comfortably because we understand the challenges of managing remote teams where all members work in isolated workplaces.
We also encourage collaboration that fosters a culture of teamwork, where employees can work together, share ideas, and support each other in different brainstorming and strategy workshops, leading to increased adaptability and flexibility within the organization.
Hiring talents from anywhere using the same employment contract across different countries isn’t a compliant way to do so. In this case, engaging an EOR (Employer of record) can help you expand confidently in a lawful way.
Build a great and strong distributed workforce by consulting our Experts on how to do so!
Follow us on LinkedIn to get more guides and industry updates.
A distributed team is one where employees work from different locations — different cities, countries, or time zones — as a permanent operating model, not a temporary arrangement. A remote team may be composed of employees from a single base company who work from home. Distributed teams, by contrast, are often composed of employees in multiple countries under potentially different employment relationships, legal frameworks, and time zones. For the strategic case for distributed teams, see our guide on global workforce strategy.
The main challenges are: time zone misalignment (APAC spans UTC+5 to UTC+12, creating overlap windows of 2–4 hours for teams spanning the full region), communication and cultural differences (communication norms, conflict resolution styles, and hierarchy expectations vary significantly across APAC), compliance complexity (each country has different employment laws, payroll requirements, and statutory benefits), and maintaining team cohesion without regular in-person contact. Companies that don't address these deliberately see higher attrition and lower productivity in distributed teams.
Effective distributed team communication relies on: choosing asynchronous as the default mode (not expecting real-time responses from different time zones), documenting decisions in shared systems (not just in meetings or chat threads that can be missed), standardizing communication tools (one messaging platform, one video conferencing tool, one project management system), and creating regular structured touchpoints (weekly team calls during overlap hours, monthly all-hands, quarterly in-person gatherings when possible). Over-reliance on synchronous communication is one of the most common failure modes for distributed teams.
Each team member employed in a different country requires country-specific employment compliance: locally compliant employment contracts, enrollment in mandatory social insurance schemes, payroll processed in local currency with correct statutory deductions, leave entitlements per local law, and termination handled according to local labor code. For a full picture of what this involves, see compliance challenges in hiring employees in Asia. Using an Employer of Record ensures each team member is compliantly employed in their country without the client company managing five separate HR and legal operations.
Culture in distributed teams requires intentional investment. Effective practices include: virtual onboarding that includes cultural integration alongside role-specific training (see our guide to best employee onboarding practices), regular informal touchpoints (virtual coffee chats, team social events), recognition programmes that work asynchronously, clear documentation of team values and working norms, and annual or semi-annual in-person gatherings for teams that can afford them.
Productivity tools for distributed teams include: Slack or Teams for asynchronous messaging, Zoom or Google Meet for video collaboration, Notion or Confluence for documentation, and Asana, Linear, or Jira for project management. For compliance, a global HRIS that supports multi-country payroll and statutory tracking is essential. Time zone management tools (World Time Buddy, Clockify) help schedule meetings during overlap hours. An EOR platform handles payroll, contract generation, and statutory compliance across countries.
An Employer of Record enables companies to hire distributed team members in any APAC country without setting up local entities. The EOR handles the local employer-of-record function — employment contracts, payroll, statutory contributions, leave management, and termination — in each country. The client company focuses on managing the work and the team, while the EOR manages the employment compliance layer. This is particularly valuable for distributed teams spanning 3+ countries, where the compliance complexity would otherwise require dedicated in-country HR resources.
