The Doist team makes some great points in their article Best Practices for Building and Managing a Remote Team, including something we’re embracing very strongly at Wildbit as well:
Managing a remote team effectively is not about monitoring the amount of time your team members spend online (in fact, that’s a great way to kill employee autonomy and motivation). It’s about building and supporting a team that doesn’t need to be micromanaged in the first place.
We wrote more about our approach to remote work here.