Effective communication with your remote teams is almost close to impossible without proper virtual communication tools
How best do you keep remote workers engaged? This is a questions that on minds of many bosses in this modern era of working from home.
While it is perfectly possible for various companies to have basic knowledge on how to telecommunicte effectively, this doesn’t come about automatically. Moving from physically shared work station to virtual offices can be a challenge to most leaders.
What is remote communication? And what re the factors tht hinders it from effective usefulness?
What is Remote Communication
This is a way of passing information to others online. Trainings, meetings and information materialls are shared over the internet.
Around 56% of the companies have created virtual teams to whom they collaborate and communicate online while 44% fully relies on shared office space.
The companies which have incorporated the virtual teams experiences various hardships for a successful and effective remote communication. This is resulted by a number of reasons.
Obstacles to Remote Communication
With many forms of working at home taking place, business leaders have opted for remote communication though there are numerous challenges regarding the matter.
We’re going to highlight common remote communication challenges;
- Missing emotional and direct communication.
- Poor working environment
- Language barrier
- Operational distance
- Lack of training
- Physical distance
- Poor management
- Affinity distance
The challenges to remote communication are not going to be our business today however, let’s have a look on the strategies that can help perfect remote communication to be more effective.
Strategies for Remote Team Communication
- Decide which tools to use
Effective communication with your remote teams is almost close to impossible without proper virtual communication tools. This leaves us with the big question, which ones should we put in practice and why? While making the decision on the tools to use, it is important to keep in mind that various employees have different technical capabilities and knowledge.
To ensure successful remote communication, the first step should be to ensure that all employees at the desired levels of education have basic knowledge of operating these tools. This is important particularly if your institution or company has to adjust to the pandemic or sudden work remotely.
There are different educational sites offering courses that you could make available for your team members. These sites use online exam testing software to give tests and even issue certifications to prove that the employees have furthered their knowledge and skills in a particular field.
As a remote employer, you need to be mindful of hardware resources. For instance, not all employees may have and can operate Apple device hence providing Apple-centric devices before training may bring a huge setback to the the companies and some of the team members. Before settling for Apple-centric devices, it’s in order to brainstorm all the alternatives of Apple devices.
- Set up a support system for the team
Setting up the support system for processes and tools that your team uses is highly recommended. This will create a know-how base and frequently asked questions on how to set up and use the provided tools.
Most of the tools use their support system to assist with a self-help portal while others will use live chat features on their system as customer support. With all the provided support, you’d still love to supplement it by coming up with content that mainly focuses on your business use tools.
Publish the links and share the policy processes, procedures, and documents so that people can easily find them. It is highly recommended to automate your system processes such as applying for paid leave.
Setting up a single position of contact in the crew for coordinating any assistance the team members need. It is also a good idea to come up with a phone directory with everyone’s contact and residence details. Crete clear direction on who to contact and how and what to do in case of any emergency.
- Schedule team building activities
Remote employees can build stronger connections and interactions with one another through virtual team building. This can be done by offering an entirely new state of affairs in which employees can interact with one another.
Virtual team building allows employees to see one another from totally different angles and build strong remote teams hence improving workplace culture and communication.
You can easily plan and control virtual team events all from your employee’s email newsletters. Virtual team building may include launching multi-plyer gaming, virtual escape rooms, or trivia nights and also conducting an employee pulse survey to see the sorts of virtual events your employees are most interested in the most.
- Recognize your employees
Being certain to recognize all your employees can be difficult when you don’t physically see each other most days. But remember, that is the same reason it is so important.
Studies have indicated from time to time that remote employees are the most productive as compared to in-person employees. In most occasions, remote employees are not visible enough from as compared employees sitting in the office.
For that reason, CEOs, Managers, and other heads need to make a greater effort in recognizing their remote staff. Choose the best way out of the many available employee recognition ideas because for sure it uplifts employee working spirits.
- Organize remote team ‘lunch and learns’
As its name suggests, lunch and learns usually serve two purposes; for newbies, lunch and learns serve as an effective method for remote team building as it opens space for creative conversations. At the same time Lunch and learn helps in assisting your employees’ professional growth.
The best thing about this is that it can be scheduled to the need of your team members and viability.
For example, to keep things simple, the head of the marketing manager entire from each team member to at least find an interesting podcast or webinar on the topic of choice.
Like marry-go-round, each remote employee can host the lunch and learn and spearhead the discussion of their chosen topic. It allows your staff to take creative initiative and control while encouraging remote team idea-sharing and brainstorming.
- Streamline remote teamwork with collaboration tools
Remote team members work from different time zones and different locations and this can slow down team collaboration. Luckily, your interior communication crew can avoid this barrier with collaborative tools for creating content for instance google documents.
Every team member in your internal communications has a chance to make edits and see and accept others’ changes in real-time. The option of leaving a comment is available for your team s well, the same applies when using google documents.
By simplifying and streamlining the communications procedure, the remote communication tools make it easier for your internal communication members to keep remote employees informed.
Conclusion
The most important section of remote communication strategy is to understand that with the technological evolution, virtual communication is as effective as in-person meetings. As long as the involved parties can hear and see one another, and have empathy your remote team will become more dynamic and connected.
Press Release Distributed by The Express Wire
To view the original version on The Express Wire visit 6 Strategies for Remote Teams Communication
