How To Improve Collaboration For Remote Teams
Times have changed- so has changed the concept of work from office to flexible work environment. Working remotely from home has a ton of perks- no hassle of daily commutes, the ability to start work just after waking up without the need to dress up or to start work at your own flexible time. However, there is nothing without a downside, remote workers can attest to the fact that it is not easy to manage tasks at home. Aside from that, another issue is to effectively work with a hybrid team and enhance productivity. Coming from an office situation, it is difficult to imagine how it feels to collaborate with team members working remotely. Thus, the onus is on the directors and managers of workspace to discover a strategy that would enhance desired growth in their business.
If you have been conscripted into a team working in a competitive working environment, how can you enhance remote collaboration for more success?
What is remote collaboration?
Remote collaboration is collaborating virtually with the rest of the remote team members through digital tools, regardless of their geographical locations, towards a common goal. Without physical presence in the office, face-to-face contact, remote teams collaborate with each other using digital technology, work files, share ideas and communicate in real-time. This collaboration is very important between team members in several units of the organization. To enhance this benefit, managers need to ensure that all employees working remotely get on the same page.
Establishing Remote Team Rule
The manager of a remote team must establish specific team rules for working from home for a seamless functioning. These include:
- Working hours: Technically, all members of the team work from home and each employee would not start work at the same time. A degree of flexibility has to be encouraged so you can decide a specific time for a group meeting to assess their progress and also issue new instructions.
- Communication: Choose a suitable platform on which your team can collaborate and adhere to it to ensure adequate communication and passing across the right information.
- Be clear: Be extra cautious while sending any information to your remote team members. Try to present in simple language and be clear and precise.
- No unnecessary lengthy meeting: The idea is to get the work done efficiently, so as a manager while conducting sessions with your remote team respect others’ time and not discuss anything that is not needed. It saves the time and energy of both parties.
- Clear Goals and Objectives: Provide clear instruction about what your company expects from its remote employees. and how to work together to boost team productivity. The collaboration tools are of no benefit if company objectives and goals are not correctly shared.
- Support Each Other: It is easy to get distracted while working remotely as the employees drift apart. You should try and keep tabs on the team members individually and communicate with them to better understand their state of mind. Providing adequate support will foster a strong team.
Tools for Better Remote Collaboration and Workflow
The right tools are essential to remote team success—and many of these tools are different from what teams might have previously used in office.
Communication Tools: Virtual meeting tools such as Zoom, Skype, Google Meet or Microsoft Teams provide face-to-face team interactions.
Collaboration Tools: Use of online document editing tools, such as Google Docs allows team members to have the most current version of a document and allow collaborative editing.
Employee monitoring tool: This is a tool that helps to measure the productivity of your remote team members, keeps logs of their working hours and provides visual metrics that helps managers to assess each team member in a precise way.
Remote team success relies heavily on team collaboration. It poses a huge challenge in its establishment but the benefit lies in its ability to foster remote collaboration within a team and increase employee efficiency and productivity.
