How to Collaborate Effectively with a Remote Workforce

A Study conducted by Owl Labs has found 84% of UK businesses are planning on having a hybrid/remote workforce, this confirms the remote wave brought on by the pandemic is here to stay and therefore the need to collaborate effectively remotely will be imperative to your business’ success.

Communication is Key

Now that many of us are working remotely communication has become even more important, with many employees now working miles away from one and other its meant for a lot of us we’ve lost that organic communication that used to make working in the office feel very natural. Losing this spontaneity is what can make it difficult for some people to adapt to a remote work environment.

So how do we overcome this and make remote communicating with colleagues as effective as possible? Well, here are a few communication considerations that you should take to improve your businesses collaboration.

• Informal Online Chats/Meetings – Replicating the ‘lunch break chat’ by having one or two informal online meetings a week can be a great way to spark ideas and give colleagues a chance to let of some steam.
• Be Adaptable – There is no trait more suited to remote work than adaptability, what works for one team may not work for another and being able to keep an open mind and work around the specific team you’re in will make sharing ideas and communicating much easier.
• Don’t Spam – When communicating remotely there are a lot more channels to do so which is great, unfortunately having all these communication channels can sometimes become overwhelming. Trying to get on with work whilst having all your many communication channels pinging away with short (not always necessary) messages can become frustrating and make it hard to filter down the important communication from the not so important. Having a meeting or putting out one lengthy and in-depth message is a great way to avoid spam whilst still communicating clearly.
• Setting Clear Goals - Employees who are heading towards the same goal collaborate more effectively to reach it and having everyone on the same page from the start of a project will help save time. Hosting a long business wide meeting every month or so can be a great chance to set clear company goals and allows all teams to share ideas and come up with monthly plans.
• Video Calling – Email, chat boxes, and voice calls are great ways to communicate but no communication tool will feel quite as natural as video calling, being able to see your colleagues face to face is a great way to feel connected and is the closest thing we have too in person communication.
• Trust – Giving employees the freedom to create their own workflows and trusting them to be productive when working remotely is a must. Successfully managing hybrid workers requires you put forward a clear and in-depth plan/goal and then allowing your workforce to manage their own time and check in when it’s truly necessary. Attempting to micromanage a remote workforce can lead to communication channels becoming overwhelmed and employees feeling untrusted, in turn lowering productivity and motivation.

The Right Tools for the Job

Whilst implementing the ideas and tips we’ve mentioned above is a great way to go about increasing remote communication, without the right tools your remote workforce won’t physically have the means to work as productively as they would in office. We’re going to go through some of the main applications used to make remote collaboration possible.

Teams

Microsoft Teams is Microsoft’s fastest growing product ever, and for good reason. Teams is an audio, video, and chat-based collaboration platform and comes part of the Microsoft 365 package. Since the start of the pandemic Teams has gained an exponential amount of traction going from an average daily user count of 13 million in 2019, to a staggering 150 million by mid-2021. This spike doesn’t come without good reason, Teams has bridged the gap between in office and remote work by giving businesses a place to virtually create teams, speak with colleagues and host meetings all under one application that can be accessed from anywhere with internet.

In a recent Harvard Business Review, they found that whilst remote communication is streamlined, and communication channels are easier to access a problem still arises. That problem being interpretation, body language is a key part of human communication and without it we can never truly know what emotion a certain message is trying to convey. Video chat is a key feature of Teams and allows up to 20 participants to partake in a video call, this is a must have collaborative tool that allows colleagues to interact in the most human way possible and leaves no room for misinterpretation.

OneDrive

OneDrive provides secure cloud storage that can be access from any device by any end user that is given permission making file sharing and storage easier than ever. Cloud storage alone is a great tool, but we believe what really makes OneDrive a collaborative necessity, is the ability to give other team members, or collaborative partners, the right to edit any of your teams Microsoft documents in real time. For example, this means you could be writing a report and at the same time another team member, or partner could add to the report in front of your eyes, from anywhere, on any device. This cuts out any need to tediously send documents back and forth and enables you and your team to quite literally all be on the same page when working on a document remotely.

We Make Remote Collaboration Easy

If you have a remote workforce, the ability to collaborate effectively will be a key factor of business success. We’ve given an insight into some of the ways you can increase your business collaboration, from communicating more effectively through consistent informal ‘chats’, to implementing the right tools like Microsoft Teams and OneDrive which are crucial to running a remote workforce successful.

Do you feel your business doesn’t have the time or facilities to focus on overhauling their IT infrastructure? If so, you’re not alone, other businesses experience the same issues and that’s why many partner with a reliable MSP like ourselves that deal with all implementations and take away any concerns working as part of a remote workforce may bring.

Having kept a countless number of people collaborating throughout the pandemic and with more than 15 years of IT experience the entrust IT group could be the partners your business need. If you feel ready to take the first step towards a better remote workforce or just want to learn more, please feel free to get in touch on 0330 002 0045 or email enquiries@entrustit.co.uk.