The importance of inter-team communication is undeniable when running a business. Especially if you hire independent professionals, it’s becoming increasingly important to improve remote team communications. Keep reading to find out more about our list of 8 efficient remote team communication strategies, as well as our recommendations about some tools and platforms.
Why is communication important in a team?
There are many reasons why companies are leaning more towards updated and intuitive corporate communication strategies: Having a team that has healthy communication is extremely vital for the quality of the work. The feeling of connectedness can become the missing link in increasing the power of teamwork in your business, and ultimately boost your productivity.
The benefits of healthy communication in remote teams
In a 2020 research among 3,500 remote workers, over 20% of them claimed that their biggest issue was communicating with their coworkers. This shows that establishing a healthy line of communication in remote teams is extremely important.Without the existence of a healthy remote work collaboration strategy, your team can suffer from:
- Inefficiency in their remote work due to lack of healthy communication and collaboration options,
- Feeling of isolation and separation from the rest of the team
- Anxiety due to lack of feedback and approval from other team members,
- Inability to create a healthy work-life balance (for example, feeling like they have to be available 24/7),
- Difficulty in providing feedback timely and efficiently due to technical constraints like connectivity issues, time zone differences, etc.
To prevent such issues while managing a remote team, you should pay special attention to improving remote team communication efforts in your business. Keep reading to see our list of 8 tips that can help you get started.
How to establish effective communication in remote work groups
1. Decide on which tools to use
The first step in establishing communication strategies in your remote team is to decide on which tools to use.These team communication tools can help you streamline day-to-day communication, arrange meetings, reach consistency on collaborations, and more. Without using the proper tools, it becomes extremely and unnecessarily hard to manage tasks, communicate with your coworkers, or solve any problems that might come up timely and efficiently.It’s important to know a lot about your team when it comes to choosing the right communication tools. Make sure you can accommodate their personal needs, work routines, project and task types, communication styles, etc.Here is a small list of tool suggestions to help you get started:
- ClickUp is a robust team management tool that’s ideal for group members of all kinds. You’ll have a comprehensive dashboard from which you can manage tasks, documents, goals, and more. There are also a wide variety of automations and third-party integrations available.
- Miro is a collaborative whiteboard software with an infinite canvas that can help ensure efficient and clear communication. Tracking, managing, and brainstorming about team projects is extremely easy using Miro’s software. You can also integrate it with 100+ other integral team communication tools to improve efficiency, including the aforementioned software ClickUp.
- Kosy is specifically designed for remote communication, as a virtual space that serves as a remote office. You can create different rooms for specific projects and teams, and collaborate and bond at the same time. It is especially efficient for weekly team meetings and/or more relaxed brainstorming sessions.
- Airmeet is a virtual and/or hybrid event platform that can easily regulate your remote team communication. Its effortless interactivity options can help your team connect and easily collaborate at the same time. Especially with the options to create different booths and customize sessions, it’s great to use for larger meetings (such as company-wide workshops or conferences, managing freelancing workers, etc.).
(Important tip: Some of the above platforms are Ruul’s partners, and offer special discounts to Ruulers! You can too register to Ruul and receive weekly newsletters and exclusive offers from our partners.)
2. Create solid meeting schedules
With remote workers, freelance or otherwise, it’s also important to establish a solid schedule for communication, especially meetings. A carefully planned schedule will eliminate any possible miscommunication about their tasks.A solid timetable for meetings is also essential for organization’s sake. Your remote team communications can assuredly benefit from a clear-cut schedule –it’ll increase professionalism and help manage expectations on their part.
3. Avoid redundancy
Online meetings are a great way to check in with your staff and check on their progress. However, you can also be wasting your talents’ time if you’re having meetings more often than necessary. According to a research conducted by the World Economic Forum, over 33% of group meetings feel unproductive to all participants. This is a number that shouldn’t be taken lightly when it comes to managing a remote team and reaching for productivity.To solve this, you can conduct a company-wide analysis and eliminate the unnecessary meetings. You can also try dividing long meetings into parts and relieving talents who are not included in the project being discussed. Most important input in this case will belong to the workers themselves, so always be open to feedback.
4. Settle on communication norms
Establishing orders of importance is a must if you’re aiming for a smooth workflow. When you have clear cut norms regarding when and how to communicate for which purpose, your team can easily familiarize themselves with it and feel comfortable after a while. You will also be eliminating the added stress some workers might face about vague rules on communicating at work.Creating and utilizing dedicated channels for different purposes of communication is another very important part of this. For example, if you’re using a group communication tool like Slack, make sure that you have dedicated channels for different teams, projects, etc. that need to be separated.
5. Don’t micromanage
Although a solid meeting schedule and communication norms are definitely helpful, it’s equally important not to disrupt your team’s autonomy. There’s a very fine line between supervising and micromanaging, so make sure that you don’t cross it!Trying to dictate everyone’s actions will definitely make your staff feel underappreciated and more stressed in their work. Try to become more of a guiding voice instead. When it comes to remote communication in collaboration, you’ll see that your team will definitely thrive when they’re provided with more freedom and trust from you.
6. Make use of virtual team building activities
Creating a supportive climate in group communication is among the most important steps of remote team communication strategies. To ensure this, you can try virtual team building activities to strengthen your work relationships.Some recommended virtual activities to elevate your remote team communication are:
- A virtual happy hour for relaxed conversations
- A game night which can include icebreaker games
- Online trivia night
- Morning coffee meetings before work
- One-on-one meetings
- A weekly or biweekly virtual book club, etc.
7. Allow asynchronous communication whenever possible
Prioritizing live communication can be very stressful while working remotely, especially if you’re operating on different time zones. Trying to juggle work along with live video meetings has the potential to become a real time management issue. Which is why collaborating asynchronously is a real life changer when it comes to remote team communication.Asynchronous communication can be defined as all communication that doesn’t happen in real time. This gives your employees time to properly execute your requests and answer accordingly, prioritize tasks based on importance, and helps your team communicate via chat in a much more sensible manner. There’s no denying how much it can increase efficiency when implemented correctly.
8. Be open to feedback
And finally, make sure that you update your approach regularly based on feedback from talents. Remote team communication techniques can easily become outdated as your team members change, new and improved communication channels hit the market, etc. Which is why staying current on these topics can significantly help your teamwork.Feedbacks can improve not only professional communication, but the entire company as a whole. Surveys are one of the easiest ways to learn about your staff’s thoughts on your communication efforts, and update them accordingly.Now that you know how to establish a safe collaborative space for your remote team, it’s time to weigh your options and decide how to implement them into your business!
