The pros and cons of remote teams
It’s been said communication is the ‘oxygen of a distributed company’. What a good analogy, because working remotely, you must have good communication strategies to survive and thrive.
Think about all the ways office-based teams interact with each other: there’s traditional meetings, brainstorming around a whiteboard, popping into someone’s office to ask a quick question, hashing out a tricky problem one-on-one over lunch, catching up in the break room, and many other small ways coworkers bond and interact with each other.
The question is, how do you communicate when your team is halfway across the world? Remote work can lack the in-person aspect, which means communication can become a lot harder. To avoid communication disasters between team members because of geographical distances, you need to put in a lot of extra effort, especially when it comes to transparency.
How to avoid communication disasters when working remotely
With the help of today’s technology, it’s not something that’s impossible to conquer. Within our team we use Slack for quick questions, saying our hi / hellos as well as announcements within the organisation. Also, you can always hop on a video call for longer discussions in Skype or Zoom, where sending a typed message is not as effective. This also helps to save time, instead of waiting for typed answers and trying to interpret them.
There’s nothing better than real time and real life interactions between your team. You need to ensure your technology and connections are failsafe when working remotely. We have all had the experiences where a Zoom call has cut out at the most important moment, or someone is unfamiliar of setting up a call and it takes an additional 15 minutes. A good internet provider and connection is critical for remote workers as it can have a negative effect on everyone else if it all suddenly fails.
These are the best tips to overcome communication problems when working remotely:
- Be open and honest
- Work towards a solution and avoid blaming others
- Continue to use technology and innovative tools to ensure that no matter where we are located, we can stay in touch and feel as if we are actually working right next to each other
- Build trust and confidence with your team
- Get the best internet solution
Out of all of the tips from above, working remotely definitely needs a lot of trust. Trust means confidence in your team and what you’re doing. Confidence and personal investment in what you’re doing means increased loyalty with your staff, which equals a win-win situation for the employer and employee.
To find out more about HTG and what they value, visit the why join page.