5 Ways to Improve Communication When Your Team is Working Remotely

Many companies have been forced to quickly and thoroughly convert from a traditional office setting to have their entire team work remotely. The transition happened so quickly and without notice, leaving companies with no time to plan, manage, and assess best practices. While this change in working style impacts many things, it probably has affected how we communicate with each other the most. Junify has helped companies manage their remote workers for years. Through those relationships, we have assembled these 5 tips to improve communication between your team when working remotely.

Be Goal and Value Oriented

When we work in the office, we can share and communicate tasks and assignments quickly and easily. Asking for and giving clarifications are also simpler. When working remotely those become more difficult, and we often become inefficient or go down avenues that end up being a waste. By being goal and value-oriented, managers and staff can better apply their efforts and make decisions that end up helping each other and the company. Provide very clear goals, ask questions, and track performance to those goals regularly.

Use tools to help

Working remotely requires a different set of tools and/or the use of those tools more deeply in our work. Select the tools that fit your daily workflow and that your team has the training to use those tools. Communication, project tracking, and security tools are key to working remotely. The latter is something that many companies have not thought enough about as they have quickly moved to remote working environments. For example, more than 50% of all new remote workers are using personal computers or mobile devices in a way that company data is getting mixed with their personal data.

Proactively join the discussion and give feedback

Communication is a two-way street. Encourage and expect the team to get involved in discussions, ask questions, and to give feedback. Sometimes in an office environment someone’s presence is sufficient because of non-verbal communication. With remote working, that doesn’t happen. Even videos can sometimes be limited in this way. Take the time to develop a communication culture that involves everyone and expects that everyone gets involved.

Continue to Build Relationships

In the office and when working face-to-face, most people understand the value of relationships. Even when working remotely relationships and the trust, efficiency, and value that come with it are important. Perhaps even more so. So long as it doesn’t become a meaningful time drain, sharing some information to create a comfortable remote working environment can lead to better morale and productivity.

Respect each other’s personal time

When working remotely, our working hours get longer, and the boundaries between work and personal time get blurred. It can become easy to make requests or expect work gets completed during non-business hours. Before assigning a task, consider whether the task is urgent or if it would be handled during business hours if work was being conducted from an office. If so, make sure any communication on that task makes that clear.