Virtual Interactions in a Real World: How to Work from Home

Image by Mohamed Hassan from Pixabay

I have always been fascinated by virtual communication and interaction, and the notion of building genuine relationships through virtual means. Over 20 years ago, I started decoding our common social interactions, and experimenting with how to build virtual means to replicate such interactions. It is not something that comes naturally to most people. It’s something that we must learn.

The current context of COVID-19 has thrown many employees into the reality of remote work and relying solely on virtual interactions. Most people were not prepared for such a change. Whether or not you were already used to working remotely, you now have to cope with social isolation within your personal life. While the two issues might be related, this piece is not about fighting social isolation outside of the professional setting, but fighting it within. In this article, I have compiled a set of best practices that I’ve gathered over the years on how to interact and build relationships over virtual means. I will examine how as a member of a team, you can establish stronger relationships with your peers, with your manager, and if it applies, with your employees.

More specifically, this article will discuss the following subjects:

• Adapting to the challenges of remote work;
• The SSENSE digital workplace;
• Your digital presence.

Adapting to the Challenges of Remote Work

Working remotely within a team comes with challenges, here are some issues that you might face:

• Your written communication can be easily misinterpreted. This is something that you most probably experienced already, but you now have to improve on this skill—and fast—since written communication is one of your primary modes of communication. You will need to over-communicate, and be overly positive within your communication to ensure that your readers assume you are well intentioned.
• No more established social work breaks (coffee, smoking, and lunch) nor hallway conversations to chat and build friendly relationships. You will need to create a virtual space that enables casual chats; think Slack channels, group chats, etc.
• It's easier for people to avoid each other, unless you contact someone on purpose, they won’t know what’s up. A conflicting situation can get worse very fast. Your peers will need to learn to be candid with one another over video and chat.
• No one is beside you to ensure that you are not picking up bad habits. Whether it’s about keeping your focus, or not working all the time, it’s harder for your peers to know what’s happening within your home, unless you share the information.
• There are a lot of non-verbal cues that are lost in most virtual means of communication. Using rich communication mediums like audio and video calls is a good way to fight this. Using emojis and animated gifs are another positive way to cope with this issue.
• Technical issues joining online meetings might become persistent. It might feel like your first day in an office everyday, akin to having issues finding the right meeting room. You will have to master the use of virtual tools. Take time to learn them, and make sure they work properly before your first meeting in the morning. They are now your best friends.
• Genuine interactions are harder over audio and video calls or written communication. If in general you don’t like to share about yourself, you will need to conscientiously do it over and over to ensure that you expose yourself to your peers.
• Feeling part of the same team, and sharing a team culture can become challenging. You will need to create a space to share your team culture, and you can no longer rely on people observing and learning naturally.
• There are no improvised team events. You need to create a virtual event space to foster serendipity.

The SSENSE Digital Workplace

A digital workplace is the entirety of all virtual channels and their contents—built upon communication and collaboration tools. This includes all digital spaces where you can communicate, interact, chat, and exchange information and knowledge. These tools and spaces are now the common areas shared by you and your co-workers. Get to know these tools, and learn how you can use them to optimize your interactions.

As an example, here’s a summary of the components and tools we use in our SSENSE digital workplace:

Email: Used primarily for formal communication and general announcements, it serves as the tool used to collaborate with our external partners and internally for asynchronous communication. Be positive when you write emails and avoid keeping a neutral tone.

Slack: Our main use of Slack is for team communication. Every team has their own channel for daily team updates, chit-chat, fun, and silliness. It helps us keep in contact with our peers, ask questions, share know-how and any on-duty knowledge. Every project also has a channel for updates regarding the project. Use threads to keep the channel clean and update your status when possible. Feel free to use emojis liberally 👻. You can even play a bit of charades with them.

Google Meet: The main video-conference tool we use for virtual meetings. Ensure to have a functional headset and webcam. It’s always more welcoming when your webcam is on. As much as possible, try not to have two people speaking at the same time. Mute yourself when you are not speaking to avoid background noise interfering with the conversation.

Github: This is our main collaborative source control platform for our code bases, and how most developers interact with each other’s code. We also use it for technical documentation. Ensure you add positive and constructive feedback when reviewing code.

Jira: We use Jira for product management in a classic agile SCRUM methodology. This is the main way we track features to be worked on and bugs to fix. Use comments and be sure to mention (@) people in order to notify them.

Trello: Although we have Jira for product management, we often use Trello for small projects or initiatives that are not related to code. We use it extensively for meeting notes and follow-ups for small or one-on-one meetings.

Confluence and Google Drive: We use these tools for documentation purposes. Use comments and open editing rights as much as possible to ensure that people are inclined to participate and enrich current content instead of making copies of the documents.

Your Digital Presence

Who are you?

While younger generations have learned various social virtual codes and etiquette, these may not apply to what we consider a professional setting. Where is the line in between having fun with your friends on social media and your professional life? All of this may sound easy, but it isn’t. It undoubtedly depends on which team and which organization you find yourself in. Whatever setting you are in, if you want to build genuine relationships, you need to be open and allow yourself a certain level of vulnerability. Share your feelings. Start with something small like how you feel in the morning.

How to communicate

For some, team communication is the most intimidating part of working remotely. However, this will only be an issue if you let it become one. Make your presence be known, don't go invisible!

1. Get on the main chat channel:

• to chit-chat about work or personal state (*feeling sleepy*);
• build relationships with people! Being present and participating will build a relationship with your teammates. Entrusting yourself to your team will build a relationship that will last;

2. Update your status (mind/body) on chat at the start of the day, lunch break, and in the afternoon. Here are some examples:

• “Good morning, I’m feeling great today! :sunny: :rainbow:”
• “Working on X project”
• “Cooking Y meal for lunch”
• “Be back in a minute - coffee break!”

3. Speak up in team meetings and rituals, and ensure everyone has a chance to talk;

4. Talk about your current work in the chat

• What am I working on right now? (link the JIRA story);
• What do I have planned for the next milestone;

Share your work

Ensure everything you do is planned in your product management tool (Jira) and discussed with your team. Include tasks in your sprints with tangible content delivered. This will provide visibility on your work to your manager, but also to everyone in your team!

Set your profile

Ensure you set your profile picture in all your tools with your real picture. Using the same picture everywhere will allow people to recognize you across the different tools in your digital workplace. It’s the best way for your teammates to ensure they are speaking with the right person at any time.

Adjust your tool notifications settings

Set notifications setting appropriately to ensure you get the information about your tools in a way that suits you. It will also ensure you are reactive when people mention you on content within your digital workplace.

Conclusion

I hope you have found this article helpful, and that you will take away some nuggets of wisdom which might help you with the challenge of remote work. If there is only one thing that you should remember, it should be to ‘over-communicate’. This will create more opportunities to express yourself the way you intended, and set the odds in your favor. If you feel uncomfortable with some of my suggestions, start small, ask for feedback after changing something, and iterate on the result. Try to incorporate these changes in your routine. It’s not about doing it once, it’s about having a healthy flow. You are bound to fail in a few situations, but this is how we learn, and it’s fine. Stay safe.

Editorial reviews Deanna Chow, Liela Touré, & Prateek Sanyal.

Want to work with us? Click here to see all open positions at SSENSE!