How to Collaborate Effectively With a Remote-Working Team

As a result of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, businesses around the world have been forced to shut down their offices and ask their team members to work from home in the interests of their health and to prevent the spread of the virus. However, ensuring your team remain on task throughout the day can be difficult without physical communication, therefore, it’s important that business owners put the correct strategies in place to ensure their workforce can work remotely without difficulty.

This guide will provide a list of useful tips on how your team can collaborate effectively while working remotely.

Reduce the number of meetings

While you may feel the need to hold regular meetings to make up for lost contact time in the office, it wouldn’t be a wise move to do so daily. Constantly asking for meetings can hinder your team’s productivity and waste time, which over time will significantly impact your business income. Therefore, ensure meetings are only held as and when necessary, and if an employee needs to speak to you, ask them to contact you directly.

Hire a professional IT service
If you have never asked your team to work remotely before, it would be wise to seek the assistance of a professional IT company to give you help and advice on how to ensure you have the basics in place. You should hire a Kansas City IT support company to take care of the vital aspects of remote working, including the following:

Ensure clear communication
You must be able to maintain a steady flow of communication between yourself and your team members while working remotely in order to ensure that tasks are completed effectively and by the required deadline. Here are just a few tips on improving communication with your workforce:

Provide your team with the correct tools and software

Maintaining productivity is key when your team is working remotely, therefore, it’s important to research the best tools and platforms that align to your company’s targets and allow you to communicate efficiently. Some of the key tools to take into consideration for remote working include:

  • Zoom
  • Slack
  • G Suite
  • Microsoft Teams
  • Trello

However, do be aware not to overwhelm your team with messages as this can become overwhelming, therefore choose your platform wisely so that you get the quickest response, without having to constantly ask whether the employee received your previous message.

Clearly define team schedules

If your workforce is based around the world, you need to ensure that you have analyzed the team schedules so that you’re able to communicate when necessary. Some aspects to consider include:

About the author

Anand Narayanaswamy

Anand is a seasoned journalist with over 15 years of experience in technology reporting. He holds a Master's degree in Computer Science and has worked with several leading tech publications. Anand oversees the editorial direction of The Hoops News, ensuring that the content meets the highest standards of journalism. In his free time, he enjoys reading about quantum computing and playing chess.