Best practices for communication and collaboration in a remote team

You can’t just walk over to your colleagues at their desks to hash out the details of a task or project. Any written communication must be as clear and concise as possible — encourage team members to ask questions when they’re unsure about something and hold regular video meetings to catch up. But when managing remote https://remotemode.net/blog/10-best-remote-team-collaboration-practices/ teams, sharing information may not be as clear-cut as you’d like. That’s especially true if your team is international and spans multiple time zones or if you’re working asynchronously by default. The ultimate goals in effective team building are to allow organizations to thrive and individuals to truly shine.

• Switchboard enables a multiplayer experience, so everyone can scroll through key meeting material and read and collaborate on documents—all without changing the view for anyone else.
• Just use the resources you already have at your disposal, adapted to a remote setting.

Managers will need to lead by example and echo that this is not mandatory. By being strategic about how your team’s time is spent and how you all communicate, you can collaborate more effectively, even at a distance. First, use regular meetings to set vision, align roles, agree on goals, or do other creative and strategic discussions. You can work side by side through video on a shared product to ask questions and encourage productivity. Finally, carefully approach how and when you use messaging to ensure that you have time for focused work, while balancing team communication. Effective team collaboration is when people within an organization incorporate useful practices and common goals into their workflow to share knowledge and work toward team goals.

Real-Time Collaboration with Live Editing

Executives who understand this and are willing to pivot toward better options will have the best response from employees. Get feedback from employees and managers on what works and what doesn’t, then be willing to make changes. Continue to survey your employees at regular intervals to ensure policies and processes are still viable. Switchboard gives remote teams the virtual space they need for spontaneity, collaboration, and productivity.

Pick an employee’s brain to get their thoughts about a strategy or the company’s direction. It’s no longer cool (or culturally acceptable) to be a standoffish leader. If you have a good friend at another non-competing company that specializes in graphic design, consider asking him to do a 30-minute presentation to your team. Employees will feel more comfortable talking with you if they feel like you’re a champion in their corner (and you should be). Consider hosting 15-minute Slack conversations, or maybe do an old-school conference call every once in a while. Assist where you can, and ask the hard questions to get them to break out of their pandemic bubble and open up.

best practices to inspire productive team collaboration

Get an in-depth look at the dozens of communication tools available for remote teams. When the office sets proper hardware and software criteria, remote team collaboration occurs fluently. Daily communication is a vital part of developing organizational values and productivity. For instance, in remote team collaboration, you need to report your work and ask questions.

And it’s likely not something your boss or mentor has tons of experience with, either—it’s an emerging business phenomenon. Virtual meetings are online gatherings powered by specialized video conferencing software and meeting tools. They let dispersed teams scattered across different regions and time zones work together through video conferencing technology, without needing to meet in person.