For example, Donut is a plug-in that acts as your virtual water cooler, facilitating daily conversation prompts and virtual coffee meet-ups. Or, Polly can generate surveys, stand-ups, and social games for your remote team. Video conferencing tools like Zoom make it possible for teams to sit in a virtual room together and discuss their work in real-time. These platforms often have a chat component for side conversations or rolling questions as well as screen-sharing capability. Some also have features that lighten the mood, like filters and background replacement.
Set clear expectations
You and your remote team members are also likely to miss out on non-verbal cues, such as body language. This is a crucial part of communication, and misinterpreting someone’s approach can introduce tension and even affect productivity. When employees work from the same location, a lot of interactions happen organically — so-called “water cooler” moments. As mentioned, there are several key differences between managing remote and in-person teams — some of which are more obvious than others.
Miro users can link up with over 100 integrations, like Google Docs or Jira. Unlike many in-person workplaces, strict operating hours are not realistic in remote teams. If your employees feel like they’re on stand-by mode around the clock, this can eventually result in mental, emotional, and physical overload. To compound matters, some team members might be hesitant to say anything, under fear they’ll be accused of a lack of commitment. In this guide, we’ll help you navigate the transition, and understand how to manage a remote team more efficiently.
What are the main challenges of managing a remote team?
We know that developing a concrete strategy for remote collaboration — and committing to making it work — is no small feat. But following these best practices and ideas for collaboration in the workplace might make it a lot less painful. And there are plenty of benefits to remote work, including no commuting, saving money, and improved work-life balance. That said, new employees may find it more difficult to stay motivated and keep up with what others are working on. These factors can have a negative effect on productivity, belonging, and collaboration.
If you repeatedly set unrealistic expectations and overwork people, they will burn out. That being said, not everyone will have the time or role to participate in these cross-team interactions. Your team can then refer to the relevant resource to understand the current state of play, including guidelines or any planned changes. In this article, we’ve compiled the top expert-tested strategies and tips for building and maintaining strong collaboration in a remote work environment.
When you gather feedback on documents, consider if you want each team member to email you separately or if you want to use a tool that allows everyone to provide their feedback in one place. The latter can reduce duplicate comments and help spark collaborative ideas. It should be the responsibility of the entire team to collaborate constructively. So before pounding the panic button on an issue, go through the following steps to keep collaboration in the workplace productive and courteous. File-sharing tools let you access documents and data on a centralized, organized platform. Instead of emailing documents around or asking someone for a file, you simply search for and grab the information you need.
- In this article, we’ve compiled the top expert-tested strategies and tips for building and maintaining strong collaboration in a remote work environment.
- Team members can co-create vision boards, make quick prototypes, and plan work on an interactive whiteboard.
- To remedy this, leaders need to prioritize building a culture of effective remote collaboration.
- In terms of how you manage people remotely day to day, there are numerous best practices and approaches you can adopt.
When collaboration goes wrong, don’t panic
People who work on remote teams face communications challenges consistently. As more and more of our interactions happen digitally, we will continue to experience new forms of miscommunication and misunderstanding. The solution lies in building a skill set that reflects the demands of our digitally-driven age.
When you have strong company culture based on a sense of community and inclusiveness, it helps retain employees and promote teamwork. Effective remote communication systems will streamline how remote team members talk to each other and help team leaders expertly manage their teams. They also prevent the loss of information because everyone knows how and where to expect communications to occur. When communications are clear and reliable, trust is built, which is key for virtual collaboration. Google Workspace combines the power of Gmail with document storage, shareable calendars, and video calls — all in one suite of tools.
That’s why, according to a Harvard Business Review article, when we practice physical or social distancing, it’s important to reduce remote team collaboration affinity distancing (distancing around values, trust, and teamwork). In other words—even if your team can’t be physically near, it’s critical that their values align, that trust is maintained and built between people, and that teamwork remains strong. In this guide, we’ve detailed the most important elements of remote collaboration, plus outlined four ways you can improve collaboration within your team. You could send urgent team-wide updates to a group in Microsoft Teams, in an email, or through a conference call. Make sure employees know sensitive information will be shared with them in specific channels that allow for privacy when the situation calls for it, such as a one-on-one video call.
The success behind virtual teams: The ultimate guide
Remote teams should get the same opportunity to connect and catch up on topics related to their personal lives as office-based teams. Make sure people are protecting themselves, too; after all, it’s everyone’s responsibility to look after their own health. If you see that certain people are working long hours, frequently checking in during vacations, and constantly replying to messages during their downtime, you may need to step in. You can even integrate your video recording tool with AI software to create transcripts and identify the key points of the video. While the former creates visual and functional outlines for a website, the latter will be responsible for bringing it live.
Async communication doesn’t just make it easier to navigate time zone differences. It removes the need for all your team members to be online at the same time, which includes traditional working hours, too. This can have a massively positive impact on your team members’ work-life balance, allowing them to work at the times where they are most productive. Acknowledge stress as an unavoidable part of work, and encourage your team members to show vulnerability.