If you can ensure that these two teams communicate freely and openly, you’ll make sure that there aren’t any hidden biases or that these teams function in siloed environments. To understand how far transparency goes in cross-team communication, imagine the various areas where the work of a design and software development team can overlap. This echoes the point about setting clear expectations — but from both sides.
This removes a lot of pressure, as no one is expecting to get an instant response. Drive clarity and impact at scale by connecting work and workflows to company-wide goals.
Make sure that, during the hiring process, you assess your candidates’ suitability for remote work and their ability to be flexible and adaptable. Remote working can require different skills and isn’t necessarily for everyone, so give yourself the best possible chance by hiring the right people from the start. In the case of the former, this challenge can be amplified if you offer a hybrid work arrangement. Your hybrid employees may — subconsciously or otherwise — favor those colleagues who they interact with in real life, resulting in silos.
Also, acknowledge what’s hard and work with your team to gracefully get through it. Simply acknowledging that fact and redefining what your days look like—and how you interact with your team and colleagues—can be empowering. These kinds of exercises sometimes get a bad rap, but they’re proven to increase creativity and team cohesion, and can measurably improve performance.
What is asynchronous communication?
You can make sure your process is easy to access by pinning it to the relevant channel, or even by setting up custom responses so your team can quickly find the correct way of doing things. And without the ease of stopping by to clarify with your colleagues, it’s easy for bad habits and sloppy workarounds to become ingrained. “When people are able to reference a document that shows the workflow channels, to have the work-back schedule, it gives them a very clear directive,” said Brochhausen. According to our recent report on Australian knowledge workers, 1 in 2 professionals would prefer to work entirely from home or split their time between the workplace and home via a hybrid model. Some leaders are so focused on delivering results that they forget about those who actually deliver them.
Bryant Galindo is the Founder of CollabsHQ and a mediator, consultant, and trainer who works with large-scale organizations and startups in conflict resolution, online training, and leadership development. He reiterates the importance of developing processes that serve your team and only introducing tools to further streamline those practices. The term remote team collaboration remote collaboration refers to how an organization works together among disparate locations. Approaches can include any processes, tools, and general work culture that a company implements to maintain a feeling of connectedness and to drive results. Everyone on your team is trying to be effective, together—even if we’re all practicing social distancing to varying degrees. Follow the four tips above to learn how to collaborate effectively if your team is remote so you can connect more frequently (even if it’s different than you would in an office).
- When done well, virtual collaboration can produce new ideas and innovative solutions that can meet or even surpass business objectives.
- Bryant Galindo is the Founder of CollabsHQ and a mediator, consultant, and trainer who works with large-scale organizations and startups in conflict resolution, online training, and leadership development.
- Everything you contribute is adding to or subtracting from your own value as a good colleague.
- This echoes the point about setting clear expectations — but from both sides.
- Done wrong, collaborative projects can feel like a waste of time where individuals spend more time talking about doing things than actually getting things done.
- And it combines several features you likely already use, making it a great option for cohesive and easy collaboration.
Centralize information sharing
The subject of managing remote teams is a fluid one, with new research, best practices, and thought leadership emerging all the time. This leadership style emphasizes open communication, collective problem-solving, and shared decision-making, which not only enhances transparency but also boosts team members’ engagement and accountability. It boasts AI-assisted writing and notetaking, templates that facilitate planning, and document-sharing features. Notion supports whatever way a group works, whether it practices Agile, plans with Gantt charts, or prefers more lightweight project planning like simple to-do lists. If you want to learn more about creating a shared language of trust in your workplace, check out Remote Connect’s session with Charles Feltman. Charles shares some great tips on how to build trust and respect, and mediate conflict in remote teams.
When Jacobs, an engineering services company, wanted to find a better solution to organize resources that were spread out across multiple platforms, they turned to Mural. Jacobs credits Mural with streamlining their workflows and creating a faster onboarding process. With a thorough knowledge base available, employees can get the answers they need without having to search extensively to find them or ask someone else. This saves time for employees, reduces confusion, and helps everyone stay aligned.
best collaboration tools to level up remote teamwork
Everyone can send instant messages, create group chats and channels, and attach images and documents. Slack is also searchable, so you can quickly locate messages on a particular topic or previously shared files. Overall, this tool is a great way for remote teams to collaborate without the potential waiting period of email. Strong remote collaboration depends on reliable communication, repeatable processes, and tools that stimulate creative collaborative work.
Managing remote teams: best practices and expert insights
Successful remote collaboration can also improve team creativity, as it gives individuals the space to think outside the box, while preserving the support system of the team. The newfound creativity helps teams tackle projects in fresh ways; it can also manifest in brainstorming, problem solving, and building novel workarounds for old issues. Teams need to be able to work together to brainstorm, complete projects, and achieve their goals, no matter where they’re located. Both face-to-face and remote employees need team-building — it helps build trust and respect and instill your company’s work culture.
Files, documents, training materials, and more can all be found in a single place. They needed a tool that would provide them with a shared workspace for cross-functional collaboration, where they could do highly visual work no matter where they were located. Remote collaboration is the process of working together with a team from different locations, using technology to communicate and coordinate team efforts.