Businesses and companies are storming into a new world of remote working as the impact of Corona virus takes effect. If your business is one that’s usually bricks and mortar serving customers or working in an office environment, you’ll find yourself now having to adjust to the working home life. While calling colleagues on a good old-fashioned phone can be good, there plenty of other ways of staying connecting with others that can be more personal or communicate in a different way. Not only can it help you work well with your team, but tuning into each other when remote working can build rapport and show support for your colleagues during a challenging time.
Here’s some simple tips to help with communicating and working together as a remote working team:
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Provide a quick update – or just let off steam
Not being beside each other in the office means it’s not so easy to see what each other is doing. Check in with your staff either at the start or end of the day to let them know what you’re working on or send a quick email. It’ll help to see where you’re working on collaborative tasks, help see what each person is doing or to let each other know about any issues you’re having with to talk them through. We’re not talking micro-managing here, but providing an update will keep you in touch about the progress of projects and talk through issues.
Have a weekly conference call
Whether it’s Zoom, Pow Wow Now or Go To Meeting, you can have a weekly virtual meeting to catch up. You can either do this through video or conference call only. It’s simple to set up a meeting, providing a password for everyone to sign in by telephone or laptop.
Set up a water cooler chat
Rather than having the usual banter on your morning coffee break, you obviously can’t have that in your remote working life. Aside from picking up the phone, you could set up a topic of the day through your company intranet or a secure messaging system. This can help to encourage chat outside of work to encourage your team members to connect and share. You could use a project and messaging tool like Slack or Asana to set up a water cooler board, too. Provide a topic of the day or create a resource (appropriate, of course) that encourages team engagement or chat.
Instant messaging
Rather than having the usual banter on your morning coffee break, you obviously can’t have that in your remote working life. Aside from picking up the phone, you could set up a topic of the day through your company intranet or a secure messaging system. This can help to encourage chat outside of work to encourage your team members to connect and share. You could use a project and messaging tool like Slack or Asana to set up a water cooler board, too. Provide a topic of the day or create a resource (appropriate, of course) that encourages team engagement or chat.
Catch up with an old friend
You don’t always have to connect with your colleagues. When you’re on a break or you feel yourself flagging, the time remote working could be the perfect time to call that old friend you’ve been meaning to get in touch with for ages. Good old-fashioned calling can sometimes be the best way. If you’re feeling it’s hard to work alone, you could always call a colleague you get on with to share how you’re feeling. It’ll make you feel ten times better.
Video Call
Being able to see the person you’re speaking to can make an incredible difference. As people, we crave human interaction and right now, a video call with a family member, colleague or friend can be so much more meaningful than a telephone call. So why not set up a video call using Facebook Messenger, Skype or What’s App with a friend or colleague?
Connect with kindness and patience
This is a tough time for everyone and all of our remote working experiences are each going to be very different. It’s important to remember that some colleagues will have their children at home, some will have older family members to take care of or other challenges. This is bound to have an impact on your colleague and they may not be their usual, prompt self. Practice a little extra patients and kindness, showing empathy with your colleagues, which will help with ded pressures. That means it’ll help
We’re going to be remote working for a while, so connecting with others is more important than ever. Kindness, compassion and thoughtfulness for one another can help to make lives that much easier to connect and work to get things done.
