5 ways for effective remote team collaboration in 2024
“Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships.” — Michael Jordan
The term collaboration means partnership. This term has assumed all-new significance of late. With offices switching over to completely remote work set-ups or hybrid workspaces, the need for effective collaboration among team members increases exponentially.
Furthermore, with many businesses like Hubspot and Amazon, offering permanent WFH to employees, it seems like working from physical office spaces would soon become a thing of the past.
Upwork estimates that 22% of the workforce (36.2 Million Americans) will work remotely by 2025.
Remote work offers a range of benefits such as increased focus and better work-life balance. Both employees and their organizations have a monumental advantage, however, it’s not as straightforward as it might seem. The lack of in-person interactions, face-to-face communication, and direct supervision can toss your team collaboration straight out of the window.
Poor collaboration can adversely impact your remote employees’ performance, efficiency, morale, and intra-team bonding. And wait, the worst sufferer is your company’s overall outcome. This is something no business owner or project manager would want that to happen.
The good news is that maintaining effective collaboration during remote work can be an easy and hassle-free task, provided you have the right skills and tools at your disposal.
What is remote team collaboration?
Remote team collaboration involves team members from different geographical locations working together with help from technology for communication and coordination. Remote team collaboration provides you the ability to incorporate wide talent into your team.
Since remote team members are separated physically with minimum interactions, the need for effective collaboration tools and techniques becomes prevalent. It is essential to keep the entire team members aware of updates and work together for the overall success of the project.
Benefits of remote collaboration
Remote collaboration increases the overall pool of talent you can source your team members from. In addition to the incredible talent, remote team collaboration also provides you with the following benefits.
- Lower overhead expenditure
Remote team eliminates expenditure related to physical office space. Since team members work from their workplace, you need not spend finances on office supplies, furniture, and other consumables.
- Large talent pool
Remote teams provide you with the ability to source your team members from all over the world. This provides you with access to a wide spectrum of talent. Since there is no limit to the location of your team members, you can select the best talent needed for your business.
- Quick scalability
While your business is growing, you can quickly hire new talent with ease. You can onboard team members from all across the globe. This means you can adapt and respond to the changing dynamics of the market quickly.
- Multiple perspectives
By onboarding team members from across the globe, you are able to gather multiple perspectives for your project work. This increases the creativity and innovation among your team members.
What are the challenges in remote collaboration?
Although remote collaboration provides you with multiple advantages, there are certain disadvantages too. The saying “Every coin has two sides” holds true here too.
The most common challenges include -
- Absent minded
Remote employees feel lonely at times. Absence of regular physical meetings can result in zoning out of employees. This can be noticed in the form of slow response during meetings or delayed response to important messages or calls.
- Distraction
The chances of distraction in remote workplaces increases tremendously. Such distractions could be in the form of pets, other people in your surroundings, and relentless scrolling on social media. Remote employees should differentiate office work from their household chores. This will ensure that you completely concentrate on your tasks during work hours.
- Technical issues
Remote working requires you to take care of your technical equipment yourself. You will not be able to get help from co-workers. Such instances can be stressful. As managers, you should ensure that you provide your team members with the necessary technical help to resolve such issues quickly.
How to improve remote team collaboration?
Now that we know the nitty-gritty details about remote team collaboration, let us look for methods to improve collaboration in remote teams.
- Use an efficient communication tool
Keeping all your team members on the same page is the key aspect that should be fulfilled for remote teams. Off-late there are a number of software and tools that can help you with the same. One such platform is ProofHub that provides you with built-in chat for quick messages. This ensures that you can manage your team members as well as share information, files, and updates with them on a single platform.
- Use a top-rated collaboration tool
The first thing you should do is make sure your distributed team is on the same platform. There has been a sharp increase in collaboration tools post COVID-19, mainly by businesses, to support both remote work and hybrid work environments. A powerful collaboration tool like ProofHub offers a suite of features in a centralized location to facilitate improved coordination among remote team members.
Here’s how ProofHub can help:
- Users get a wide range of collaboration features for Discussions, Notes sharing, and comments with @mention in a centralized location
- Users can access it from any device and location
- Offers integration with apps your team is already using
- File sharing, proofing, and approval in a single place
- Easy task and project tracking through Kanban boards, Gantt chart, Table view
- Track time spent on tasks and projects with inbuilt time-tracking software
- Send instant messages to share crucial information, files, and other documents.
- Set clear work-life boundaries
It’s easy to slip into overwork mode when working from home. The comfort of working from home minus the need to commute from point A to point B can prompt you to carry on working beyond scheduled work hours. As a result, your recreation time reduces, and you have less time for yourself and your near and dear ones.
Fatigue, stress, and potential burnout cannot be ruled out. Hence, you need to draw a clear, distinct line between work and your personal life, just like a typical day at the office. You are stepping in at 9 in the morning and walking out by 6 pm. Don’t pick up work-related calls, emails, and queries once you’re done with your work for the day.
- Celebrate small things
You should prioritize a certain time for virtual birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, or even informal conversation sessions. This will help to strengthen the team relationships and promote camaraderie among team members. You can also schedule virtual pizza parties or coffee conversations, which will help new team members familiarize themselves with all people. All in all, remote workers should not be made to feel overwhelmed, overworked, isolated, and disconnected.
A simple practical example of this is using the Announcement feature available in ProofHub to celebrate a special occasion. Be it a work anniversary, birthday, or any other celebration.
- Trust your team
High-trust companies experience 74% less stress and 50% more productivity. During remote work, some managers tend to check in with their teams too often, which can put off employees and affect their self-confidence, morale, and productivity. At the same time, employees also need to trust their employers.
Brooding suspicion in regular office spaces or distributed teams can lead to an increase in conflicts among team members or between employees and senior management, poor communication, missed deadlines, chronic indecisions, a dearth of sharing new ideas, and most importantly, a missing team spirit.
Wrapping up
More and more companies are opting for full-time remote work and hybrid work, which can impair inter-team and intra-team collaboration. This increases the importance of remote collaboration tools.
By keeping your team members on the same page, you can ensure smooth progression of projects and eliminate delays. Team members also feel comfortable working in such an environment without feeling lonely or left out.
With ProofHub you can ensure that your team members are all on the same page and build a closely connected team irrespective of their geographical location.
Stop juggling multiple tools and emails. Boost efficiency and focus on what matters most: getting things done. Try ProofHub Free!
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