Join Digital Nomads and Remote Workers to Ask Questions, Share Experiences, Find Remote Jobs and Seek Recommendations.

13 Ways To Improve Remote Team Collaboration

A distributed team isn’t a new concept, but today’s workforce is busier than ever. Members of these teams often must work alone or in remote locations, and team members are forced to rely only on email and phone calls to collaborate. While this may work for some short-term projects, it is much more difficult for teams to work together on a regular basis.

Remote teams differ greatly from teams in the same physical location. Differences include the fact that most remote teams share technologies, tools, and resources. Also, members of a remote team typically work in different time zones (and are usually located in different parts of the world). In addition to their differences, remote teams address a range of challenges. Challenges such as how to find team members geographically dispersed and how to solve communication issues.

Today, many virtual teams use online collaboration tools to stay connected and share information. These tools offer many benefits, such as improved project management, cost control, and project visibility. Unfortunately, remote collaboration efforts often fall short of their full potential. To maximize your team’s productivity, here are some tips.

Keep The Meetings Small

One of the things that remote workers struggle with is maintaining a sense of connection and comradery. In the traditional office setting, it’s easy to run into your colleagues for a quick chat, or maybe just a quick laugh. The tiny office setting in remote work can leave remote workers feeling isolated and disconnected. But by reserving meeting rooms for social gatherings, remote workers can alleviate this problem. If small groups of remote workers get together regularly, it helps foster feelings of teamwork and camaraderie among the group.

Consider Implementing Slack

Remote work is a growing phenomenon in most industries and companies. With the technology available today, communication between employees is easier than ever. Slack, in particular, is a collaboration tool that allows teams to communicate and work together while allowing employees to have more control over their quality of work.

Use Visualization Tools

Visualization tools allow remote workers to more effectively communicate and collaborate with one another. These technology tools enhance remote work by allowing remote workers to virtually “see” each other. Remote workers can share ideas, thoughts, and information without meeting in person.

Reward Employees for Attending Meetings

Being present at a meeting is important for remote workers – especially employees who work from the comfort of their own home. The benefits of remote work can be numerous, but one of the most important is the opportunity for employees to work at their own pace and be their own boss.

However, sometimes not attending these meetings can be detrimental to that, as it means they’re not taking full advantage of all the advantages remote work has to offer. An employee will miss the camaraderie of being in a meeting, and it can also mean that they’re missing important updates or information about the work that they’re doing. Therefore, companies need to reward employees for attending meetings.

Schedule Weekly Meetings

Remote work can be hectic. With work piling up, it’s common for remote workers to forget to (or be unable to) meet their deadlines. A weekly meeting can help remote workers stay on top of their projects. This is especially important in remote work because it’s easy to lose focus when you’re working remotely. Whereas in an office, co-workers and supervisors are often around to remind each other of their tasks.

Have A Private Chat Room

Private Chat room are important when working remotely. Remote workers frequently use tools such as Slack and Zoom to keep in contact with co-workers. Private chat rooms are available on nearly every platform. They allow workers to discuss work issues in private, without coworkers seeing the conversation.

Identify Key Team Members and Communicate Expectations

Remote work can be both a blessing and a curse, depending on the business/team dynamics. It is important to identify key team members, and to communicate expectations to ensure success. Identifying key team members can be difficult for remote workers but setting aside time to talk and plan can ease the transition. Communication between team members is key, and it is important to set expectations, as well as monitor behavior.

Review Team Project Goals and Progress

When you work remotely, it’s important to review goals and the progress your team has made, and to set new goals for the following week. This keeps you on track and ensures that you and your team are progressing on your projects and goals.

Assign Clear Tasks, Deadlines, and Roles

Clear tasks, deadlines, and roles are important for remote work. When working from home, it is easy to lose track of time and lose track of what you need to get done. Making the tasks you have clear, deadlines, and roles will help employees stay on track.

Create a Collaborative Workspace

The main reason to create a collaborative workspace is that, remote work requires everyone to be on the same page. You need to ensure that everybody is on the same page, working towards the same goal. This requires you to have an efficient communication tool, where everybody can be on the same page. The most effective way of doing this is by creating a collaborative workspace. Collaborative workspaces create multiple channels for people to communicate with each other.

Share Documents and Feedback

Remote workers need to maintain strong communication skills and work effectively with teammates. Sharing documents and feedback is one of the essential skills that remote workers need. Sharing documents enables remote workers to not only share information, but to get feedback from their coworkers. In this way, they can work together better, maintain efficiency, and improve performance.

Foster a Culture of Collaboration

To foster a culture of collaboration, it’s important to have one on ones, have regular meetings, and to keep the rest of the team in the loop. Work for an organization where everyone is on the same page. For example, if you’re developing a product, make sure everyone is on the same page regarding design specs, user stories and estimates to avoid confusion.

Use Collaborative Applications

If you are considering working remotely, shared applications are a must. Collaborative apps allow you and your co-workers to work together on documents, spreadsheets, presentations and other works, regardless of where you or your workmates are located. These tools enable companies to not only scale but improve communication and create efficiencies.

Summary

In conclusion, remote work and collaboration is becoming increasingly popular, especially now with technology at our fingertips. With today’s tools, organizations don’t have to call each other on opposite sides of the world to have meetings or to communicate. And with the increased use of videoconferencing, remote workers have more opportunities to connect with their co-workers and supervisors. It’s important to improve remote team collaboration, establish trust, foster constructive dialogue, and being transparent.

We Work From Anywhere

Find Remote Jobs, Ask Questions, Connect With Digital Nomads, and Live Your Best Location-Independent Life.