5 Ways to Improve Remote Work & Internal Collaboration

Still managing work from home? Learn how to improve your remote work & internal collaboration with employees.

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Almost two years into the pandemic, many businesses have settled in a remote work environment. But this still relatively new arrangement demands a focus on remote team productivity and internal collaboration tools. To better participate in team activities, each team member must learn to adapt and interact with their colleagues. Everyone seeks more human connection while working remotely, and for this, you need to provide necessary resources and tools that add value.

A remote working policy isn’t just a set of rules to follow. It also considers how everyone in the team feels and what they require while working from home for an extended period. Employees who have had a pleasant remote work experience report higher productivity and higher levels of engagement. As a result, organizations with a high level of remote employee satisfaction enjoy a 25% boost in profit and a 37% decrease in staff turnover.

This post will discuss five unique ways that your organization can adopt to ensure improving employee collaboration when working remotely.

1. Improve employee communication

Ensure that your managers and employees work without relying too much on communication to have a successful remote work approach. This is why it could help to limit the amount of instant meetings and video conferences that remote employees participate in. You must set expectations, roll out the standard operating procedure and communicate the same to employees working remotely.

Chalk out a remote collaboration strategy in a team working online and communicate the guidelines for collaboration. To avoid misunderstandings, team members should know how and when to communicate through video, instant messaging, or email.

 2. Get the right remote tools

Different tools fit different organizations, cultures, and teams. Ultimately, you need to choose the right set of tools to suit your business needs. It will only make things more difficult for your team and create additional issues if the remote work tools are overly sophisticated or just not suitable for your business.

Getting your remote tools may seem like a quick fix, but they come with a cost, and you need to give the training to ensure everyone adapts to it. Go with minimum tools that support most remote work operations to remain cost-effective. Also, The goal should be to maximize remote employee productivity, reduce expenses, and simplify remote work collaboration by adopting a minimal tool approach.

3. Get the best security protocols

Remote working gets difficult without the right tools and technologies at your disposal. Build a toolkit that includes an instant messaging app, project management software, and a productivity tracker, all of which help improve remote work. It enables team members to work together quickly. But, this means that remote workers need to be wary of hackers and need precautions to guarantee that working from home is secure.

When your team is working remotely, you need to secure the digital workplaces against data intrusions. A Virtual Private Network (VPN) should be used by anybody who has access to or is responsible for handling sensitive business data.

Your team can access the company’s private network and intranet without disclosing their personal information to the outside world when you put the right security protocols in place. This includes providing authentication-based access control, enabling VPNs, and implementing MFA (multi-factor authentication) to access certain critical information. 

4. Ensure creative collaboration

It is tough to drive collaboration in a work from home environment as everyone feels far and away. Fortunately, having the right set of tools and resources for remote collaboration ensures everyone is on the same page.

You can also improve remote employees’ experiences by connecting them with different activities and communication channels. Try using some of the below-mentioned techniques to help your team collaborate better:

• Collaborate playlist on Spotify
• Virtual workout challenges
• Sending our riddles and puzzles on group chats
• Organize movie nights on platforms like Teleparty
• Virtual hangouts and promoting engagement with games like So Cards to build stronger team camaraderie

Have your HR department customize team-building activities if you’d want to take it a step further and formalize these activities. Surely, they’ll develop new ways to improve the remote employee experience. Ultimately, you can drive better collaboration by fostering a sense of belongingness where employers support their employees’ transition to remote work.

5. Break down silos

Start to break down organizational silos by bringing all relevant parties and departments together under one roof. Everyone involved in the project should have access to a centrally located information board where all necessary information is posted in real-time. This arrangement makes it easier for team members to share information when working remotely. It also implies that everyone is aware of their duties and those of their coworkers.

You can also roll out a visible and collaborative team charter template to build team ties and align projects. It is also a good idea to have a virtual scrum meeting which is an excellent method to build accountability and openness. The template may be used for any weekly meeting and is not limited to those run by agile teams.

Wrapping up

The still ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has seen many workers forced to relocate their jobs to their homes. And since the future is uncertain, it is critical to put these best practices into action as soon as possible.

Following the above-mentioned five tips to improve your remote work culture. Adopt whatever approach suits your business the best and ensure that everyone in the remote work environment remains updated. Internal collaboration also demands greater efficiency from team members to avoid lag in output.

Enhance your remote team’s cooperation and performance by bringing in the necessary tools and methods that deliver efficiency with the right results. You can drive long-term success working remotely when your team is self-motivated and trained adequately. Make sure you nurture their remote presence with engaging interactions in a collaborative work environment.