Get best of the week

How to work together, working apart

image

The media is full of news about the epidemiological situation and recommendations for self-isolation.

But there are no simple recommendations regarding business. Company executives faced a new challenge - how to transfer employees to a remote location and build their work so that everything was “as before” with minimal losses for productivity.

What worked in the office often does not work in remote conditions. What can be done to ensure that distributed teams maintain effective cooperation and interaction within and outside the team?

The availability of mobile communications, fast Internet, convenient applications and other modern technologies, in general, help to overcome many barriers and build productive work with partners or colleagues.

But you need to prepare.

Everything will go according to plan. If he is


Remote work requires a special construction of internal processes and communications. And the preparatory phase can eliminate many questions and problems before they arise.

Both in the office and in remote work conditions, everything is built on four pillars:

  • Planning
  • Organization
  • Control
  • Motivation

First of all, you and your team need to set the right goals, rebuild the reporting system and correctly combine asynchronous and synchronous communications within the team. Asynchronous communication is letters, chats, updated reporting and any communication options that do not require immediate reaction. Synchronous communication is real-time communication, with fast feedback.

It is very important to remember that when working remotely, planning requires regularity. It is necessary to maintain a balance of work with strategic and operational tasks, to set the pace of work on priority tasks weekly or even daily. Proper planning and goal setting will make the work understandable and help avoid burnout. They will not feel isolated from the process.

Video Conferencing: Number One Tool


The isolation of remote employees is more informational than social. They don’t miss sitting next to someone (although it happens in different ways), they mostly worry about the lack of quick access to information and communication with colleagues. They don’t have the opportunity to ask a colleague a question and immediately get an answer, celebrate a small victory or conduct a debriefing, conduct a brainstorming session or just chat about plans for the weekend.

In part, this shortfall is offset by video conferencing services.

Videoconferencing allows one or more people to have a conversation in real time, either by phone or through an online video conferencing platform. Calls are a synchronous communication channel, but can also be used when only one person speaks with a group, for example, for conducting webinars . Examples of such services: OVKS from MegaFon , Zoom, BlueJeans, GoToMeeting.

Benefits:

  1. Video calls convey intonations, emotions, facial and other verbal signals of the interlocutor, thereby helping to clarify and understand his mood.
  2. Additional information makes messages clearer, adds emotional content and helps build communication and trust.

Disadvantages:

  1. Coordination in time. Calls can only take place in real time, which complicates the communication process for a team distributed across different time zones.
  2. The course of communication is not documented in any way. Calls do not leave a written result.
  3. Interpretation. The quality of communication is not optimal for everyone (especially for those who are self-insulated in the country). Words are not always perceived correctly.

When to use video conferencing?


  • Regular meetings, one on one, and group
  • Team Mitapas
  • Planning and brainstorming (best with video)
  • Resolving misunderstandings or dealing with aggravated or emotional situations from other channels (such as mail, chat)

If you think that your teamwork on a remote site is not productive enough, do not waste time - try to change the situation.

  1. Enter daily checks with the team.
  2. Closely follow the timing and goals of the meeting, write them in the invitation and remind them at the very beginning.
  3. Do your homework. Prepare for the meeting and write down on paper what ideas led you to this meeting, what are your expectations from the participants, and what are their expectations from you?
  4. Ask participants to share roles (take notes, provide information, act as moderator of the meeting).
  5. Do not hold meetings for a large team (more than 8 people).
  6. Do not forget to synchronize your meetings with the time zone of the participants.

When all together: how to organize general company meetings


Meetings of all company employees have become a popular way to share information.

There are some tips on how to better organize them:

  1. . 11-12 . , . . , , , mp4.
  2. . , , , , .
  3. . , .
  4. . , .

:


When it comes to brainstorming, it is important for distributed teams to use a common digital tool. It allows you to collect, group and classify ideas during a brainstorming session.

Here are some important tips to help you storm effectively:

  1. A remote team can choose a collaborative project management tool that supports the kanban-board functionality that many teams are already familiar with, such as Trello.
  2. An alternative could be the tool provided by the Webinars platform - a drawing board that everyone sees, and it can be edited by any of the participants.
  3. Use the voting option to evaluate which idea is the most interesting to implement. All statistics can later be uploaded in csv or xlsx format.

    image

    image
  4. Experience shows that it is better to warn employees in advance of an assault so that they have time to think about ideas. When the group gets together, the participants will not come empty-handed.

When used correctly, synchronous communications, such as video calls, can be an excellent tool for conducting teamwork, tracking its results and emotional support for all team members. And in combination with asynchronous tools, they help distributed process participants to be no less (and sometimes more) productive than their colleagues in the office.

image

More articles:


All Articles