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Starting in 2020, remote work became mainstream. And as a next step for the remote work environment, many companies started hiring worldwide. It seems obvious: what’s the reason to limit hiring to a region when you can choose from a bigger market? Despite many pros for employees and companies, it soon turned out that regular on-site processes don’t work online. Without process adaptation, teams' effectiveness and performance significantly drop. Here are seven essential points for teams that help stay productive in a remote environment, based on my three years of experience building remote and distributed teams. 1. Work Synchronously Whenever Possible Based on my experience, having 4-6 hours overlap and working together during this time is the most effective option. It helps immediately solve most problems without waiting until tomorrow's overlap time. I prefer an “infinite group voice call” in Discord or Slack Huddle: all team members join this call and stay muted. It helps to break the “talk barrier”: when someone has a question, they can quickly ask everyone on the team and, in most cases, get an immediate response. Moreover, it creates an office-like space – the call quickly becomes the place where the team talks about all news, issues, and even gossip. It usually works best when applied to a small group – like team-wide. Cross-team and cross-department communication doesn’t require that many syncs and happens irregularly, so common video calls work better for these cases. 2. Watch for the Work-Life Balance It starts with the idea that everyone seems to work less during remote work so that we might control them more. Nevertheless, it’s a pretty rare case, while the most common problem is overworking. The time border separating working time from home has vanished. People start working immediately after waking up and finish right before going to sleep, which quickly leads to burnout. So, checking that work hasn’t allocated all available time is essential. Basically, regular checks of work-life balance during a retrospective or any other weekly/fortnightly meetings should be enough. However, it’s also a good subject to include in your company’s “Beginner’s Guide” and similar articles. 3. Do Video Calls MORE Remote work environments increase isolation which could also lead to burnout. Humans are social creatures, and we seriously rely on communication and being part of society. “Warm” contact helps in many cases: it’s much easier to ask for help from someone you know than a stranger (it’s also a reason why cold calling works that bad). Moreover, video calls are just more efficient: they transfer more information at the same time period, such as emotions, mimics, voice tones, etc. And also, regular face-to-face communication just helps you stay in a good mood and don’t burn out. For sure, any rule can be brought to the point of absurdity by excessive diligence. After all, even in collocated offline work, not every issue requires a meeting, right? 4. Visualize Everything With Whiteboards, Screen Share, Etc. Visual information is much easier to read and perceive. A screencast or collaboration on a whiteboard (like Miro) will be helpful, depending on the topic. Whiteboards help visualize ideas and involve everyone in the discussion. It also doesn’t require any specific skills – ordered stickers connected with arrows are good enough to explain things rapidly. Furthermore, the resulting board is a perfect artifact for the post-meeting: it will remain after the meeting, and you can easily find out what was discussed at the meeting. 5. Do Daily Meetings Twice This point doesn’t relate to distributed teams but works perfectly for synchronous remote teams. “Daily stand-ups” commonly take place at the beginning of the workday, rarely – at the end. In both cases, they indicate workday start and end for most people. Having two daily meetings might be an amazing trigger for workday boundaries. It also takes less than 10 minutes and helps stay synced and aligned. 6. Record Async Video Messages Whenever Possible As I mentioned above, not every question requires a sync video call or meeting. However, having a video part is a huge benefit when you need to share something. A perfect example could be sharing a bug reproducing steps, but it's not the only usage. You can find more creative ways to use this kind of recorded video, like having an async "sprint demo" or having simple "how to" documentation for common project tasks. A video provides more information per second, and it’s helpful for both – the speaker and the listener. In most cases, it’s much easier to present things rather than describe them, and it is also simpler to correctly understand when you have a visual artifact. There are several services that help in that, like Loom or Tella, that provide a super useful interface to record and share that kind of video quickly. Last but not least, recorded videos give a more socially involved feeling than text, which also commits against social isolation and burns out. Do More Informal Meetings, Including Informal 1-On-1, “Random Coffee”, Etc. The remote environment doesn’t provide any coffee points, which is absolutely important in an office. Since small talk doesn’t have any “business” value, it’s easy to miss them in remote work. Meanwhile, those conversations are essential – they help maintain relationships between colleagues, share news, or even gossip. And this actually matters more than expected. Apart from the social isolation problem I mentioned above, significant events from private life affect people's moods and motivation. 1-on-1 and “random coffee” might be a great opportunity for people to talk about a movie they watched last week or maybe the last book they read. During 1-on-1s, you also can find out that someone is having issues with their home mortgage or rent, for example, which definitely leads to a performance drop since almost no one would be focused on the job-related stuff when he's having living issues. Conclusion Of course, these points aren't a full list or a silver bullet to organizing an excellent remote working process. However, from my standpoint, most of them are essential if you want to maintain a productive process. These tips helped me organize processes in my remote and distributed team and solve the lack of live communication. And I hope it will help organize yours.

Searching for a Unicorn or How to Build an Effective Remote Team

When you work remotely, your colleagues can only hear you on calls and talk to you over Slack or e-mail. There’s no physical interaction. They can’t see you working at your desk, in the conference room for the meeting, and they especially can’t do a casual chat on their way to the coffee machine. You’re not working in a physical office anymore, so you need to build a unique way for your colleagues to get to know you personally. People searching “work from home” and “remote working” are at a five-year high. The majority of the workforce is working from home, so we need to sharpen our remote communication skills. There’s no doubt! In this guide, you’ll discover 9 remote communication tips. Let’s get started: 1. Create Onboarding and Training Videos Are you a manager? It’s challenging to train new employees while working from home. And new employees also have a lot of questions and confusion regarding the onboarding process and training. It is not productive in the short term to take calls every time new hires have questions. So how can you save time and make your process easier? They can re-watch these videos when they have any doubts. Create onboarding and training videos that show how to use your company’s culture and standard programs and share these videos with new employees as part of their induction package. 2. Use Diagrams and Visuals to Ensure Processes Are Fully Understood When I try to explain an idea, sometimes I doodle on a piece of paper. And I know if my explanation is making sense by checking the person’s reaction. How does this translate to remote work? A good practice is to use diagrams and workflow charts to ensure that process flows are easily understood. Graphical representations have the power to ease understanding and by using simple icons and short sentences, you can explain things simply. 3. Avoid Boring Text Documents By Using Pictures While regular work can become monotonous, you can do something about it with imagery. Often long documents become unreadable and impact the productivity of employees as well as their motivation. This is because it looks like a lot of work, and the human brain finds it hard to keep its attention sustained for an extended period. In such situations, it is also possible that employees neglect essential details about the work, thus impacting the overall project. Make sure you add pictures and visuals to ease the task. 4. Adopt New Communication Tools New communication tools can help you say what you want but in a more transparent manner. For example, while many teams use Hangouts to communicate, there are better tools like Slack they can explore. Slack is a better communication tool because it manages your entire workplace from end to end. Be it your Google calendar, monitoring people’s birthdays, or asking their opinions now and then. It can also help break the ice between teammates and make collaboration more seamless and productive. Adopting new communication tools can help significantly in engaging your team and communicating with them more effectively. 5. Prioritize Video Calls Video calls aren’t meant for spying on you. Most employees keep their videos shut during a meeting as they don’t feel very comfortable. However, while connection issues are genuine, you must connect with your team via video calls once in a while. This is because facial cues are the best in displaying emotions, which are, in turn, the building blocks of effective communication. When you can see people around you, it feels more like a physical workspace and enables you to communicate ideas more clearly. For employees, this can be an excellent opportunity to understand the concepts being conveyed better. After all, it is always better to look at the speaker than staring at dark screens. 6. Hone Your Writing Skills Writing skills are an essential aspect of communication, no matter what. In an organization, you might not always be able to call people and explain the situation. Most of the formal work has to be sent via emails and other forms of written communication. Even if you are creating a document for a job assigned to you, writing skills become fundamental to complete it. Therefore, you must try to hone your writing skills to avoid ambiguity and help people understand more effectively. 7. Respect Your Colleagues’ Working Hours Always respect your colleagues’ working hours. Your colleagues might have different work hours to yours, depending on time zones, how they structure their day, etc. It is important to remember this, and hold space for your colleagues' work-life balance. While you should have the same approach in a work environment for a healthy work-life balance, you must respect your team members. This means scheduling meetings, asking for any feedback or report, all within their assigned or chosen work hours. 8. Don’t Forget the “Water Cooler” Chitchat Water cooler chitchat is an integral part of the work-life balance. While you get to do that in a physical environment, it is difficult in remote work culture. Nonetheless, you can use technology to the rescue. Pair up teammates for random coffee during the work hours. A 5-10 minute break with another colleague will help them catch up on various things and feel refreshed. Use tools like to play remote games and virtual quizzes with your colleagues. Trivia 9. Commit to One-On-Ones One of the best practices for effective communication is one-on-one chats with your teammates. Employees might not be comfortable sharing everything in a group, which is why you should connect with them personally. Ask them about their day, how they have been feeling lately, and whether they face any challenges. Not only will it keep them motivated but also increase their productivity, knowing their problems are being addressed and efforts recognized. Conclusion and FAQs How would you overcome communication challenges on a remote team? Create some guidelines on how all remote team members should communicate. Get started by answering these questions: What tools and apps should everyone use? How long is an acceptable wait time for a response? For what issues should email be used, and what items can be addressed via a chat program? Is there a time of day when everyone must be available for an hour or two? How to help your remote team to improve their communication skills? Here’s how you can help your team: Use collaboration apps like Slack and MS Teams. Encourage your remote workers to schedule virtual meet-ups to build a personal connection. Schedule chat times and meetings that work for everyone. Set clear and consistent expectations. As you can see, communicating effectively with your team doesn’t have to be difficult. Just think smart and follow these ideas. Do you have any other remote communication tips to improve communication skills while working remotely? Drop your thoughts here. Previously published at https://www.springworks.in/blog/remote-communication-tips/

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