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New ways of working, remote and hybrid, have led business owners and departmental leaders to implement some processes to maintain workflow and achieve organizational goals.
For anyone in charge of a distributed workforce, the question of how would you overcome communication challenges on a remote team is key to achieving results.
Remote work is more normalized than ever: according to Forbes, 12.7% of full-time employees work from home. This opens the door to communication challenges on a remote team and it’s important to keep in-office, hybrid, and overseas employees on the same channel.
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Cloud-based collaboration platforms help you pass these difficulties, but you can also implement other strategies that allow you to communicate with your team members, work without interruptions and reach your goals quickly.
At Serviap Global, we are a remote-first company that asssist companies with hiring remote talent in over 100 countries worldwide, so we understand how to overcome communication challenges on a remote team.
Contact us for more information on how we can assist you with global hiring.
7 tips for dealing with communication challenges on a remote team
Communicating clearly and accurately with your workers, even if they are in an office, will always require particular skills since you must not only dominate your oral expression but also your written one. This way, tasks are performed on time, processes are understood, and your workflow is not compromised.
Telecommuting is here to stay: it is flexible, brings diversity to companies, and improves work-life balance. However, it is a fact that it can cause some communication difficulties. So, if you manage staff or work from a distance, follow the tips below on how would you overcome communication challenges on a remote team:
1) Use a common communication platform
Although there were already several platforms for remote communication and collaboration, the telework boom led more people to hire overseas developers and offer innovative solutions to meet the challenges of distributed or international teams.
For this reason, nowadays, many applications on the market, such as Slack or Teams, make it easier for all team members to express themselves, organize meetings, share files, and communicate with others inside and outside your organization.
So, opt for a standard and easy-to-use option so all your employees have the same communication channel. And in case you need it, have an alternative, either for emergencies or if your usual platform fails.
2) Implement protocols and guidelines
Sometimes, to overcome communication problems within an organization or with a remote team, reviewing previously designed documents and action guides, such as crisis communication plans, is necessary.
These manuals, among other uses, give instructions that help you communicate with transparency, convey trust and credibility and stimulate a collaborative spirit among the members of your organization.
Thus, to overcome communication challenges on a remote team, as a leader or department head, apply protocols and guidelines such as defining agendas correctly. This helps you to avoid unclear instructions and poor planning.
3) Optimize your workflows
More organization and planning helps to overcome communication challenges on a remote team, meaning you will know what to assign in your regular meetings with collaborators, what tasks are most important, and what your collaborators are doing.
So, to optimize workflows and ensure your employees keep track of the sequence of activities, duration, and how they should be delivered, implement a task assignment and control system.
Tools such as Notion, for example, help you create shared databases where they can indicate the task’s name, who is responsible, the due date, and the status and even attach evidence once the work is completed.
4) Facilitate access to files
Workspaces, even virtual ones, should be as well organized as possible. For example, in an office, you may have file cabinets with folders containing necessary documentation. The same can —and should— be done with your virtual workspace.
The platforms you use for virtual communication should allow you to have storage capacity in the cloud, so you can have files in various formats to perform your daily activities. This way, your employees will save time asking where a document is.
The more organized you have your virtual workspaces, the fewer communication challenges on a remote team will present themselves and the more harmoniously you can work.
5) Conduct team-building activities
According to Indeed, improving your staff’s communication skills through team-building activities can increase productivity and mitigate conflicts before they arise. They are also a way to break the routine and have fun.
Regular team-building activities are essential for your employees to get to know each other beyond the work environment, understand what each other does, and know whom to turn to if they need help.
In addition to being a strategy to overcome communication challenges on a remote team, these activities will help you discover other talents of your staff that can add value to your business and shared tastes that can lead you to develop other projects outside the organization.
6) Offer general training
Employee training has positive effects on workers and companies alike. By improving their skills and knowledge, employees perform better and are more productive, leading organizations to achieve their goals faster and more efficiently.
Training can be on how to use a new platform or system or even on how would you overcome communication challenges on a remote team. Whatever the case, they also help members of different departments get to know each other and work collaboratively.
To lead a remote team and achieve success, remember that communication is not only between team members but interdepartmental and outside the company, so it is better to train your team, improve your communication channels and solve any conflict arising.
7) Accept and give feedback
Feedback is vital to strengthen communication with your employees. Reach out to them, have 1:1 meetings, listen to their needs, and implement strategies together. Your comments do not necessarily have to be through a scheduled appointment or an e-mail; they can be a quick message on an employee’s performance, a recently delivered task, or an ongoing project.
Feedback also helps create stronger, more harmonious teams by helping to break bad habits and allowing employees to recognize their areas of opportunity for further improvement.
Also, leave a door open for your employees to give you feedback on your performance, so you will recognize what you need to correct to continue coordinating your distributed workforce successfully. This will also help you overcome your own communication challenges on a remote team.
Serviap Global facilitates remote team building through its recruitment services
At Serviap Global, we offer international PEO / EOR services and facilitate contractor hiring in over 100 countries. We also provide global talent acquisition services for companies looking for candidates to hire directly.
Contact us to learn more about our global hiring services.
You can also get an idea of the costs of hiring talent in different countries using our free paycheck calculator.
