Remote work and remote workers are changing the way we work globally. Working from an office (a 9-5) is slowly being phased out, and virtual work is steadily taking root across regions and industries. As much as working from home may seem easy at first sight, it is crucial to understand that, as a business owner, you can only ensure it is efficient by adequately communicating with remote workers.
Proper communication implies that it is easy for you to disseminate crucial information on time and also have an open line of communication between yourself and your virtual workers to ensure they can reach you promptly. With proper communication, it will be easier for your remote workforce to do their work correctly and also easier for you to pass on critical information.
Here are strategies that most of our clients have in place to ensure they get the best out of their remote workers.
There are a variety of tips and communication platforms that you can employ to effectively communicate with your remote employees and get the best out of your engagement.
Here are 10 of the best tips to use to ensure you properly communicate with remote workers:
You must identify your company goals and strategies to understand an ideal platform better. Many online platforms will help you with virtually all sorts of communication. However, not all of them suit the nature of your work, your budget, or the size and complexity of your business and employees.
Consider having various engagement platforms to keep communication consistent and always delivered appropriately. On top of that, you also need to train your employees on how to use these platforms and the tips and tricks they can use to get the best out of the media. Finally, give your employees access to each communication platform where they need to be to avoid missing anything.
If you have a team of remote employees, they will have varied preferences regarding platforms and communication methods. Therefore, you must ask them which tools they are most comfortable using and if they have successfully used specific sites. Learning this will enable you to choose tools that your employees find easy to use, and most importantly, they already know how to maximize their usefulness.
A company newsletter is integral in passing on top-to-bottom communication, especially concerning company-related issues. Top managers usually discuss most of these issues regarding policy changes and announcements and then pass them down to juniors.
You will therefore have to develop a newsletter regularly to enable your employees to know more about the business and if any changes will affect their engagement with your company.
Consider sending your newsletters via email so employees can always return to them quickly for reference.
As much as all your employees are always aware of what they should do during working hours, you can regularly check in with them. If they are experiencing any obstacles and whether there is anything you can do to help them more in going about their duties, you need to establish this as soon as possible and act promptly. Doing this will enable your employees to always have a proper support system and continually grow their working relationship with you.
Regularly asking your team questions about certain aspects of their work will enable you to gain helpful insights into what works well and what doesn't. Also, constantly ask for feedback from your employees so that you do so from an informed position whenever you implement changes that affect them. Finally, surveys help you generate data integral to consistently producing quality results and meeting deadlines.
The best way to communicate with remote employees is always to ensure you write using clear and concise language. Whether through email, instant messaging, memos, or newsletters, always pass on your message in the shortest time possible. You also need to eliminate long sentences and paragraphs to simplify communication.
Avoid using jargon, made-up phrases, and abbreviations in official company communications. If you should use an acronym, it better be a well-documented part of the company language.
When having a one-on-one meeting with your employees in the office, it is easy to explain yourself using your body language. Consider your non-verbal cues, especially during virtual meetings. Rely on your body language to deliver your message efficiently.
When having a conversation when someone, understanding the context will enable you to comprehend what the issue is and the severity of the problem. To offer a better response or solution, it's necessary to understand the context of the conversation, whether you're communicating through video call, audio call, text message, or email.
Having remote workers can be challenging regarding the time difference between you and your workers. Therefore, when passing out information, it must be timely. When you have employees scattered across different time zones, you need to devise a system of disseminating information that will not bias your employees. So, instead of passing out information at other times, only pass on the news when most of your employees are actively working?
It is advisable to give people the benefit of the doubt when communicating with you. Always be open-minded and give them time to express their feelings before you conclude they have bad intentions. This is not only a leadership skill but also a top communication skill that will help you maintain your calmness and understand other people's points of view.
Always give your remote employees the space to express their feelings openly, even if they may use harsh tones and hostile remarks.
The above tips will enable you to be an excellent people manager and an impeccable communicator who will bring order and organization to your workplace. Order and organization are integral in building and maintaining formal and productive structures. Therefore, to ensure your remote employees produce quality results, consider the above tips to reduce obstacles significantly.
Let's look at the various methods you should consider when developing a proper communication strategy for your workplace.
Whether you are a well-established company or a startup, as long as you have remote workers, you must ensure a working communication strategy. The importance of doing so is that work gets done faster. In addition, in an orderly manner, workers complement each other toward achieving company goals, and you can also pass on company goals more efficiently.
Here are 11 of the best communication methods you should consider when developing your communication strategy:
Email has been there for a long, and it has always been able to distinguish itself as the go-to mode of communication for companies. Using emails has always been a good way of bringing formality to company communication and giving companies an extra layer of authenticity and trust. In addition, email communication makes people more professional than texting on instant messaging sites like Discord.
During working hours, an employee may have an issue that needs a quick and instant response. The best way of getting this done will be through instant messaging since it will prompt a much faster response from the intended person(s). Slack, for example, is an excellent tool that facilitates instant messaging and quicker responses, which are usually short and won't require an email.
Most Google Suite applications enable people to collaborate on documents and ideas in a much more streamlined way. You should therefore ensure your employees have access to these platforms to get more done efficiently.
Even though you have remote workers, you should always ensure regular meetings to discuss issues affecting your employees and the delivery of work. You should therefore select a platform that will not only accommodate all your employees but also be efficient when it comes to achieving the main agenda of the meeting. Some of the most common video meeting tools are Zoom and Google Meet, enabling you to hop onto video calls at a moment's notice.
However, meetings can also be in audio form, not just video. The idea is to get many people on a call simultaneously to discuss issues quickly.
Unlike brief video meetings with fewer attendants, video conferences last longer and usually involve more people than a meeting would have. The video aspect makes the session much more lively and engaging.
If your business always tends to the needs of its customers, then you will need a customer support team in place and on standby to help your customers promptly. Setting up virtual call centers is an impeccable way of ensuring customers can always rely on your responses. You can also have a call center that tends to the needs of your employees in case you have a large team of employees to whom you can't offer support, one at a time on your own.
At times your nature of work may call for collaboration on projects or tasks by your employees. In this case, you will need a platform to complete a project promptly and orderly. This need, therefore, calls for tools such as Asana, which are brilliant at organizing work and ensuring the project is always in the hands of the right person from start to finish. Most platforms also have chat or comment sections to keep project-specific chats in the same place.
As long as you have ongoing projects with deliverables and deadlines, it would be best if you tracked the progress of these projects continuously. Consider doing this to ensure processes and systems work well and your employees can meet their targets promptly.
Always rely on visuals to summarize anything you want to communicate to your employees. Visuals will also enable you to make your message more likable and engaging. Always employ visuals in email, instant messaging, or video meetings.
You can rely on recordings to enable everyone in the company to get all the information. For example, you can record a video meeting for people who are away on leave so that when they come back, they can be in the loop as well.
Finally, you can create a virtual meeting for your employees to hang out when not working, talk about other things outside of work, and mingle with each other. Make this a culture to enable your employees to get to know each other and strengthen workplace bonds.
Over the years, we have realized that a company's success depends on how quickly and efficiently managers implement proper winning strategies to bring overall success. One of the strategies a manager should put in place early is adequate communication. If a manager can master the appropriate way to communicate with their remote employees: they are more likely to have a smooth recruitment and onboarding process. Most importantly, their employees will have the best support system.
Be brief but precise. Shorten virtual conversations to reduce interruptions and increase productivity. Because the information presented through video and chat meetings can be more difficult for individuals to understand than in-person sessions, be sure your messaging is still evident.
Keep everyone involved: You must be reachable if you want excellent organizational communication flow. Channels are always open. It will promote available contact with you. This is especially crucial when leading distant teams.
Remote communication can be either synchronous or asynchronous. Asynchronous communication doesn't require simultaneous participation from all parties, whereas synchronous communication occurs in real-time.
