6 Ways to Improve Remote Team Collaboration

Hybrid and remote work have become the norm for many organizations in today's increasingly globalized business landscape. This applies to MSPs as well as their clients. Effective remote team collaboration facilitated by effective communication channels is therefore essential for achieving success.

Maintaining strong connections and promoting teamwork is challenging without excellent streams of communication, especially when team members are geographically dispersed. Luckily, businesses with remote workers can employ various strategies to enhance remote team collaboration, boost productivity, and foster a positive work culture.

1. Learn about the Importance of Workplace Interactions

The workplace is an important source of social and personal interactions that have been at least partly curtailed by working from home. A 2023 study into the relationship between workplace loneliness and employee engagement found that remote employees with high and moderate levels of loneliness were less engaged with their jobs.

This underlines the importance of maintaining a high level of collaboration and engagement with your remote employees both on a human and professional level. Apart from putting processes in place that facilitate communication, it’s important to check in with workers regularly. Many will miss the everyday chat and banter an office environment provides; try to find an alternative such as Banter from Slack and Viva Engage from Microsoft, or at least find ways to dedicate time and resources to individuals. Making people feel seen and valued will reap rewards that extend far beyond KPIs.

2. Prioritize Effective Communication

Communication is so much more than just words. In fact, it's thought that 55% of all communication is nonverbal. This poses a problem for remote teams as they must find ways to communicate and collaborate effectively despite missing out on the many nonverbal cues that facilitate in-person communication.

Businesses that rely on remote collaboration for projects, troubleshooting, or shared tasks must therefore find different ways to optimize remote team communication. The following two strategies can make a significant difference:

Use Integrated Chat Software

There are many remote collaboration tools that improve communication between colleagues. However, workers' ability to collaborate effectively with third-party vendor resources is an underdeveloped yet essential part of boosting business productivity.

Imagine a collaboration tool that puts workers in direct contact with the MSP technicians who could solve their problems straight from the chat software the business already uses; this is where Thread comes in.

Thread is a communication platform that streamlines communication between businesses and MSPs by removing the need for complicated and time-consuming ticketing administration. Instead, workers can use chat software like Microsoft Teams or Slack to get in touch with the person they need. 

Having a direct line to support personnel reduces communication breakdowns, lowers the amount of time spent waiting for solutions, and ultimately boosts productivity by minimizing bottlenecks caused by technical issues.

Schedule Virtual Team-Building Activities

Having remote employees doesn't mean companies should shirk important team-building and morale-boosting activities. Remember, communicating online always loses some of the nuances that are present when we speak face-to-face. 

Working on your team dynamic supports effective remote team collaboration by developing similar types of relationships as you would have in the office. It also boosts understanding and goodwill between colleagues.

Getting to know your colleagues also helps people identify the verbal and nonverbal cues that facilitate effective communication, even when you're all online. You can achieve this by reframing how your team considers collaboration and teamwork. Consider incorporating virtual team-building exercises into your weekly or monthly schedule to achieve this.

Try virtual drinks after work, quiz nights, or photo contests as fun activities you could do together online to get everyone on the same page. These activities give employees a chance to participate from wherever they are, develop social connections, and create stronger bonds with their teammates.

3. Establish a Shared Team Vision & Communication Guidelines

In remote work environments, it's crucial for leaders to clearly articulate the company's vision and goals. While assigning tasks is important, providing context and explaining the "why" behind the work is equally as essential. This helps employees understand their role in the broader picture and fosters a sense of purpose and community.

It’s also essential to establish a communication guide for the "who, what, when, and where" of how the business communicates and why. These shared guidelines help to create a cohesive and aligned team and prevent a lot of the unintentional misunderstandings that can occur when working and communicating remotely.

4. Make Communication in Meetings Meaningful

Video meetings are an inevitable part of remote workplace life. However, for remote work to succeed, establishing a purposeful and productive rhythm is essential. Following some remote meeting best practices will ensure your meetings are productive and efficient:

• Create (and stick to) an agenda: Keeping your meetings productive is easier if the person setting up the meeting provides an agenda with points to address, the expected timeframe, and goals for the meeting.
• Consider virtual daily standup meetings: A virtual standup meeting allows team members to present what they did yesterday and what they're working on today. This type of meeting is helpful in keeping everyone in sync. A daily meeting is the perfect opportunity for individuals to ask for support or collaboration in their individual projects.
• Use video conferencing software: Workers should be fully engaged while they're in a meeting regardless of whether the meeting is online or in person. Using video not only improves communication but also allows personality and empathy to shine through during meetings.

Meetings should be valuable additions to your workers' day rather than a chore. An effective meeting will boost productivity and improve the knowledge and communication skills that are essential for effective collaboration. They facilitate the sharing of experiences and task collaboration, and allow employees to ask for a fresh set of eyes to provide perspective on individual projects when needed.

Integrating scheduling software like TimeZest with Thread facilitates seamless and stress-free scheduling between IT technicians and clients in just a few clicks. This is a far cry from the arduous and time-consuming task scheduling meetings can be without scheduling software.

5. Use Remote Collaboration Platforms

In today's fast-paced work environment, minimizing distractions and maximizing productivity is essential. One significant time-waster is "work about work," which encompasses tasks like scheduling meetings, searching for documents, and switching between multiple applications.

Consider adopting an all-in-one digital collaboration tool to enhance team collaboration and productivity. This type of platform integrates various functionalities that streamline virtual collaboration. These include messaging, calendars, video conferencing, and file sharing, into a single interface. Consolidating these tools streamlines workflows, reduces context switching, and improves focus.

Asynchronous communication, which allows for flexible scheduling and responses, also contributes to a more productive and efficient remote team. Utilizing asynchronous communication effectively protects flow states and encourages clear and concise communication among team members.

Here are a few ways a collaboration tool helps your team collaborate remotely:

• Share files between team members: Digital collaboration software simplifies file sharing among team members. Platforms like Google Drive, Dropbox, or Trello allow you to establish a central repository for all relevant documents. This centralized "single source of truth" ensures that remote team members have easy access to the information they need.
  
  To enhance collaboration and transparency, communicate about shared files within the same workspace. This allows everyone to stay updated on file changes and access the most recent versions at any time.

• Schedule projects and tasks: Digital collaboration tools offer powerful features for scheduling projects and assigning tasks. By clearly outlining individual responsibilities, team members can better prioritize their workload and stay focused on key objectives.
  
  Shared calendars are particularly valuable for remote teams, as they enable collaboration across different time zones. A shared calendar helps team members stay up to date on project progress, deadlines, and schedule changes. This fosters better coordination and ensures that everyone is aligned on project goals.

• Coordinate work seamlessly: For virtual teams to stay on top of project tasks, milestones, and deadlines, effective coordination is essential. Digital project management tools offer valuable features like visual task breakdowns and notifications, ensuring transparency and accountability.

These tools help team members track individual workloads, understand dependencies, and stay aligned on project goals. This helps prevent delays and ensures that deadlines are consistently met.

6. Set Clear Expectations for Communication

Though it seems like remote work has been around forever, working from home or outsourcing workers from other states or countries are still relatively new concepts. This means that establishing and sticking to remote work etiquette is often a work in progress.

Remote workers often face the challenge of constant distractions from their own projects due to the expectation of immediate responses through chat and email. This can even extend to expecting responses outside of working hours. Constant time pressure leads to increased stress and negatively impacts the quality of work.

It's essential to establish clear expectations regarding response times to foster a productive and sustainable remote work environment. Managers should emphasize that immediate responses are only required for urgent or critical matters. A delay in response should be acceptable for less urgent matters.

Ultimately, collaboration is much more than working together on shared tasks. It’s also knowing when to ask for collaboration and when to leave individuals to their own devices.

Communication Is Key to Productivity and Workplace Satisfaction

Investing in and promoting remote team collaboration tools brings your business and your employees several benefits. Improved communication boosts productivity, strengthens your team's bond, and creates a more fulfilling work experience for everyone involved.

As remote work is normalized, both individuals and businesses can expect more and more technological solutions to streamline communication. Choose the solutions that most effectively boost productivity, help solve problems, and support the success of your team.