Communicating effectively with a remote team has always been a big challenge for companies. Team members don’t work together and you can not communicate or share information face to face in time, most communication is through calls or emails.
In this situation, how to communicate effectively with a remote team? Here today, we’ll share helpful tips for effective communication with your remote team.
Obstacles to Effective Communication for Remote Teams
Geographical restrictions
For remote teams, members usually work in different places and cannot communicate face to face. Your colleagues can only hear you on calls and talk to you over Slack or email. There’s no physical interaction, which will take more time for communication.
Time restrictions
If you’re a global company, there must be jet lag between remote teams. Team members can’t discuss or share information in time. Time differences make the communication inefficient and information is not consistent.
5 Effective Communication Tips for Remote Teams
1. Use more visual communication ways
When you try to explain an idea or discuss a program with your coworker, through text can be inefficient and not clear. Offering visual communication ways such as diagrams or screencasting can be a great solution, which can explain things simply and easy to understand for others.
2. Invest in collaborative and communication software or technology
Remote teams cannot lack collaborative and communication tools. They can help a lot in engaging your team and communicating with them more effectively, they also help to make collaboration more seamless and productive.
There are a lot of tools that let remote teams collaborate effectively. Choose the suitable tool for your team. Below are some examples:
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Instant communication: Slack
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Screen and video recording: Filmage Screen
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Collaborative documents: Google Sheet
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Video Conferencing: Zoom
3. Avoid boring text documents
Nobody likes reading plenty of text. When people work remotely, text documents can easily be ignored or skipped. Instead, visual documents and videos are more engaging and make people want to read it.
4. Create training or tutorial videos
Video is one of the most popular and effective ways to deliver knowledge and information now. Companies are more likely to create training videos to train new employees now, such as company culture introduction and product training. It is much more efficient and engaging for the company’s onboarding process, most importantly, video can be reused which can save time and money.
5. Trust your employees
Last, trust your employees. You can’t work effectively with a remote team without trust. Although you can’t see them working, it doesn’t mean that they are not working. Just trust your team that can get the job done and allow them room to do their work.
Conclusion
Working remotely is not strange for us. What we can do is adapt to the challenges and make changes timely. Follow these tips to make the most of that experience and communicate effectively with your remote team!
