5 tips for effective communication with remote workers

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As motorways remain congested and technology advances, working remotely is gaining in popularity. While there are many advantages to working at home, there can be potential concerns, especially around communication within the team.

It’s super important to have very clear expectations, clear boundaries and support as well as the right tools. When everyone’s on the same page and understands what’s okay and what best practise is, issues are minimised.

Simple things like acceptable hours to send emails, should you cc or bcc others, use Messenger or Chat, at what point do you pick up the phone? Are files being shared or stored and transferred? The answers are different for each business however it’s important to discuss what works best for team members, clients and the business.

The majority of our People Passion team work remotely and we encourage use of “hot desks” in our office. In addition we’re often spending time at our clients’ sites and coordinating work from there as well. We’ve found numerous advantages for our team, clients and our business. We’re very reliant and enjoy using technology to maintain communication throughout the team on a daily basis.

Here are our top 5 tips for effective communication with remote workers…

  1. Use technology – we’ve created a digital noticeboard as a closed group on Facebook. We use it to share wins, interesting articles, antics around the office etc… everyone gets to feel included

  2. Sharing calendars (up to date ones) is a must! It explains why responses take longer to get back sometimes!

  3. Regular updates – we use a weekly newsletter that allow us to share workloads and updates on projects

  4. We have a SIP phone system meaning we have our own extension via our computer and/or mobile phone. We can see when our colleagues are on the phone and their calls appear to be from our office

  5. Most importantly our remote workers love what they do and get to wrap family and other commitments around their work without wasting time in traffic

By the way, studies keep proving that you can be more productive when you work from home too!

 

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Aimee Lander | People Guru