There is no denying that remote work is great for both employees and organizations. While employees get to work from their homes and maintain a better work-life balance, organizations get to save on infrastructure costs and improve overall productivity.
But in the long run, remote work can affect efficiency and collaboration majorly because it lacks direct human interaction which many of us have become accustomed to. When teams are siloed, they often have no idea what the other employees are up to, which can lead to collaboration issues.
We have been trying too hard to replicate the physical office in the remote work setup when the key to efficient remote collaboration is replicating human interactions digitally. The idea is to implement remote collaboration techniques in a way that it replicates human touch, brings everyone closer, and creates stronger team connections.
Here are the top techniques to improve remote collaboration and replicate the human touch
1. Create and nurture an online platform for communication
Your physical offices had water coolers, coffee spaces, and canteens where your staff could come together to talk about general day to day things which helped them bond and build better camaraderie.
Remote teams can often face issues with communication and collaboration if all they do is talk about work. In order to improve remote collaboration, organizations need to encourage employees to have random discussions with each other and that starts by creating and nurturing an online space that is specifically aimed towards this.
Establish communication norms and encourage random conversations between team members who don’t communicate directly with each other as much. A great way to do that is by designating a 30-minute slot every Friday and matching random team members to have virtual coffee with each other. Having a digital workspace platform that boosts work collaboration as well as random conversations among employees can also help establish an ideal remote working environment for teams.
2. Create a space for celebration
By creating virtual spaces and digital rituals for celebrations, you can strengthen employee relationships and give your employees a sense of belonging in the organization even when they don’t meet their co-workers every day. You can celebrate just about every small or big milestone like:
- Teams achieving their project goals
- Team members delivering impressive work
- The company reaching long-term and short-term milestones
- New talents joining the company
And of course, employee birthdays shouldn’t be forgotten. Even the quietest of the team members appreciate warm birthday wishes from their colleagues. You can also throw virtual birthday parties by sharing cake and party gifs.
All of these celebrations only take a few minutes of time every day, but they can go a long way in building close connections in the team.
3. Use more emojis 👍
Adding emojis can be a great way to add context to your messages when most of your team communication does not happen face to face. With emojis, it becomes easier to convey feelings of happiness 😀, confusion 😕, and more 👋. They can become the perfect replacement for body language and facial expressions which are often missing in remote team conversations.
If you are working on something important and receive a message from a team member, you can use an emoji to acknowledge their message and then go back to your work. Employees can also decide on using certain emojis to let each other know about their mood and status without having a difficult and awkward conversation. For instance, you can have separate emojis for:
- Trying to focus on something very important
- Feeling overwhelmed with all the work
- Needing a bit of alone time to recharge and re-energize yourself
4. Conduct virtual team building activities
When employees work from the same physical office, they often have team building activities to improve team communication and break the ice with new co-workers. Just because your team is now working remotely doesn’t mean you should give up on it. Here are some virtual team building activities that you can consider for your remote team
- Playing multiplayer video games together and keeping a monthly scoreboard for it
- Sharing recipes and photos of meals that the employees are making in their homes
- Watching the latest movies or TV shows together and then discussing them
- Skill sharing of interesting hobbies like painting, playing instruments, and even yoga
- Creating a book club that discusses a new book every week or month
- Hosting a Friday party on a video call where everyone grabs a drink together
Whatever team building activity you choose, just make sure you aren’t forcing employees to attend any of these activities. Instead, employees should be actively interested in them.
A great way to do that is by creating a separate communication channel to share event details with everyone. Whoever is interested can RSVP directly for the team building activity. If you don’t get enough RSVPs, cancel the whole event and look for more interesting activities that can engage employees. You can also post polls to get employee suggestions about which team building activity to conduct next.
5. Meet in real life
No remote tools or techniques can completely replace what it’s like for teams to be in the same room and have face to face conversations. Whether your remote team meets only once a year or more often, meeting everyone in real life is one of the best ways to build team spirit and improve collaboration.
Meeting in person allows team members to get to know each other as human beings and not as just another face on their screens. Many fully remote companies organize annual retreats where all of their employees come together for a few days of fun team building activities. While organizing these events can be expensive, it is definitely worth the investment in the long run.
Collaboration is the key to successful remote teams
Remote work brings new challenges to the table but with the right approach, we can bring human interaction to life digitally. The idea is to use the collaboration tools and techniques that align with the organization’s culture and allow your employees to work closely together.
Guest Blog by Chintan Jain, Head of Marketing, Kissflow
Chintan Jain is the head of marketing at Kissflow. Chintan is a skilled digital marketing practitioner with deep experience in working with web solutions, marketing, analytics and product management. Chintan writes extensively on topics like digital marketing, work management, and the digital workplace on various business and technology platforms.
