Beneficial Aspects of Team Communication for Remote Employees

Team communication has been an essential part of an organisational structure to ensure workforce productivity as well as employee satisfaction. In the pre- covid times, achieving the same was easy. Companies could organise everything from setting up employee seating closer to each other, to regular meet-ups, AMA sessions as well as fun parties and team outings to keep the teams together and connected. This connection not only fuelled the conversations and team bonding but also made sure that the knowledge transfer is fluid, all the team members are on the same page and organisational growth is never compromised.

And the pandemic changed everything.

With people working remotely for more than six months now, the importance of team communication is highlighted more than ever. Given the global situation that points towards extended or even permanent remote working, team communication for remote teams is a key element that organizations need to invest in.

Here’s why you and your organizations need to move past the conventional modes of communication for remote working teams.

Beneficial Aspects of Team Communication for Remote Employees

1. Bringing speed to communication

Let’s admit it, email is latent. And however critical role email communication plays in the overall organisational communication, email can never be counted on as a fast communication medium. People have moved past the emails and now no one really checks their emails very often. People reserve a dedicated part of their schedule to check their emails and that’s that. In case you want to convey any important messages or communicate any new updates to your remote employees, doing it so over the email will not assure an immediate response. 

To bring speed to your remote team communication, it is important to choose a tool that is not email, can be quickly accessed from notification bars and the messaging is easy to follow.

2. Keeping the knowledge base afresh

When employees work remotely- due to the pandemic or otherwise, they need to be updated with the business knowledge and resources at all times. Even if that means sharing multiple files and information over others means. For employees to truly contribute to productivity, it is essential that they have the latest business knowledge and have access to the key business documents in real time.

3. Exchanging business documents in a secure environment

While we are at the business documents, one of the prime aspects to consider is the security of the communication tool and how the business resources are shared with remote employees. The business resources cannot be risked to be vulnerable to attacks or breaches. The resources need to be shared over a secure environment, with necessary encryption and ensuring that only the employees have access to the documents and files shared.

4. Ensuring that the communication is easily accessible

The reason why email is latent in the inbox and the clutter it brings with it, not to mention the ping pong emails that can cause distractions and hinder the employee productivity. The remote team communication needs to be instant, with multiple communication modes including instant text and voice messaging, voice and VoIP calls, group chats and video calling.

5. Employee engagement 101

When employees work remotely, they often miss out on the human connection that working out an office brings in. Lack of communication can lead to lack of engagement which further leads to employee demotivation. An often underrated but a very important benefit of maintaining remote team communication is to keep employees together virtually, retaining them in the longer run.

Closing lines…

Remote working looks like it is here to stay and has created permanent alterations to the way organizations operated. As telecommuting and working from home seems to be the new normal, not enough can be stressed on the importance of remote team communication in order to keep businesses afloat and the wheels well-oiled at all times.