In a time where a growing number of people are working remotely, business communication is more important than ever. In fact, in 2016, 43% of working Americans stated that they spent some of their time working remotely. These days, workers can find jobs that allow them to work remotely 100% of the time. In the age of digital nomads and convenience, remote work is growing in popularity.
Remote work not only offers more flexibility and convenience for employees; it can also be a money-saver for companies. It allows companies to hire employees around the globe.
The issue with remote work comes in the form of a lack of interpersonal face-to-face conversations. Thankfully there are methods that can bridge the gap. Here are five ways communication systems are working to make collaboration more realistic.
1. Video Conferencing
Today’s communication is all about instant and quick responses. We send and receive dozens of emails a day. We communicate via text messages or social media posts. While phone calls are a bit more personal, there’s nothing that bridges the distance gap between employees like being able to hear their voice and see their face.
With video conferencing, you all but remove the risk of misunderstanding someone’s tone or assuming that someone is being light-hearted when they aren’t.
The ability to see someone’s face helps to avoid miscommunication and allows your employees to form solid connections and relationships. This makes collaboration easier and much more effective.
Aside from the internal benefits, video conferencing can also be useful when meeting with new customers or discussing business with a potential new partner. You can make eye contact and see each other’s true emotions versus having to assume.
When upgrading your business VOIP phone service, be sure to ask your provider about video conferencing from your VOIP phone.
2. File Sharing Made Easy
Have you ever opened your inbox, only to be overloaded by large attachments? Written communication is the key to collaborating on ideas and sharing information, but emailing documents is less than ideal. You’re often left with multiple versions of a document, file access issues, and other problems that are easily preventable.
Poorly written communication leads to a cumbersome process that often causes extra stress, missed deadlines, and tons of frustration.
Today’s communication systems help to minimize these issues by storing documents in a central location. This means no more emailing or faxing documents. Instead, employees can work on the most up-to-date version of the document, allowing them to feel as if they’re sitting around a table mocking up a file.
3. Improved Engagement
It’s hard to feel engaged in a conversation when you’re sending emails back and forth or communicating on the phone. To boost collaboration, you’ll need to improve engagement between employees. By offering more personal ways to connect with each other, your employees are able to engage, ask questions, and get a deeper understanding of each other.
4. Virtual Training
There are all sorts of skills that employees need in order to be successful at their daily jobs. But as expectations increase and business grows, so does the number of skills that are needed to keep up with ever-growing business.
In order to stay competitive, each of your employees must have the skills needed to get their jobs done effectively and efficiently. Instead of sending employees to training at the cost of thousands of dollars per person, consider providing virtual training.
A virtual classroom not only saves, but provides the training and information your employees need to be successful. You’ll also be able to record the training sessions, allowing you to reuse for new employees or as reference material in the future.
5. Create a Culture of Collaboration
It’s much easier to collaborate when everyone is sitting in the same office. With a conference room, everyone is able to sit around the table, eat pizza, use the whiteboard, and post sticky notes. But with remote work, a conference room won’t cut it anymore.
By using the right communication system and web conferencing, you can create a virtual conference room with a virtual whiteboard. Many of these programs offer chat and calendar capabilities as well as tasking so that everyone knows what their follow-up actions are.
Through web conferencing, you can bridge the communication gap and ensure that employees, no matter their location, can share ideas, make process improvements, and work together to achieve success.
The development team can work together to figure out the best caching plugins for the company site. The marketing team can use the webpage and social media analytics plugins to figure out where their weak spots are in the current strategy. Even upper management can have their weekly meetings, and it can all be done through a web conference.
Conclusion
Remote employees and workspaces can be a challenge, but they’re also quite beneficial. To ensure business communication meets team and customer expectations, make sure you’re using some of these tools and technologies to make everyone feel closer together.
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