How to Improve Your Remote Team’s Productivity

Companies can save money and increase productivity by employing team members who work remotely. However, in order to perform this successfully, teamwork needs to be a priority. How can this be accomplished? Cloud solutions and on-site Voice over IP (VoIP) systems can achieve unified communication amongst staff members. There are many ways to boost your remote team’s morale and work ethic and a business telephone system is just one of the technologies that have transformed organizations. Here are some ideas on how you can improve your remote team’s productivity.

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Improve Bonds

Cultivating a good relationship with your team is paramount to having a successful business. In order to attain this, you need to be able to collaborate properly and achieve the expected results, while ensuring employees are happy and productive. Happy employees are effective employees, and creating a sense of well-being, security, and comfort is vital to achieving goals.

Create Awareness of Time Zones

Cycled work schedules can increase productivity. In the past, all teams would typically work together and accomplish tasks at the same time. This would normally be achieved by alternating shifts. But when you have a team that is geographically diverse, team members will always be trying to catch up. The traditional method of running a strict and non-flexible schedule can actually hinder your team’s ability to perform efficiently, which is why you need to always choose an overlapping time to bring together the entire team for conference calls or virtual meetings. Regardless of location, everyone could have this allotted time period to work together.

Encourage Collaboration

Believe it or not, there is a difference between working together and truly collaborating. Collaboration enables the team to get motivated and excited over a shared inspiration or goal, whereas working together is more about everyone doing their part to finish a project. Even when employees work remotely, you can schedule vocational brainstorming chats or conference calls so that everyone knows they’re collaborating towards the end goal of the project.

Be Clear about Expectations, Deadlines, and Standards

One of the biggest mistakes we make as business owners is to give each member of our team a different set of rules or standards by which to operate. We need to assume that team members will communicate with one another and share information outside their scheduled work time. Try to keep all of deadlines, standards and expectations universal to ensure that no one feels left out. Competitiveness can be valuable, but it can become unhealthy and out of hand when employees feel like there is a hierarchy or implied favouritism.

Choose the Right Technology

Thanks to the Internet, team members can communicate in an endless number of ways. Chat windows, telephone calls, programs like Skype and Facebook video, and different communication technology can be used to establish better connections amongst employees. Depending on how intimately you want to work with your employees, you can either use e-mail and chat or video to simulate a face-to-face meeting.

Get Help from High Tech Communications

In this modern world, more and more employees are working from home or other remote locations. If you would like to benefit from this arrangement, it is important to take the extra steps necessary to create a team environment. As a result of your efforts, you can achieve a sense of community and loyalty that cannot be measured. Employees will feel valued. Everyone will feel like part of the team, and the company will reap the benefits of lower employee turnover, greater job satisfaction, and greater creativity and productivity from employees.

Based in Aurora, Canada, High Tech Communications provides cloud services that can transform your business. We have partnered with several first-rate cloud service providers to bring excellent communication technology to our clients. Our services also include setting up high-end VoIP phone systems and data solutions (on site or in the cloud) that can benefit a host of GTA sectors such as education, health care, hospitality, call centres, and countless other types of businesses. We provide dedicated communication support across regional, national, and international accounts. To learn more about how we can help you get more out of your communications, contact us toll-free at 1-(800) 853-2335.

Image Source : iStock.com/KatarzynaBialasiewicz