As the COVID-19 pandemic has changed a lot regarding our day to day lives, one major change has been the increase in telecommuting. More and more companies are finding that having their employees work remotely helps to decrease their risk of contracting the virus and it actually helps to boost productivity. However, if you’re experiencing some collaboration issues with your work-at-home employees, here are some helpful tactics that you can easily implement.
Set Communication Guidelines
When you’re in an office setting, you can pick up the phone or head down the walkway to an office to talk with a co-worker. When you’re working at home, it can seem more difficult to find the right way to communicate. Instead of pondering what’s best, you should set up clear communication guidelines for your team members. This way, everyone knows what to expect working remotely.
Offer the Right Technology
One of the biggest reasons that there may be a lack of collaboration between your employees is they simply don’t have the tools to do it effectively. Companies who rely on email and employees using their personal phones for communication are noticing a lapse in collaboration efforts. With the help of technological tools like NetSuite OpenAir Solutions, you can give your staff easy methods of communication that will open up the collaboration that you’ve been hoping for.
Encourage Organization
One of the hardest parts about collaboration is keeping track of who is doing what. With helpful organization applications, you can set your teams up for success. You should be using technology applications that allow for tasks to be easily seen by the group and assignment of each task to staff members. This should be laid out in an easy to read format for all workers. When a staff member knows who is working on a specific topic, they easily know who to go to for information.
Mix Up Your Teams
It’s very easy to stick to keeping certain staff members together on projects. When they perform the task well the first time, you can bet that you’ll get high-quality work the next time. However, that’s not the best way to encourage collaboration. It’s, rather, a great way to encourage isolation from other workers. You should be regularly switching up the teams that you put together so that different employees can learn to collaborate with others.
Working from home may be a new challenge for many of your workers. Getting them to collaborate like they did while they were in the office together can seem difficult at first. However, if you utilize the tips we outlined for you above, you should be well on the way to enhancing the collaboration level from your employees.
Brooke Chaplan is a freelance writer and blogger. She lives and works out of her home in Los Lunas, New Mexico. She loves the outdoors and spends most of her time hiking, biking, and gardening. For more information, contact Brooke via Facebook at facebook.com/brooke.chaplan or Twitter @BrookeChaplan
