As the head of human resources or internal communication for a large organisation that manages a remote team, you spend much time pondering how to keep your team connected and engaged.
Whether your team is scattered across different time zones or working from their home offices, ensuring seamless communication is no small feat and can quickly become a challenge.
How do you overcome this challenge? How do you ensure smooth yet effective communication with your remote team?
In this blog, you’ll learn ten expert-approved, simple, yet powerful ways to improve your team’s communication.
You’ll also discover the right communication tools to enhance your team’s productivity.
Keep reading.
Which famous companies have excellent team communication?
The internal communication of your remote team is essential for the team’s productivity. If your team members consistently and effectively communicate, they will most likely meet targets and produce the required results.
Below, we’ve listed three companies with successful communication practices.
1. TED – Short durations
Not every organisation or team member’s meeting is successful or productive. There’s a huge possibility that your team is present physically but not mentally.
Mentally, they might have zoned out.
TED, an innovation organisation, was also facing a similar issue. After finding the fault, TED implemented famous research about average attention span.
The research says an average British attention span is 10-18 minutes. So, TED ensures effective communication in the first 18 minutes of the meeting.
You can also adopt the same idea. Set up short-duration meetings for different agendas. Also, a question and answer session should be added to the meeting.
2. Virgin – Innovative spaces
To keep their team communication interactive, Virgin chose a different way. Virgin started having all their meetings in different places.
They have meetings in places like parks or coffee shops to feel fresh. Innovative space ideas help all your remote team members to produce new ideas.
You can suggest the same idea to your team members. Your team members from the same city can meet in a park or cafe. And you can join them virtually.
3. Netflix – Internal memos
You should involve higher management in team communication. However, involving higher management in every remote team communication is not a great idea.
At least not for your internal team communication…
Large organisations like Netflix prefer simple communication. They have monthly, quarterly, and annual meeting plans for management.
The best part of their meeting is that higher management only observes and answers the questions of team members.
You can also have internal memos in your remote team communication. Invite higher management to observe your team’s performance during meetings.
Your management can also help in clearing all the doubts of your employees.
How can extensive team communication be improved?
There’s no one particular way to improve communication in an organisation. But you can lead your team with the help of experts.
Below are ten simple yet powerful ways to improve your remote team’s communication.
1. Consider your team’s need
Cecilia Gorman, Manager of Boot Camp Digital Course at Cecilia Gorman, says:
“You have to consider your team’s needs. There’s a chance your team is struggling with communication. Interactive and clear communication can help them achieve your company’s goal more efficiently.”
As a business owner, one of your valuable assets is your team members. You must take care of your team’s needs, and they’ll take care of your customers.
You can always have stand-up meetings bi-weekly with your team and make them share their challenges during such meetings.
2. Embrace morning meetings
Graham Glass, founder and CEO of Cypher Learning, says:
“If you hold regular and early morning meetings, you can break communication barriers among your team members.”
You must be thinking, why morning meetings? Surprisingly, morning meetings make you more productive.
Schedule early morning meetings and suggest your team members get a warm cup of coffee beside them during the meeting.
You’ll notice a change in your team. Almost all tasks will get completed before the afternoon, because major issues and their action points were discussed during the early morning meeting.
Now, your team will be productive and not have to deal with burnout.
3. Encourage questions
Graham says, “You must encourage questions from your team members. Provide your employees with a space to reach out with questions — whether their questions are for a colleague or an expert/manager.”
If you think asking questions is a breeze for everyone on your team, think again. It’s not as simple as it seems.
Let’s face it, not everyone feels totally at ease speaking up. The odds are that plenty of folks in your company feel a bit hesitant about asking questions, no matter who it’s to.
How can you encourage them to speak, ask questions or communicate?
Start by checking in instead of asking questions. Also, the most effective thing to do is listen. Ensure you listen to whatever your employees share.
4. Try team-building exercises
Graham says, “Whether you opt for anonymous feedback or personal conversations. Your employees must feel comfortable speaking their minds and airing out any negative aspects of their work.”
Your team’s feedback is important. An interactive and fun team-building exercise is like a one-stop solution for burnout and demotivation.
You can engage in team-building exercises every week. The frequency of your team-building exercise depends on your team’s current communication.
5. Find the right communication tool
Graham Glass says, “The right tools, processes and leadership are paramount for workplace communication.”
The right communication tool allows your remote team to communicate effectively with each other. No matter which country your team members are in, the right communication tool makes their work easy.
If you look into the market, you’ll find many communication tools. But not every communication tool is right for you.
You must look for the features, budget, integration, and capacity. Whether you manage a remote or a hybrid team, Talk Magnet is the right choice.
Talk Magnet helps boost your team’s productivity with instant messaging. Talk Magnet is also elementary for anyone who knows how to use WhatsApp.
With 100% uptime, your employees can easily use Talk Magnet without lagging.
6. Keep meetings small
Cecilia says, “You can allocate a couple of minutes at the start of the meeting for work-appropriate small talk only.”
Lengthy meetings can make your team lose interest in the topic. Make your meetings more exciting and on-topics by eliminating unnecessary topics.
Even your management will agree with the small meeting idea…
In comparison, long meetings take time, creativity, and focus out of your team. If you schedule small and regular meetings, your team will collaborate more.
7. Mandatory video calls
Ben Chestnut, Co-Founder and CEO of Mailchimp, says, “Keep your team members as closely as possible.”
A video call lets you observe your team’s body language and expressions. Mandatory video calls make your communication more human, like face-to-face interaction.
Your team can also demonstrate their go-to attitude via video calls.
In your stand-up meetings, make video-on mandatory for everyone. No exceptions.
8. Welcome team feedback
Cecilia says, “Arrange daily or weekly feedback meetings to connect your employees with the office environment.”
Feedback meetings are more important than any other meeting. You can take or give feedback to your team to avoid future challenges.
Arrange feedback sessions through meetings or surveys. However, online meetings are the best and most effective way to receive or give feedback in a remote team.
Before starting your feedback session, email your team and pre-prepare them. So that when they attend your feedback session, they participate and contribute as they should.
9. Conduct individual training
Graham says, “Make your communication training more specific for your team members and your organisation.”
Training your team benefits you in multiple ways. You engage your employees with your organisation’s goals when you train them.
You can conduct individual training right after hiring and also during tenure. Before you conduct any individual training of your team, do your research.
Look into your team’s performance report. Check where they are lacking and how you can help them in your training session.
10. Respect time zones
Graham says, “Save and respect your team member’s time zone. Share and update your strategies timely.”
Whether you’re an in-house team or remote, you must respect time. Especially with a remote team, you must respect your team’s working hours. If you want your team members to work in a particular timezone, establish the timezone.
For urgent tasks, you define the urgency and importance of the task. The urgency level will help your team manage their work accordingly.
What are extensive business communication best practices?
Operating a large organisation can be quite a challenge. We get it. You need to adopt advanced and the best communication practices.
Graham Glass says, “In your remote team, communication can directly and positively impact your productivity.”
Graham further states this points:
- Your team must have the right communication training with clear company expectations and goals.
- Get advanced communication tools and get every member of your team on board.
- You’ll get valuable results when you’ve got a feedback and rating communication system.
- Update your communication strategy to encourage your team to communicate openly.
Want a one-turn-key solution? We’ve got you covered
Now that you know how to keep your team close, it’s time to choose the communication tool that works best for them.
Use Talk Magnet. With Talk Magnet, you can build a remote team that is ready for the future of work on one platform.
Communicate with your team (through chat, voice, or video), share files and access information anytime you want without lags, downtimes or delays.
Sign up your team for Talk Magnet’s free trial and enjoy seamless virtual communication.
You can also book a demo right away. Feel free to ask our staff anything you need to know.
