Effective Teamwork During Remote Working

The past year has been a challenge for all businesses, with offices having to close and working from home becoming the new norm.

Though costly and time-consuming commutes have been cut out, remote working comes with its challenges. Luckily for you, we’re here to help your team thrive as you work from your bedroom, kitchen or even your shed!

Whether you’re a manager, a team leader or are simply part of a remote team, there are a few things you could do to make sure everybody feels motivated to get on with their work. Here are some handy tips on how to achieve effective teamwork during remote working.

It’s All About Trust

Trust is so important when working in a team remotely. It’s hard to work in isolation, as you can’t see what others are doing, or ask for help across the desk.

As a result, accountability is a key part of creating this trust with your colleagues. Accountability doesn’t mean pointing the finger or putting a colleague under scrutiny; it’s a way to make sure every team member knows what goals they’ve been set and the tasks they’ve been assigned.

Making sure everyone knows their responsibilities and how their work impacts others will set you on your way for effective teamwork during remote working.

Communication Is Key

With everyone in your team working on their own, it can be hard to stay in touch with your colleagues; you can’t walk to their desk to ask them for an update on a task. Luckily though, there’s plenty of communication software out there to ensure you can stay in touch with your team.

Here at Intuity we use Teams to communicate with each other, but you might prefer to use Zoom, Skype, or Google Meet instead. All of these allow you to message your team in an instant and check in with them with a video call whenever you like – a great way to enjoy human (although virtual) interaction.

If you’ve loved your experience using Teams, you don’t need to say goodbye even when remote working comes to a halt. Intuity can help integrate teams with your current office telephone system by Teams direct routing.

Plan Ahead

Using a communication software is great but be mindful of your colleagues’ work schedule.

Planning a schedule using the software’s calendar feature is an ideal way to help your team plan ahead for calls and manage their workload around this schedule. Humans love a routine to work to and so scheduling a daily or weekly company call could be good way to ensure everyone’s on the same page but also make sure everyone stays in touch.

It’s also a good idea to use time management programs such as ACE project or ClickUp to set tasks for colleagues. These tasks will include a deadline to work to and are also a great way to check the progress of a piece of work.

Track Time

Whilst planning, just remember to try and set time limits during these calls; it can be easy for these calls to go off on a tangent and potentially waste valuable work time.

It’s also a good idea to ensure everyone in the team is keeping a track of the time taken for each task by using the clock features on ACE or ClickUp for instance. This way, you can see how efficient everyone is being when completing tasks and can work with your team to see why a task might have taken longer than expected.

Not only that, the likes of Zoom and Teams use call recording solutions which is handy for managing the efficiency of your team. This feature can help to making sure they are communicating with customers and colleagues appropriately, can help to increase productivity, and also allows you to record training sessions.

Remember to Celebrate

Remote working isn’t all about work! Just because everyone in the team might be scattered all over the place doesn’t mean you can’t have fun.

Celebrate individual successes with values awards, try out some virtual team building games or perhaps host a quiz online.

Working from home has many benefits but it can have its disadvantages. Remote teams might find it hard to communicate with one another due to everyone being in different locations. Ensuring there’s trust between colleagues, accountability of tasks, planning ahead and making sure that the team is communicating with each other online are great ways to build effective teamwork during remote working.