Articles

How to Increase Communication When Working from Home

by Rayanne M. Writer

Working from home is no longer a trend as it was the past decade. Today, the number of remote workers is at a whopping 4.7 million in the U.S. alone, which is about 3.5 percent of the country's population. Although working from home is indeed a possibility and, nowadays, very common, there are still imperfections that need to be smoothed out before the work-from-home movement becomes an infallible way of doing business. One of the key areas that prove to be problematic for businesses is intercommunication. Here are five tips on how to boost communication for employers and their employees when working from home:

Establish Expectations

Your teammates may live in different time zones or have different preferences for how they want to exchange information. Don't just expect everyone to work at the same schedule or use the same set of tools. As the team leader or business owner, you'll want to clearly define what you expect from your team to avoid any confusions and frustrations. You should also encourage your workers to set their own daily work schedules rather than require them to be online at specific hours of the day. Flexible schedules can help unlock the highest productivity levels in each employee.

Keep Workplace Culture Alive

Even if your team is working from home, you should keep workplace culture going. For instance, if you used to do group stretches and deep breathing exercises at the office, you can devote five minutes of your online video conference call towards doing the same exercise routine. If your workplace culture also allows employees to bring their pets to work, you can carve out some time during end-of-the-week meetings for employees who are also pet owners to introduce or give updates about their furry pets. You should also use your brand's colors and logos on all collaboration tools and software that your team uses. Establishing some semblance of workplace culture helps keep team camaraderie up and encourages teamwork.

Schedule Regular Calls

Daily calls with your team keep your group synced up on priority tasks and target milestones as well as any issues that need to be addressed immediately. Doing a daily voice or video conference creates certainty and leaves little room for surprises. In uncertain times like today where coronavirus continues to disrupt society, this habit of constant communication as a group can help everyone remain focused and work towards the same goals. Scheduling regular calls also leaves small opportunities for building stronger professional relationships amongst coworkers. A simple "how's it going?" can spark lively conversations about each other's personal lives and interests.

Choose Video Conferences Over Voice Calls

Although the latter can get the job of exchanging information done, video conferences are a more accurate way to gauge the current status of your employees and pending projects. Thanks to free conference call software, you don't even need to pay to video chat with your employees. Face-to-face interactions are richer in terms of data you can take away from said interaction. You can pick up on facial expressions and body language, both of which are essential parts of clear communication. It's more difficult to determine if an employee is struggling to finish a high-priority task or if a new employee is acclimating well around his/her new work group if they only SMS or email you about it.

Set Up Meetings With a Purpose

The whole reason why meetings are notoriously dull and unproductive is the fact that they are often set up without any expectations or goals in mind. Have a list of things that you want to go over with your team members, and try to cover all these items before the allotted time for the meeting runs out. Preparing talking points before the meeting minimizes long, time-wasting pauses and avoids the conversation from getting sidetracked by unimportant topics. You achieve a higher degree of cohesion in communicating ideas and instructions with your teammates.


Effective communication isn't merely about talking to people and keeping everyone updated; it's knowing what message needs to be relayed and to whom. As the team leader, your job is to get the right information to the right people in order to achieve the right results.


Sponsor Ads


About Rayanne M. Advanced   Writer

4 connections, 4 recommendations, 289 honor points.
Joined APSense since, June 15th, 2020, From Corvallis, United States.

Created on Aug 19th 2020 14:12. Viewed 309 times.

Comments

No comment, be the first to comment.
Please sign in before you comment.