Key Strategies to Support Team Collaboration While Adapting to Remote Work

Availability is the greatest problem for most remote team managers. Although flexibility in the schedule is a common advantage for remote workers working from home, it can not always be possible for team members to work independently.

Fremont, CA: Remote work figures clearly show that working from home will increase both employee satisfaction and productivity while lowering overall business costs for the company. In reality, 85 percent of enterprises reported an increase in productivity due to improved flexibility provided by remote work and 83 percent of employees reported lower stress.

But welcoming work from home has not been easy for everyone, at least at the beginning. Managers are struggling to solve the organizational difficulties that remote work brings with it, and team coordination is one of the greatest challenges of all.

Best practices to foster collaboration and build a resilient remote team

Centralize correspondence

The first thing you need to do for good remote team collaboration is to centralize all contact within the team. There should be a collaborative contact area where team members can express their thoughts, exchange updates, ask questions and collaborate effectively.

Although it is good to provide one-on-one contact with the team manager and other colleagues to establish strong ties, participants should be encouraged to share all their project-related concerns, issues or thoughts on a shared team communication platform so that everyone is in the loop all the time.

Create team schedules

Availability is the greatest problem for most remote team managers. Although flexibility in the schedule is a common advantage for remote workers working from home, it can not always be possible for team members to work independently. To ensure a smooth and productive remote team collaboration, you need to identify team schedules.

Creating a schedule does not mean requiring that workers work a set number of hours every day. It's about trying to find a routine that works with all members of the team and gives them the flexibility they need.

Create and reward project milestones

Whenever a new project starts, it's a fresh chance for workers to create something from the ground up and demonstrate their skills. But when the day-to-day pressures of a project start rolling in, it can be a constant uphill struggle for remote teams to remain on the same page.

In order to ensure that everyone remains aware and motivated to carry out their best work, team leaders should always make it a point not just to share important project accomplishments and deadlines with everyone but also to reward the contributions and achievements of the team members.

At the same time, managers should encourage peer recognition as well as ask employees to appreciate the efforts of their colleagues to build strong bonds and trust within the team.

See also: Top Remote Work Tech Solution Companies