How to have an effective collaboration with your staff while working in distance? A very common question heard recently when the work is changing every day. Thanks to a better digital workspace and the demands from millennials who have different expectations about their workplace, organizations nowadays are creating a modern environment for their workforce. The modern workplace environment has a blended workforce and less tied down to physical locations.

Remote Work, a modern workplace

Remote work is becoming the norm in the modern world of work. Many organizations linked to information technology and digital services are opting out of a traditional central office and building remote teams. Remote work is a trend that started to grow a decade ago and is likely to continue in the future. According to Gallup’s recent report, the amount of people who work remotely at least once per week has grown by 400% in the last ten years. The advanced technology allows remote teams to work together from different locations and different time zones. This way of work takes more into account the employee’s personal needs as it allows them to be more autonomous, efficient, and to produce high-quality work without office distractions that result in lower levels of stress. Working at a distance not only brings many benefits for employees, but it has also multiple advantages for employers such as greater motivation and productivity, cost reduction, talent acquisition, and a loyal workforce that results in less employee turnover. However, there are still some business leaders who are concerned if the distance can have a negative impact on their employee's performance.

Difficulties and concerns of working in distance

With any kind of work arrangement that requires a remote working, employees will have greater autonomy. Yet, this greater autonomy will require more self-engagement and self-management, which increases responsibility rather than freedom. But, the freedom from the four walls of the office can be seen as a challenge from some business leaders who think it may seriously hinder employee’s productivity, collaboration, and connection. They are concerned that working in distance may result in loss of control toward employees. Most of these concerns may arise when work expands and intensifies while norms about where, when, and how long to work are removed. But the fact is the opposite of this tends to be a reality since remote workers are more likely to overwork. According to Owllabs report, there are 43% of remote workers who work more than on-site workers do. Besides the loss of control toward their employees, some other business leaders think that geographically distributed collaboration could have a negative impact on both effectiveness and efficiency due to communication and coordination difficulties. Nonetheless, today distance becomes more subjective as long as people stay connected. Therefore, communication and collaboration are considered as a key to success for remote teams. So, to have an effective remote team for organizations is recommended to have well-defined policies on how remote teams will maintain communication, how they will collaborate, and what are the expectations. In addition to that, having the right tools and technology is very necessary.

Collaborating while working remote Collaboration can be defined as a process of shared creation where two or more coworkers are interacting toward the achievement of a common goal. But many may ask on how coworkers can collaborate while they are in different physical locations. Recent technologies are compressing this geographical distance, as it allows people to stay connected even if they are not within the same office. Therefore, for every organization that decides to have remote teams the first thing to do is to ensure that the remote workers are fully connected and integrated with the rest of the organization. This means that every organization must ensure each remote worker is using the appropriate connectivity tools to access applications and communicate with remote coworkers or partners. In addition to this, the remote workers must be supported by high-speed internet infrastructure as they will have to use high-quality video conferencing services and other applications or platforms that require significantly higher bandwidths than conventional textual applications of the past.

Collaboration tools and services

The way people work together is changing. In the previous decade, many large organizations with offices over the world spent large amounts of time and money simply to gather people in one office. Today, these kinds of meetings can be done very easily. All the traveling costs can be eliminated with a high-quality video conferencing. When this high-quality video conferencing is combined with other collaboration tools people can be productive as if they been working in the same office. The digital collaboration tools and platforms are vast, but here will be elaborated only a few of them that may help improve the chances of successful project outcomes for any business that has remote teams.

1. Team Collaboration Tools

As a team collaboration tool is recommended the Microsoft SharePoint Teams which provides a collaboration space where people can work together on a project. This collaboration tool helps teams to share different information between coworkers. The Microsoft SharePoint is designed around bringing the organization into a central point where teams can collaborate, especially when teams are not geographically connected as it provides remote workers the ability to connect via a portal.

2. Video Conferences and Screen Sharing Tools

There are a lot of free web conferencing tools with video and screen share options that any organization can use while working remotely. Cisco’s WebEx is one of the most secure and reliable conferencing tools that provides personalized video meeting rooms where users can be a host or join meetings. Remote workers can use WebEx for team collaboration, webinars, and training. However, the free version of WebEx limits the number of conference participants to three. Another tool that is highly recommended while remote working is Skype for Business. Besides the options of the conference call, video conferencing and screen sharing with Skype for Business users can see who is available and send instant messages. Instant messaging is considered an effective way of communication since it doesn’t cause delays. Both Cisco WebEx and Skype for Business have the option to take control of the presenter’s screen. This feature enables remote workers to provide support for customers and partners all over the world.

3. Cloud Storage Services

Cloud storage is a model of computer data storage in which the digital data can be stored in multiple servers that are owned and managed by a hosting company. Microsoft One Drive, Dropbox Business and Google Drive are some of the Cloud Storage platforms that can be used by any organization. All these platforms keep files in a secure and centralized location. These platforms enable Remote workers to share Large files that cannot be sent via email. Other than that, remote workers benefit from the Cloud platforms since they can access and update the files from everywhere in different devices.

4. Time Converter Tools

Considering the fact that remote teams might work from different locations, finding the right time to communicate has crucial importance for them while working in different time zones. Therefore, it is highly recommended for remote workers to use any of the time converter tools that may suit them. World time buddy and the time zone converter are two among many time converter tools that can help any remote worker to find the appropriate time to schedule their conference calls.

5. Note Taking Tools

Last but not least, taking notes has crucial importance while working remotely. During every conference call it is recommended to take notes for remote workers, as it enables them to be more efficient and organized. Microsoft OneNote, WooBoard and Evernote are most popular applications for taking notes. All these applications enable information gathering and multi-user collaboration. Besides, all these supports simultaneous editing documents by multiple users when the document is stored in the Cloud Storage or Shared Drive.

Conclusion

Even though remote work may offer many advantages, some argue that nothing can replace working together face to face. We have also to bear in mind that not all organizations can work with remote teams. However, this is a trend that is growing rapidly and any organization that can apply this way of working is wise to prioritize as a strategy to be able to achieve a highly competitive advantage if concepts are applied correctly. Ultimately, to have an effective remote team, organizations must put correctly into practice collaboration and communication methodologies by using the right tools and services.