5 Tips To Keep Your Remote Workforce Connected

5 Tips To Keep Your Remote Workforce Connected

QUALCO |

Effective team communication is always important, but it is now more challenging as most of the people work from home to reduce potential exposure to coronavirus.

The move to virtual working felt like a simple answer to a complex problem. However, physical isolation if not managed appropriately, will have unintended consequences, like decreased moral & reduced productivity.

Humans are social creatures, and as such many of our resilience resources are affected by our social interactions.

QUALCO has adopted successful strategies to maintain resilience & effective communication amongst its teams. To summarize these strategies and our experience so far, here are 5 key tips for establishing an efficient remote team communication.

  • Support

  • Confidence

  • Tenacity

  • Recovery

  • Agility

Support Tips

    • Provide our teams with not only practical but also psychological support

    • Initiate not only task driven conversations but also connect with our staff on a personal level

    • Schedule recurrent team meetings

    • Simulate corridor conversations virtually (e.g. five-minute check-in calls or a message via digital platforms)

 

People largely derive confidence through their interactions with their teammates. Working in teams and interacting across the company provides them with daily feedback on their contribution, even if they don’t notice. Their ideas are reinforced in conversations and team interactions, they often see an output connected to their contribution, and they can more tangibly see the value they bring. Remote working decreases feedback loops.

Confidence Tips

    • Increase our affirmative feedback

    • Recognize small milestones & individual’s contribution to team goals

    • Acknowledge what our people do well, even the small things

    • Make them understand that you notice their contribution

Tenacity Tips

    • Help them maintain the big picture

    • Remind them of enduring purpose and your team’s long term goals

    • Coach them to identify solutions when they feel overcome by the challenges they are facing or the uncertainty they need to navigate

    • Discuss with them even if you don’t have the answer in everything. Talking about feelings and uncertainty helps to cope with them

Recovery Tips

    • Help our team members working remotely to find ways to take breaks and recharge through connection with family members and/or co-workers

    • Work from home does not mean availability 24/7

    • Set up digital as many forms of social connection as possible

    • Reinforce our people's one on one communication with other team members

Agility Tips

    • Encourage them to transform challenges to opportunities

    • Enhance their agility to handle the new reality

    • Empower them to develop a growth mindset

    • Brainstorm together new ways of handling your everyday or long term challenges

 

Our practical guide recaps to the following:

  • We bring the office daily life in remote working

  • We stay close to our teams and peers

  • We standardize the methods of communication i.e team morning coffee daily at 11 am for ½ hour

 

 

#QUALCO #StayHome #StayProductive

 

Sources:

 

1. Fostering Resilience During Uncertainty: How HR Leaders Can Support Team Communication and Connection During Social Distancing, Shelley Winter
2. How Loneliness from Coronavirus Isolation Takes Its Own Toll, Robin Wright

3. How Leaders Can Show Empathy During Uncertain Times, Alissa Carpenter