5 ways to avoid the problem of miscommunication in remote teams
It’s not a lie when they tell you that communication is key in the workplace. Look around at fast-growing companies and you’ll realise that teams in these companies have really got a strong rapport with each other. From daily discussions to pantry conversations by the water cooler, conversations help to build awesome connections.
Now that is when communication within a remote team is a little tricky. When everyone is scattered across the world, dealing with different timezones, communication can break down. Uh Oh. Think about it – we have all played broken telephone before, all the way from primary school till now. We do it with our best friends and family – what about the colleagues we’ve never met?
How do you avoid the problem of miscommunication in remote teams?
Working physically apart means you do not have the chance to pop by your employee’s desk to check on his progress. However, it’s important to know how far your colleague is along with the projects.
To work around the lack of face-to-face communication, schedule a weekly touch point with each and every team member. This can be over a phone call, a short work email or a video conference.
This can also be a platform for your staff to air their concerns, clear misunderstandings about instructions or for you to set certain goals for them. We recommend a weekly touchpoint on every Monday so that your staff would feel fresh and motivated.
Unlike the traditional workplaces where teams meet up every month to update each other face-to-face on projects, remote teams have a limited opportunity to do so. Relying solely on text messages and work emails may spell disaster by creating internal tension. When people are tense, miscommunication in remote teams becomes more blatant.
Schedule a video conference each month so everyone is able to do a virtual meet-up and brainstorm ideas or share updates. Doing so would ensure that everyone is on the same page, and everyone gets the same messages. Not only does this get productivity going, it also helps to keep the team tighter.
*Tip: Remember to consider each other’s timezones when it comes to scheduling the video conference. Take into consideration of your team’s lifestyle habits too. Not everyone is a morning person/ night owl.
Having a sense of community and belonging in a team makes communication a little easier. If your colleagues can understand each other better and know each other personally, you can expect work emails and messages to be a little less paggro (read: passive aggression).
Traditional work teams often schedule quarterly retreats or team bonding events in order to improve communication among staff. In a remote work team, your members work from different ends of the world. It can be challenging to prevent miscommunication.
An alternative could be to create a common online platform (make Facebook groups great again!), where everyone can share non-work stuff and just let their hair down. Whether it’s cat GIFs, silly memes or mind-blowing articles, there is surely one thing that all your members can laugh together (behind the screens) and bond with each other over.
Create a work calendar such that everyone can share their schedules and working hours. This way your staff will know when they can look for each other, instead of impatiently sitting behind their computers wondering why a colleague is not replying. A work calendar is definitely an essential for teams with international staff from all over the world.
The thing about not having any physical interaction at the workplace means that there’s a huge reliance on texts and emails to get things done. And one danger of written communication, is that it is hard to tell the intent of each message. What this means is that emails can be a hotspot for miscommunication, and so it’s always good to drop your staff a reminder to be mindful of the tone they are using. It’s cool to use emojis, so don’t hold back!
Know anymore tips to avoid miscommunication that we may have left out? Let us know so we can all share about how we can keep our remote work teams productive!
