Remote Team Communication - Chat, Call, Talk!

We’ve already presented tools for successful team communication. And it’s high time to discuss how to chat and talk remotely effectively. Let’s start right now!

1. Use all ways of remote communication

To communicate efficiently and use all its benefits - use chat rooms as well as video conferences tools and as well as phone calls. Ideally, it looks like that:

• Email for sharing files;
• Chats for immediate messages and team chat rooms;
• Phone calls and video conferences to discuss some complex issues, to imitate real communication and to make it emotional and visual.

2. Keep it active

Don’t make your team's chat “dead”. For this, you should consider time zones and working hours of each member so that you talk when it’s comfortable for everyone, make sure your message is meaningful and teach your team not to ignore the chat. 

In addition, we recommend creating an informal chat room where workers would be able to talk to each other on some private (informal) topics and get to know each other. It is important to keep the balance between work and rest to make the communication permanent.

3. Use emojis and gifs

This point seems too informal and childish, but it can be quite effective if we mean exactly team communication. Using gestures, marks, smiles and stickers will help to make the talk more real and interesting, as if you’re not in different parts of the world or the country. It’ll also help to highlight important information and show emotions virtually. 

4. Use tools for screen sharing

Screen sharing is a great way to pretend you work at one computer. It is also a great way to discuss how the task should be done together, seeing all the changes and steps immediately on the screen. That makes co-workers involved in what is being done; don’t neglect this tip.

5.Don’t interrupt while rest

If your workers have different time zones, set working and rest hours, then don’t  disturb them while their rest ones. Everyone must respect the time of others, so texting and having unplanned conferences and calls all the time are not a nice idea at all. Leave it for unexpected situations when there is no choice to not to organise an unscheduled meeting. 

For this aim, you can find a messenger, where a person can set a status “busy”, so that no one would interrupt him.

6. Create a blog

A blog where you’ll share the plans, aims, achievements of your team is a good idea to make the team more united and engaged into all the work and non work processes of it. 

You can encourage your colleagues to update the blog by themselves, post the notes about meetings and so on, make the list with necessary information etc. This would be the right decision to widen your cooperation and, again, make it less informal.

7. Organize video conferences and phone calls correctly

As we’ve said, video conferences and phone calls are essential. However, it is also essential to make them efficient. Here are some advices:

• Control yourself. Don’t let yourself get angry or irritated while discussing some problem;
• Make a plan. Make a list of issues you would like to discuss while the meeting, so that you’ll make some important conclusions after it;
• Don’t be selfish. Make sure everybody has expressed his opinion;
• Use humor. Being too serious doesn’t bring a good mood to the team and slows down the achievements you all may get after the meetings;
• Summarize. This includes summing up all the decisions that was made during the conference to make it as clear as possible.

8. Real meetings

Although you are in a remote team and don’t have an opportunity to see each other, we advise to do it sometimes. 

You can invest some of your income in trips or team events. This will help to make the communication between each of you more honest, more personal and easier. Bringing a piece of informal stuff into the team culture never ends badly because, in fact, it’s completely opposite.

Hope we were helpful! See you next week!