Remote Collaboration Guideline: How to Improve Remote Collaboration Efficiency?

Remote collaboration is the work way that we need to pay attention to with the breakout of covid-19 and globalization. Many corporations already implement remote work, especially during the shutting down period because of covid-19.
However, we find that few companies are willing to allow their employees to work remotely for a long time. As long as they receive the notice of unblocking, they prefer to gather their employees back to the office.
But why? So why? If you have the same confusion, keep reading to get the answer. We will help you understand by explaining everything about remote collaboration to you. It includes: what it is, why it is crucial, what will affect its efficiency, how to improve it, and what tools you should use.

What is Remote Collaboration?

Remote collaboration is a process in which members from anywhere in a team get rid of distance limitations and work together to achieve a specific business goal. 

For example, as a global sales team with different members from the United States, United Kingdom, and Germany, your purpose is to expand your business to these three countries and increase sales. But team members are far away from each other and can only collaborate remotely. You need to negotiate or discuss some things with messages, video calls, file sharing, etc.

Why Is Remote Collaboration So Important?

Remote collaboration is a vital working way. Many people are working in this way. What makes remote collaboration so essential? Here are four major items that level it in a high position. 

1. Increase the sales of global and cross-regional businesses.

Many companies expand their business in different countries or areas. They will build a branch in the desired country or place with local members which will make everything easier and increase local sales quickly. In this case, members from different locations need to collaborate remotely to discuss the problems and strategies. Only this way can the company make sure everything goes on as scheduled.

2. Earn the salary and keep the business going on.

Covid-19 changes people’s work way and lifestyles. A lot of people shut down at home. If they cannot work at home, they do not have any salary or income. It will be a disaster for a family. And it is also a disaster for a company as it cannot keep its business going. Remote collaboration makes it different. You can work from home and collaborate with your team. You can get paid, and the company businesses keep running normally. 

3. Save money for the company.

If a company owns a team working remotely, it does not need to rent a place or buy computers and other work-required things. It can save a lot of money. Also, to save money, companies will hire employees from areas or companies with lower salaries to build another team for some professions, for instance, technical specialists. As they are in places far away from locations with most members, remote collaboration is necessary to let all your members work together. 

4. Balance private life and work for employees.

Many people will choose to work as freelancers or jobs that can work from home as they need to balance their life and work. They may want to enjoy a much more flexible life and may have babies or other family members required to take care of them. Whatever cases they are in, remote collaboration can help them do these.

What Are Major Factors Affecting Remote Collaboration Efficiency?

Although remote collaboration has many benefits, still many companies are not willing to choose it. Because it has many factors that will affect remote collaboration efficiency. And things may be out of control when you work remotely. 

Ineffective communication.

When collaborating remotely, the most troublesome thing is to communicate fluently. Unlike face-to-face ones, you cannot see the body language of your members as you may talk via phone calls, messages, or email. Sometimes, you may not understand what they say without the help of body language. Moreover, communication needs to look at specific documents, contents, or materials. Remote communication is difficult for you to do. It will bring communication to the wrong place. And it will also consume more time on interpretation. 

Delay in communication.

You cannot control the speed of response for remote collaboration and may feel upset if you send an email or message to your boss and do not get an instant reply as you want. You may feel not happy or even very angry if you cannot get a quick reply from other team members. And you may feel anxious if you cannot get a fast reply when you are dealing with an urgent issue. Lack of immediate response can decrease your working efficiency and mood. It will make everything to be a mess. 

The environment is not suitable for remote collaboration.

It is difficult for many employees to find a proper working environment if they work from home. If at home, it is not easy to find a quiet space if your family is big and you have your child at home. If at the library or another quiet place, you may have a lot of other people around. So it is not convenient to communicate via phone call and video call. All these will make your remote collaboration low-efficiency

Devices, tools, and WIFI may not work stably.

Unlike working at the office, the device, software, and WIFI problems can be solved by technical support immediately. If you work at home, you may use the computers and WIFI of your own,  have to call the device and WIFI providers to help you out. That takes a long time. Even though you are using the devices from the company, it is also not easy for your technical support members to figure out the problem and fix it. These will make your collaboration shut down and result in low efficiency. 

How to Enhance the Efficiency of Remote Collaboration?

A lot of problems may exist with remote collaboration but can be fixed with the below tips. If you are a remote collaboration team leader, you should have a look and strive to enhance its efficiency. 

1. Communicate effectively.

How to Communicate fluently is the first thing you should consider when you want to improve the efficiency of remote work collaboration. Here are several things you should do. 

First of all, as a leader, you should make sure every member of the team engages in collaboration. Commonly, you will ignore someone when there are many members in the group. You should observe your members’ activity and talk with the member directly if they did not engage in the collaboration or meetings, etc. 

Secondly, when you try to assign tasks, explain something, or point out some issues to your members, you need to interpret them as clearly as you can. 

Thirdly, choose video calls instead of email or messages as you can get instant replies. And video calls will be better for you to know what sense, feelings, and body language they have. These can help you understand what your members want to express. 

Fourthly, you can build communication norms. For example, before communicating, each member should prepare all content that they need to say. If using messages or email to communicate, how long they should reply. 

Fifthly, A tool with powerful features can make remote collaboration in a different place. For example, if you need to start a video call with members, Google Meet is your best choice. 

2. Accessible. 

Making sure members are accessible is very important to push remote collaboration going on well. You need to know when it is available for members in different places and timezone and schedules in advance. 

3. Working behavior. 

You should specify a fixed working time and every member should be in front of the computer during that time. Also, you can have a set meeting time. For example, having a meeting to review one week’s work on Monday. 

4. Follow up on the schedule.

 Everyone should have one schedule for the work and update it at the end of the day. You can also let members give feedback via email, file, or messages about the process. It is a good way to let your members keep updated on what the team is doing and what problems it has, etc. 

5. Strengthen relationships. 

We are not a machine. Remote team collaboration efficiency will also be affected by the relationships between your team members. You can use activities and celebrations for remote employees, let them feel you are a warm team and they will be more willing to open their hearts to you.

Best Remote Collaboration Tools

Collaboration tools for remote teams are necessary as they can improve remote collaboration efficiency and keep everything on schedule.

1. Communication Tools

Slack-Best Message Communication Tool

Slack is one of the best collaboration tools for remote teams. It can allow you to message your members with ease. It provides different channels to manage your conversation. You can use default stickers and emojis to make your communication more interesting. It can also allow you to start a voice call and share your screen with your team to communicate. What we like most are the notification features. If you have any notifications and new rules that you need to let everyone know, you can do it with this directly. 

Google Meet – Best Video Call and Conference Tool

Google meet is a free video call and conference tool. It does not need to sign up with any email. You only need to visit the official website and click on the “New meeting” to start. You can share your screen, window, or tab. Also, if you have something to write, it has a whiteboard for you. It is a remote collaboration software worth your try. 

2. Doc Sharing

Google document is a highly recommend document sharing and creating tool. It is 100% free to use and powerful to manage and share your documents. You can create word, excel, or PPT easily. And all members can edit the documents in real-time. 

3. Project Management and Task Management

Monday.com can manage your projects, plans, and tasks directly. It also has a lot of prepared templates for you to create your desired project management and task management with no effort. 

Final Words

Do you get the answer to why some companies do not want to have remote collaboration for a long time? We are sure your answer is yes. And you also have complete knowledge of what remote collaboration is, why it is important, what will affect the efficiency, how to enhance it, and what remote work collaboration tools you should use.