Remote Work Best Practices
Gone are the days when every team member is a cubicle away.
Today, your IT technician might be in Atlanta, your marketing consultant in Dalton and your sales lead in Knoxville.
What used to be a five-minute face-to-face chat has become a long Slack message or a quick Teams chat — opening the door to miscommunication, disunity and a dip in productivity.
But you shouldn’t spend your work days fighting a headache from managing virtual chaos!
When you implement strategic communication and establish a physical “home base,” you can elevate your team’s potential as you embrace the freedom of remote work!
- Set clear communication expectations with your team
Before miscommunication and a backlog of questions derail your productivity, schedule frequent check-ins. Depending on the size of your team, you might meet with parts of the team or the whole.
To prevent meeting fatigue, keep these tips in mind:
- Stay on target! Keep these meetings relevant to your team’s needs, open the floor to project-focused questions and provide constructive feedback or clarity on current. This is an opportunity to genuinely check on your team’s progress and mindset.
- Establish a communication hierarchy. In these meetings, define or reaffirm your communication strategy. Make it clear what purpose Slack, Teams or an email chain all have within your team.
- Be time-conscious. Aim to keep these meetings short, around 30 minutes if you can, so they’re not hindering your team’s momentum for the day.
- Embrace the flexibility.
Flexibility is what makes remote work so appealing!
In this age of remote work, it’s becoming increasingly apparent that every employee has a different work style.
Some prefer to work around the hum and bustle of an office. Others prefer silence. Some like to take their meetings over the phone so they can walk and talk to stay alert. Others need to sit in their home office with their planner in hand.
Yet out of fear your team will become unproductive, some team leads institute strict guidelines for where and when and how teams can communicate.
We’ve found that balance is key!
While you should encourage and maintain your team’s professionalism, avoid micromanaging. It’s okay to allow some flexibility, helping employees embrace their autonomy and lean into their strengths.
This attitude helps your remote team feel relaxed, encouraging them to embrace their strengths and the work style that makes them the most productive.
- Establish a “home base.”
While remote work has great advantages, nothing builds team camaraderie like face-to-face communication.
We recommend having a space where some or all of your team can reconnect throughout the year to cultivate long-term unity.
For remote or hybrid teams in or near Lawrenceville, Cornerstone Coworking is the place for you! With numerous conference rooms for large or small teams, our third space offers the professional haven you need to build team chemistry and collaboration.
You don’t even need a membership to spend time in our space! If you and your team are only in town for a few days, a day pass will give you access to our common space, cafe and WiFi.
Ready to reconnect? Explore our shared office space in Lawrenceville!