How To Create a Culture of Collaboration in Your Hybrid or Remote Company
Collaboration can seem challenging in large companies, especially when teams work remotely and employ different business practices and tech tools.
But it doesn’t have to be.
Below are some tips from Stormboard on creating a culture of collaboration in your company by providing the right tools and encouraging feedback and ideas from all employees.
Encourage Open Communication
For cross-team collaboration to happen, everyone needs to feel comfortable opening up about ideas and criticisms. You can encourage open communication by practicing it yourself, being open with your team members about future changes or decisions, and making a point to solicit feedback.
When talking to your employees, establish mutual trust and communicate effectively. Be clear about what you want to know, and never assume others always automatically understand what you mean. People are unique — everybody communicates a little bit differently. Keeping open lines of communication will help you learn the best way to reach your team, and help them understand you better as well.
Use the Right Technology and Tools
Technology plays a crucial role in fostering cross-team collaboration. For example, having a real-time chat system that allows employees from various teams to interact during work hours encourages team members to get to know one another and learn about project updates.
You can use software to schedule meetings as well. And when it’s time to brainstorm, you can take that online with Stormboard — whether you want to collaborate through live, hybrid synchronous meetings, or asynchronously.
One other aspect of collaboration is document sharing, making it possible for team members of different locations and departments to work on projects simultaneously. Stormboard makes it possible to keep all of your project-related documents in one place with integrations into Google Drive and Microsoft Office 365. Team members can even use Stormboard as a central hub to not only store, but co-edit documents.
Slack and Asana are popular programs for businesses, as they offer ways to create groups and team boards to help organize and keep track of tasks, which is perfect for collaboration. Trello and Basecamp, or services such as Google Drive and Dropbox might also suit you.
If you’re already using one or more of these tools, it might be checking how how they can integrate between one another to improve your processes and workflows.
If your business has considered using — or currently uses — a remote staffing agency, there may be a better option. Employees from these agencies tend to feel very detached and, since they’re working with multiple businesses at a time, they won’t likely be able to really meld with your team.
A talent scout might be a better fit. Choosing this compared to a staffing agency means that your virtual scout will find you the right permanent employee to fit a particular role. Then, that person can engage with and build your team along with other permanent employees. It’s a small shift that can make a big difference.
Leverage Digital Documents
Make it easy for your team members to do what they do best. When you collaborate on documents, sometimes the text or formatting needs to be changed significantly. You don't want this process to be difficult and time-consuming.
Instead of editing those documents with a PDF file — which has limited capabilities — use an online conversion tool that turns PDFs into Word files, so you can make those edits quickly and simply. Upload your PDF, convert it, work in Word until done making changes, then save it as PDF when finished.
Stormboard offers dozens of exports and reporting options that can take your collaborations, meeting notes, and ideas from a common digital workspace to a functional, editable document.
There are many ways for your team to communicate and stay up-to-date about what everyone needs to do. One way is to use a product road-map template. With this tool, you can outline the strategy and tasks of every team member involved in getting your product to market.
You also ensure important details aren't left out or forgotten during collaborations. Templates make it easy to prioritize tasks and set themes, create deadlines, understand pain points, and set business goals to help you succeed.
Promote Feedback Between Teams
Most employees have different skill sets and areas of expertise, and they should be encouraged to share knowledge across teams. Encourage team members from various departments or roles to meet monthly for lunch or happy hour.
Organizing social activities on site or even virtually gives them time and space outside their usual routines to develop personal relationships, but it also allows them an opportunity for constructive professional feedback.
Cultivate a Culture
The purpose of collaboration isn’t just to increase communication — it’s to solve problems faster. There are great digital tools available, like Stormboard, to help your team work productively together no matter where they are located. By cultivating a culture of open communication, learning, and idea-sharing, you can enable your team to do its best work.
Photo Credit: Anna Shvets via Pexels
This post is a guest contribution from Katie Conroy. Interested in having Katie create content for your website? You can reach her at kc@advicemine.com.