How did social media support organizations during the COVID-19 pandemic?

The power of social media came to light during the COVID-19 pandemic when organizations faced an unprecedented shift. It came in the form of mandated work from home, which took a toll on employee productivity and mental well-being, as everyone was isolated. During this time, social media sites became a platform to stay connected with peers and updated on the latest news and information. Nearly all social media sites amped up their features to incorporate the new business model. Moreover, the ongoing pandemic accelerated the use of online forum discussions to facilitate professionals to share industry-related insights and ways to transition to the new normal. Most organizations enhanced their presence on LinkedIn, where they promoted employees to share stories of professional and personal growth, challenges, etc. This helped everyone feel they were not alone in this. Moreover, social media has also become a preferred platform for global hiring. Additionally, many companies encouraged their employees to post their work from home pictures and videos on social media to foster a positive environment. Overall, social media has become a powerful way to promote employee well-being and connect with co-workers. Now let’s take a look at the benefits of using social media for business.

Why is social media important for your business?

Social media is an effective platform for businesses to enhance their customer reach, sales, and profit margins. It offers a myriad of benefits. Here’s a list of compelling reasons to build your brand’s social media presence right away.

Positions the organization on a global platform

There are 3.96 billion social media users as of 2022, and the number is projected to grow to 4.41 billion by 2025. Given the exponential user growth rate, no organization can ignore this as an effective tool to make a mark in the marketplace. When organizations create their social media profiles on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, they inadvertently open their doors to a global audience. And as a result, they can target a larger clientele. Brands like GoPro, Nike, Spotify, Wayfair, and Starbucks are some examples that stand out in positioning their brand on the global map. Using different social media sites, one can engage with their customers, respond to their needs better, and even collaborate with the influencers to target the right audience.

Streamlines communication in a hybrid setup

The after-effects of the Covid-19 pandemic have split the workforce into three groups, in-office, hybrid, and remote, making collaboration a tedious process. Social media works as a bridge in these challenging situations by enabling employees to communicate effortlessly. It is faster than most traditional communication tools like email and other messaging software that have their own limitations. Furthermore, the informal nature of social media allows the Gen Zs and the millennial-led workforce to communicate seamlessly.

Leads to organic traffic and boosts sales

Social media is instrumental in getting organic traffic that eventually generates leads for businesses. Using social media analytics, businesses can target their customers by tracking their activity and also pay for sponsored ads to increase top-of-the-mind recall value. Thus, when customers plan to buy a product or service in that niche, the brand becomes their first choice. For example, people refer to Xerox when they want a photocopy and Coca-cola when they want a soft drink. In addition, brands today run attractive contests in collaboration with social media influencers and build a community that they can leverage to drive sales.

Networking with the right audience and tracking competitors

Social media helps businesses tremendously when connecting and networking with the right people. Further, it serves as an online marketplace where vendors meet their potential customers. The actionable insights provided by social media apps help brands understand their target audience, purchase history, and their buying behavior. Leveraging this data, they can approach them at the right time in their buying journey. Furthermore, businesses can run an extensive competitor analysis to determine the strengths, content type, audience engagement, gaps, and threats. They can use these insights to make data-driven decisions and amplify their social media marketing game. Along with this, even employees get a chance to connect with the professionals in their domain and gain industry knowledge.

Facilitates training and personal development for employees

The advent of remote work and online education has propelled social media apps to add a new feature to their existing suite. Popular platforms like LinkedIn learning, edWeb, Edmodo, ISTE community, and Ted-Ed have become the first preference for professional learning and career development. Employees can use their free time to access and learn more about their industry from training modules and articles shared on these platforms. Organizations also sponsor these courses for their workforce to gain a competitive advantage.

Improves employee acknowledgement and retention

Since employees are working remotely, organizations can avail social media to acknowledge their hard work. They can add their employees’ pictures with captions talking about the tangible benefits their commitment brought to the company. This fosters a sense of accomplishment amongst the employees, and they can share these posts on their profiles to enhance credibility. It also helps increase the employee retention rate because they feel valued and recognized.

Helps recruit the right talent across geographies

According to Glassdoor, 72% of people look up their jobs on social media. Using social media as a hiring medium is an ongoing trend for most organizations. Businesses can recruit from a global talent pool by leveraging their social media presence. Moreover, job seekers are more likely to apply to a company with a strong brand presence online, reflecting their work culture. One of the prime examples is the well-known food chain McDonald’s. They used Snapchat in Canada to hire employees by taking an innovative approach. They tweaked the term applications to “snaplications” to attract the Genz and millennials as they were the prime targets. Aspirants could upload a thirty-second video sharing why they want to work at the burger franchise. Organizations can implement social media to elevate employee productivity, not just business benefits. Here are some ways to get started.

Tips on using social media to enhance employee productivity

When organizations use social media wisely and strategically, it can be beneficial in improving employee productivity in the long run. Here’s how;

Formulate a personalized social media calendar

Organizations heavily invest in building their social media presence and creating content around their brand on different platforms. However, the best practice is to create a content calendar that will help employees plan their schedules ahead of time. Further, it will prevent any clash on priority and enable employees to prepare the necessary content on time. For example, if the social media team prepares three posts a week, including videos, reels, and infographics, they can schedule the posts a week prior. This will ensure better time management and productivity, helping organizations consistently keep their audience engaged.

Encourage employees to take mental breaks for a healthy work-life balance

Due to various reasons like high workload, tight deadlines, etc., employees could miss out on taking breaks. However, constant work or long working hours can lead to burnout, lowering productivity. When employees consume social media content for entertainment, it releases dopamine, which activates the brain’s pleasure and reward center. Therefore, employees are rejuvenated and return with increased enthusiasm and vigor to continue work. They can also read some inspirational stories for a productivity boost if they feel disengaged.

Create an online community for employees

Organizations can create an online community or forum on social media to help employees connect and communicate with like-minded people from their domain. They can raise questions and doubts, discuss trends, seek expert advice, and understand conceptual topics. These forums can work as a means of getting a third-party perspective on processes from professionals outside the organization. Employees can also utilize these online communities to collaborate on innovative ideas. It can expedite problem-solving, elevating productivity.

Use social media platforms for rewards and recognition

As discussed earlier, organizations can leverage social media to recognize their employees. One way is to post their story on LinkedIn, which helps boost employee morale or create a shout-out on stories and reels crediting an employee’s hard work. Sharing employee’s contribution gives them a sense of purpose as they will be able to see the conspicuous results of their efforts. It will also encourage them to work harder to attain further goals, helping them be more productive. Additionally, an enhanced feeling of joy and inclusivity will enhance employee retention.

Set clear goals and tasks for social media

Social media can increase sales and reach a target audience, but doing it unorganized can do more harm than good. Therefore, social media managers can set clear goals and objectives every month. When employees get clear information in advance, they can divide the work accordingly. Moreover, organizations can first state the objective of using social media. For example, some may use it to hire global talent, while others seek to generate leads and increase sales. Clarifying the objective before executing the social media strategy will help employees put their efforts in the right direction, thus enhancing productivity.

Conclusion

As mentioned in this blog, leveraging social platforms in the workplace the right way can contribute to employee productivity. Therefore, it’s high time organizations encouraged their employees to use social media constructively and not perceive it as a source of distraction. Coupled with best practices, the strategies mentioned above can help you put social media to the best use.

The Glossary

The Saviom Solution:

SAVIOM is the market leader in offering the most powerful and configurable solutions for managing enterprise resources efficiently and effectively. Having more than 20 years of experience, this Australian-based MNC has a global presence in over 50 countries. It is also popular with more than 100 customers and helps them achieve their business goals. SAVIOM also has products for project portfolio management, professional service automation, and workforce planning software which can be easily customized as per business requirements.

Questions like these must be raging through your mind – especially if you manage a remote team.

The remote work culture has gained momentum after the onset of the COVID 19 pandemic. However, despite its benefits such as eliminating the commuting time, better work-life balance, improved productivity, reduced overhead costs, etc., it has one major downside – lack of trust and transparency.

A survey reveals:

18% of remote professionals surveyed reported the lack of transparency/honesty about something important as the cause of conflict.

Thus, it’s evident that to minimize these conflicts and promote cohesiveness, building a high-trust culture is the need of the hour.

Many organizations are taking initiatives and revisiting their work management practices to achieve this, yet face myriad roadblocks.

This article takes you through some actionable insights that can help you combat these challenges and foster trust and transparency in remote teams.

But before that, let’s first understand why it has emerged as a significant challenge in the first place.

Maintaining trust and transparency: Why is it a challenge in remote teams?

With remote work set up, coffee and lunch breaks with team members, walking to a colleague’s desk for a quick chat, watercooler conversations, etc., are things of the past. The remote work setup has made it impossible for the team members and managers to have these in-person conversations. It has led to the feeling of isolation amongst them and made it challenging to stay transparent and trust their coworkers.

Moreover, the lack of non-verbal cues such as facial expressions, body language, and other gestures can lead to misunderstandings as the members may fail to appreciate each other’s intent. As a result, it can create mistrust between them and disturb the synergy between the team.

Besides, communication barriers are more pronounced as teammates are dispersed across geographical boundaries and operating from different time zones. It becomes difficult for a manager to bring everyone on the same platform to interact and share the project’s progress, roadblocks, and so on. Thus, it creates a lack of transparency, which causes a ripple effect on the trust between team members and managers.

All these reasons cumulatively make it a daunting task to establish trust and transparency in remote teams.

However, despite these roadblocks, a high trust culture can offer myriad benefits once established. The following section enlists them:

Significance of fostering trust while managing a remote team

Barbara Kimmel Brooks, the co-founder of Trust Across America, says,
“Trust starts with trustworthy leadership. It must be built into the corporate culture.”

Here is why:

Minimizes internal conflicts and discrepancies

When there is mutual trust between the team members and managers, there is little or no room for confusion and ambiguity. Therefore, it helps bring everyone on the same page, find a middle ground, and work harmoniously, leaving minimal scope for internal differences.

Boosts overall productivity and engagement

HBR’s findings reveal:

People at high-trust companies report 50% higher productivity compared to low-trust ones.

When a manager trusts remote team members and practices autonomy, it encourages the workforce to work more responsibly. Moreover, trusted teams feel confident and reciprocate with higher commitment and productivity.

Acts as a catalyst for building a high-performance culture

When people trust each other, instances of conflicts go down significantly. It prevents them from getting emotionally drained or distracted and enables team members to give undivided attention to their work and be more productive. These factors help them perform better, which contributes to a high-performance culture.

Reduces unplanned attritions

Trust and transparency between team members and managers help strengthen interpersonal relations.

When teammates share a strong bond with peers and their leader, it naturally generates a sense of belonging in them.

So, their odds of leaving the organization go down automatically, thereby reducing attritions.

Promotes team cohesiveness and transparent culture

When teammates are honest with each other at the workplace, it naturally develops a culture of transparency and fosters trust amongst them. Moreover, it helps them understand each other’s perspectives better, enabling them to work cohesively.

Given the benefits of trust and transparency, let’s learn some best practices to maintain them.

7 effective ways to build trust in a virtual team

As already stated above, the remote work setup varies substantially from the physical office environment. So, it is vital for a manager to walk the extra mile to build trust in remote teams.

Here are a few powerful strategies for that.

Define clear roles and responsibilities for virtual teams

In-office work culture lets managers explain the key responsibility areas to individuals better. However, geographically dispersed teams working in different time zones make it cumbersome for leaders to communicate and explain individuals’ roles and responsibilities. Nonetheless, leveraging appropriate tools and channels can help overcome this challenge.

For example, you can conduct one-on-one video calls to help individual team members comprehend their roles. Besides, you can also send emails with clearly defined key responsibility areas to each teammate. While it’s important to elucidate individual KRAs, it’s also vital to bring the team on one platform and help them understand the interdependencies. It will allow teammates to understand each other’s responsibilities and sync their efforts better to achieve end goals. Well-defined KRAs also prevent role ambiguities and boost transparency.

Conduct virtual team-building sessions

Virtual team-building sessions help remote coworkers familiarize themselves with each other’s working styles, viewpoints and connect on a personal level. Further, it helps them understand their peers better and work in tandem. Therefore, the management should make regular virtual team-building activities a part of the remote work culture. They can be anything ranging from group discussions, brainstorming sessions to online games, etc.

One of the ways to make every session more inclusive is to consider team members’ specific preferences and customize the activities accordingly. It will make them feel heard and build more trust. Also, the organizer should book a slot considering everyone’s availability so that no one is left out.

Make feedback sessions a priority in virtual work setup

Gaining complete visibility of individuals’ work and tracking their progress becomes more tedious during remote work. Moreover, the absence of detailed in-person interactions makes it difficult for managers to identify any roadblocks that are hampering the team members’ performance. To combat this, managers should conduct one-on-one feedback sessions with individuals, understand their progress, and resolve issues, if any.

While listening to their concerns, managers should also acknowledge their achievements and highlight the areas of improvement. When a manager puts additional efforts into improving employee performance, team members feel valued and trust them. Besides, regular feedback provides more clarity on expectations, thereby boosting transparency.

Adopt an empathetic approach while working remotely

Various reasons could lead to distractions for people while working from home. For example, there can be a financial crisis, household exigencies, health issues, etc. If a teammate displays signs of stress during video calls or indirectly via lack of concentration in work, more errors, or absenteeism; managers should look into the matter and support the individual to get back on track.

They can start with a video call, interact with them, and try to find if the reason behind their stress is work-related or personal. Accordingly, they can provide emotional support, help them eliminate the stressor by offering some alternatives. Your compassionate gesture won’t only facilitate their speedy recovery but also lay the foundation of long-lasting trust and respect for you.

Empower remote teams with greater autonomy

Due to the lack of frequent in-person meetings and check-ins, a remote team manager is skeptical if the team members will succeed in meeting deadlines, ensuring quality, etc. Therefore, they inadvertently start micromanaging the team members. However, this micromanagement via rigid schedules, frequent check-ins, or interruptions does more harm than good.

It disengages team members and compels them to feel that the manager doesn’t trust them. Thus, managers should take the opposite approach and practice autonomy.

Entrusting teammates with their tasks and providing them better control over how they do it elevates a sense of responsibility and promotes confidence.

Moreover, when you let them explore their creativity and individual working styles, it also strengthens their trust in your leadership.

Be proactive and transparent in communication

Often in a virtual work setup, conveying the latest updates on projects’ progress, changes, etc., becomes challenging. This disrupts the transparency and also misaligns the teams’ efforts from the expectations. It can further lead to a lack of trust between team members and managers. To avoid this ordeal, managers should give due diligence to regular communication.

Moreover, urgent meetings should be conducted to convey any changes or issues instantly. It gives enough time to deduce a viable solution together as a team and also eliminates last-minute hassle. Moreover, clear communication regarding every nitty-gritty of the project reinforces transparency and thus generates trust.

Leverage the right tools and technology to facilitate virtual collaboration

Collaboration between remote teams is necessary to boost productivity, engagement, and accountability. Thus, you should provide an appropriate tool inventory to the team to ensure an uninterrupted exchange of information. For instance, a messaging app and a video conferencing tool can be equipped for meetings and real-time updates. Similarly, a file-hosting service app like Google Drive or OneDrive can act as a central data repository.

Additionally, resource management software can give enterprise-wide resource visibility and help you maintain the resource health index. These are some examples of useful technology. However, you can build an inventory that suits your organizational needs. Overall, these tools cumulatively facilitate conversations, real-time feedback exchange, break communication silos, and enhance transparency.

By leveraging these strategies, you can garner transparency and build a high-trust organization.

Conclusion

Denise Morrison, the former president and CEO of Campbell Soup Company, says, “The single most important ingredient in the recipe for success is transparency because transparency builds trust.”

So, it is high time you focused on building trust and transparency in remote teams and reinforced a positive and productive work environment. With the right mindset and above-mentioned practices, you can effortlessly achieve it all and ensure your company’s success.

What’s your take on building a high-trust culture?

The Glossary

The SAVIOM Solution

SAVIOM is the market leader in helping multinational clients manage their resources efficiently and effectively. With over 20 years of experience, this Australian-based MNC has a global presence across 50 countries and has helped 100+ clients with their Workforce Planning Software. Saviom also provides tools for Enterprise Project Resource Management, Project Portfolio Management, and Professional Service Automation. Boost your remote team collaboration with Saviom.

“How do I enable smooth remote team collaboration between my employees?”

“How do I make sure my employees stay motivated while working remotely?”

These are some questions raging through the minds of many companies’ leadership teams who are switching over to a fully remote or hybrid workplace.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a significant shift in workplace dynamics. It has driven companies to rethink their management structure, work set up, and become more adaptive to change. Transitioning to the new normal, most firms are planning to implement long-lasting solutions to collaborate with remote teams effectively.

However, if you are forming a distributed workforce for the first time, setting up a sustainable remote team collaboration system can be a daunting task. Having said that, pairing the right collaboration strategy with technology can make this transition fairly easier for you.

In fact, according to Alfresco survey, nearly 83% of professionals depend on technology to collaborate.

This article explains what companies can do to collaborate with their remote teams as effectively as they would in person.

What is remote team collaboration?

The term remote team collaboration means virtually working with your team through various digital collaborative platform. It includes communicating in real-time, sharing ideas, updates, and feedback through a unified interface. For a company that’s new to remote collaboration, following are the digital amenities that support this initiative

• A virtual collaboration platform where you can meet one-on-one or in a group to communicate real-time. This includes a messaging app and a video conferencing platform.
• A file-sharing space, often cloud storage, that will work as a central repository for all your work and updates. Companies either use a globally available storage system like Google Drive, One Drive, etc., or internal server storage if handling highly sensitive files.
• Task- and time- management tools that easily help with collaboration and tracking like digital whiteboards, Kanban boards, program management software, etc.

Let us further examine why remote team collaboration is inevitable in today’s workplace scenario.

Importance of remote team collaboration

Employees, managers, and leaders alike enjoy many benefits while working remotely. When employees and teams work together, it invariably leads to better coordination, and everyone stays committed to the deadlines and targets. Here are some reasons why remote team collaboration is crucial for a project’s success –

Fosters inclusion and diversity

Remote working has broken one of the main barriers of working from office– Geographical boundaries. With companies hiring from across the world, teams are now comprised of people from diverse cultures and socio-economic backgrounds. When employees belonging to these different backgrounds collaborate effectively, it provides a fair opportunity to everyone, regardless of their caste, community, race, etc., to voice their opinions. This fosters a culture of diversity and inclusion at the organization.

Gives a sense of autonomy

In a survey by Trinity Solutions, about 69% of employees responded that they considered changing jobs because of micromanagement.

When teams work remotely, it’s arduous for managers to keep a tab on each employee or resource. Thus, managers start delegating tasks to competent resources, which gives them a sense of autonomy and responsibility. Moreover, when these tasks are shared on a collaborative platform, it helps them understand how their work can contribute to the bigger picture, thus garnering self-discipline.

Boosts productivity

When teams work remotely, additional care is taken to ensure communication, exchange of necessary files, and updates happen in real-time. Or else, it can cause potential delays in meeting project deadlines. Uninterrupted collaboration between remote teams ensures that every update regarding the project or submission of files after every task is done instantaneously. Additionally, employees don’t waste time commuting for meetings, thus increasing productivity hours.

Promotes multi-faceted talent pool

As mentioned, there are no geographical restrictions when it comes to recruiting resources for remote work. This allows firms to hire the best candidates with exceptional competencies and form a multi-faceted talent pool. Further, managers can create a team of these resources who can contribute their learnings and ideas, and translate them into reality. Such resources bring in more innovation and are a ready asset for diverse projects.

Cultivates effective communication

According to Owl Labs CEO Frank Weishaupt, one of the main challenges of remote working remains to be ineffective communication. So, efficient remote team collaboration helps with real-time updates between the team members, thereby creating an effective communication channel. It also enables the managers and team members to be more transparent with each other concerning project updates, hurdles, etc., thus forming a culture of trust and transparency.

Thus, when remote teams communicate and collaborate well, they get an advantage by leveraging their strengths. Here are some significant things that can go wrong if the remote team collaboration is not handled efficiently.

How can poor remote team collaboration affect performance?

According to a survey by Salesforce,

About 86% of employees and executives cite lack of collaboration or ineffective communication for workplace failures.

Poor remote team collaboration can affect the business negatively in many ways. It can impact different levels – from creating disturbance within the team to affecting project delivery or even posing security risks such as data breaches, especially when data security policies are not implemented properly on collaborative platforms.

When collaboration is disrupted, it will form silos between teams due to a lack of real-time updates, uninterrupted communication, etc. Thus, it will create more room for discrepancies and conflicts. This will eventually lead to a dip in their productivity, further deteriorating their performance.

Real-time collaboration allows managers to stay updated on the tasks’ progress, gives them insights into the resource productivity, etc. When this is interrupted, it can cause potential delays in projects due to the lack of timely receipt of updates and necessary files.

Additionally, poor remote team collaboration can also lead to employee disengagement. When employees are not interacting with their team members or managers, it can lead to isolation, loss of interest and productivity, etc.

The absence of a systematized workflow for remote team collaboration can get extremely challenging. Companies can follow these steps to establish a smooth and enhanced collaboration of remote teams.

7 effective ways to boost remote team collaboration

One major component of boosting remote team collaboration is to be attentive to your employees and team members. Remote working has hindered the usual coffee breaks, lunch time gossips, and even celebrations like birthdays and anniversaries in person. So, so it is important to be humane virtually too. A few best practices can propel your remote team to collaborate and perform effectively. They are enlisted below:

Establish rapport & a sense of community

There is a lot at stake when it comes to onboarding your team onto a project. Without it, a team member might feel not-welcomed and left out, and might lose interest in the project right at the start. Managers can help break the ice and establish rapport between the team members before the project briefing. This can be achieved by organizing icebreakers and other team-building activities that are communication-intensive. It allows the team members to get to know each other, understand diverse perspectives, and connect on a human level.

When the team is well connected, it gets easier to work cohesively towards the common goal. Moreover, by inculcating respect, they can brainstorm better, innovate more, and work together for the project’s success.

Align timelines and boundaries

Research shows that 70% of employees end up working on weekends as well, and 45% regularly put in more hours than before.

This can lead to burnout quickly and deteriorate the mental and physical well-being of the workforce. Thus, it is crucial for managers to set timelines, realistic deadlines, & clear expectations, and optimally allocate tasks right at the beginning. Companies can also implement asynchronous communication channels to employees working across time zones to facilitate fast sharing of completed files and prevent any lag.

In those times when synchronous communication is crucial such as daily stand-ups, managers can set up an agreed-upon time that aligns with everyone’s time zones and work hours. It will help everyone stay on the same page and prevent any discrepancies without getting fatigued.

Keep track of KPIs and celebrate milestones

Just as real-time file sharing is crucial, real-time tracking of employees’ productivity, and exchanging feedback are also important. Managers can track the project KPIs using a project or resource management tool in real-time and then conduct the feedback sessions in case of any challenges or deviations from the expected outcome. This gives space for open communication, a chance for improvement, and allows the team members to rectify early on before the project gets impacted.

Moreover, this real-time tracking of relevant KPIs also provides insights into the project timeline and thus gives a chance to celebrate significant milestones. Managers can hold virtual rewards and recognitions to acknowledge the good work and motivate the team, eventually enhancing their remote work productivity. This uplifts the team’s motivation, thus encouraging them to collaborate more and improve their results further.

Conduct regular stand-up meetings

As discussed earlier, it is challenging for managers to stay updated on the project’s progress and individual tasks when the team is dispersed across geographical locations. To combat this challenge, managers can conduct daily stand-up meetings before they begin the day or during the pre-decided time zone that suits everyone.

They can get updates from individual team members, understand resource schedules, discuss priorities, and make necessary revisions. However, managers should ensure that these meetings do not cross 15-20 mins and are kept precise and brief to retain productivity. These meetings also enable the team members to identify any hurdles they are facing or foresee and brainstorm to mitigate them.

Promote transparency and reliability

When people from different backgrounds collaborate remotely, trust is a challenge that could crop up very often. It can disturb the synergy between the team members and managers, which will further reflect in productivity and the project’s performance. Thus, managers must ensure that they garner a culture of transparency by conveying the roles and responsibilities clearly, providing honest feedback, and even communicating the setbacks to the team. This fosters trust between the team and managers.

This encourages the employees to be open about updates, ideas, challenges, and conflicts, which leads to efficient remote collaboration. Moreover, managers can show reliability by holding the employees accountable for specific tasks, generating a sense of autonomy and responsibility.

Prioritize employee engagement & recreation

Remote working has led to more isolation and loneliness without the usual water-cooler conversations and cubicles meet-ups. To keep these employees motivated, employee engagement is vital for any organization that works remotely.

The Gallup research shows that virtual team building activities bring in 41% lower absenteeism and 21% higher profitability.

Companies can organize virtual engagement activities, recreational games and organize hobby clubs for the employees from time to time to keep them engaged. Managers can also take their team out for retreats that offer great team bonding activities. This will revitalize employees and strengthen their bond, and they can collaborate better, work more efficiently, and produce better results.

Centralize updates using the right collaboration tools

As mentioned earlier, technology is a great enabler for the smooth functioning of remote team collaboration. Some necessary tools that can enable collaboration are task management tools with Kanban boards, clutter-free messaging and conferencing platform(s), cloud services for central data repositories, and many more.

Similarly, a modern resource management software can be a great addition to the tool inventory. It can provide 360-degree visibility of the entire resource pool regardless of their location, procure real-time KPI reports and dashboards using BI, and so on. It’s important to note that a tool inventory is unique to every organization based on their needs and requirements. Overall, these tools can aid collaboration, enhance productivity, and improve overall efficiency.

Conclusion

Remote working might become permanent for many organizations in this post-pandemic world. Fortunately, the technology advancements and access to a plethora of tools have made the transition much easier and helped create a harmonious environment by facilitating remote team collaboration. With the personal connection decreasing at the work level, companies and managers can refer to the tips mentioned above to build a solution that blends the digital and human aspects of project success.

What are the effective collaborative practices that you have adopted for your organization?

The Glossary

SAVIOM Solution

SAVIOM is the market leader in helping multinational clients manage their resources efficiently and effectively. With over 20 years of experience, this Australian-based MNC has a global presence across 50 countries and has helped 100+ clients with their Workforce Planning Software. Saviom also provides tools for Enterprise Project Resource Management, Project Portfolio Management, and Professional Service Automation. Boost your remote team collaboration with Saviom.

What are cross-functional teams?

Cross-functional teams comprise human resources belonging to a company’s different functional areas or departments who come together and work collectively to achieve a common goal or accomplish a project. Let’s take another related example. The software development team of a product firm can work cohesively with the sales team to understand the current industry demands and incorporate the requisite features in a new product. This practice is beneficial in two ways. For one, there is extensive knowledge sharing between different departments which will improve the information base of your firm. For two, cross-functional collaboration is enhancing client satisfaction. Let’s delve into the benefits,

Advantages of cross-functional teams

Global business leaders are considering cross-functional teams the future of the work structure. The reason is the plethora of benefits they provide for enterprises. Here’s a rundown on those benefits that explain why forming these teams is the need of the hour.

Increased innovation

Every employee differs in viewpoints, approaches, and personality. So, when members from different functional groups work as a team, they bring their own perspectives to the table. In addition, their acquired industry experience, unique skills, and creativity combine to pave the way for “out-of-the-box” ideas that boost innovation. For example, Apple uses cross-functional collaboration to enhance customer experience. The business process management team, for example, works cross-functionally with other Apple teams and brainstorms ways to improve the process and achieve desired results.

Better knowledge sharing

Forming cross-functional teams facilitates an easy flow of knowledge between different departments. For instance, if a sales executive notices a trend in clients’ expectations, they can share it with the marketing team. It helps the marketing team revamp their strategies using these valuable insights and maintain their competitive edge. Moreover, cross-functional collaboration enables the team to work in tandem and identify and overcome project-related challenges from a broader perspective without limiting themselves to a niche. For instance, CISCO created the “Architecture Centre of Excellence” (ACoE), a cross-functional geography community. Its members are architect experts who can learn, collaborate, and share knowledge about architecture topics. ACoE has helped CISCO achieve some of its business goals, including an increase in site traffic and better clients’ experience.

High-performance work culture

Companies strive to maintain and sustain a high-performance culture to deliver exceptional results. As discussed earlier, resources get an all-inclusive perspective to look at a project when they work in cross-functional teams. They can leverage diverse skills and ideas to deduce the best possible solution for a project bottleneck. Moreover, when different departments work in cohesion, it helps the members understand the interdependencies better. They get a clear picture of how the project is the result of the success of each of these interdependent tasks. It also increases individual accountability as every resource knows how their role will affect the progress of a consecutive task. It eventually enhances individual performances and the quality of the deliverable, thereby garnering a high-performance culture.

Enhances efficiency and profitability

Forming a cross-functional team empowers you to go beyond matrix boundaries and leverage diverse projects’ internal resources. This way, it reduces dependence on external channels to hire resources, thereby controlling resource costs and increasing profitability. At the same time, managers can tap into the maximum potential of each resource and leverage their talent, leading to efficient and intelligent utilization of the workforce. Furthermore, working towards a common goal enables the team to synchronize their efforts better. These individual efforts reflect in their work which escalates the overall team’s and organizational efficiency. These benefits are a clear indication of the necessity to empower cross-functional teams. So, let’s understand the ways to bolster them.

How to empower cross-functional teams?

Forming a cross-functional team is just half the battle won. Empowering them to ensure their consistent performance and productivity is the real task. Managers can implement multiple strategies to achieve the same. Here’s a rundown on some of the most prominent ones.

Standardize communication policies

Seamless communication is important for a business, especially when team members are dispersed across geographical and matrix boundaries. First, you need to establish clear rules and guidelines to streamline cross-functional communication. Deciding on the channels to use across your teams based on the purpose follows next. Managers can implement a common platform, a code of conduct to maintain decorum, and establish the rules for using synchronous and asynchronous methods. It helps minimize the chances of discrepancies and internal confusion regarding communication. Besides, you can set protocols for away messages, time-outs, email alerts, or one-on-ones with teammates. For instance, one of the protocols can be setting an agenda before the onset of any meeting. It can potentially reduce the meeting hours as the host will stick to the point, ultimately minimizing zoom fatigue and enhancing productivity.

Assemble the right team with the right skills

A crucial step to forming the right cross-functional team is assessing the project’s requirements and identifying the resources from different departments accordingly. Competent allocation of the workforce and assembling the right team ensure project quality and timely delivery. Moreover, managers must also ascertain that the resources possess requisite soft skills like team spirit, emotional intelligence, problem-solving approach, etc., that align with the company’s culture. This will allow the team to work in tandem and minimize discrepancies. Further, managers should form a fair mix of resources from different band levels and competencies. It will provide fair opportunities for less-experienced employees or freshers to learn, grow, and prove their mettle in a collaborative environment.

Define individual roles and shared goals clearly

Defining organizational goals is essential to align the members’ efforts with long-term objectives. However, while most team leaders ensure this, they fail to take proper measures to prevent “social loafing”, which is: A natural psychological phenomenon whereby employees generally tend to reduce their effort when working collectively instead of alone. It makes those who work diligently feel exploited while the ones who slack off drift away further from their individual accountability. The result is a rift between them, which hampers team spirit and impacts the overall productivity. Thus, a team leader should also establish key performance indicators and goals for individual team members. It will ensure individual and team accountability and secure the project’s fate.

Celebrate milestones collectively

Rewarding oneself is incumbent to boost morale and positivity. Thus, managers must make it a point to celebrate the accomplishment of milestones and recognize the ones responsible for taking it to the finish line. Expressing gratitude towards the whole team and acknowledging individual efforts makes the workforce feel valued and appreciated. Additionally, appreciating and rewarding the work in front of the team fosters a sense of pride and motivates employees to perform better. There are myriad ways to reward and recognize extraordinary efforts. You can send an appreciation email or use social media shout-outs to high-performers and ultimately inspire them to walk the extra mile.

Foster trust and transparency

Working with a non-homogeneous group with different mindsets may sometimes cause trust or credibility to erode and build tension. However, it is essential to iron out these differences between the team members and the leader to upkeep cohesiveness and efficiency. Being transparent about your expectations and their performance is also crucial to retaining the team’s trust and confidence in your leadership. Project managers must also promote autonomy and avoid micromanaging the employees. It gives them a sense of responsibility and makes them feel trusted by their leaders. At the same time, managers should conduct timely reviews and one-on-ones to point out the areas of improvement. Moreover, they should also listen to their concerns and assure them of appropriate remedial measures. It will help prevent the issues from aggravating and ensure the sustenance of employee engagement and productivity.

Promote inclusiveness in decision-making

As a project manager, you should always make sure that you are unbiased and give equal importance to all the members from different departments. For this, it is vital for you to ask for regular suggestions, feedback, and opinions about the project to maintain equity among your team members. You can involve them further via regular stand-ups, brainstorming sessions, meetings, etc. Allowing employees from different backgrounds, age groups, communities, etc., in your team to voice their ideas is also a good practice. It will let everyone feel comfortable, valued and contribute to decision-making in crucial matters. This way, you can ensure that all the critical decisions in the course of a project reflect fair representation from all departments.

Encourage change and innovation

A well-developed change management framework is an integral part of a successful organization. It helps you enhance your cross-functional team’s efficiency, stay relevant, and maintain a competitive edge. That’s because a definite roadmap allows members to adopt new technology and tools, processes, workflow restructuring, etc., at ease. Besides fostering change management, you should also aim for a sustainable innovation management process. It encourages out-of-the-box thinking, collaborative effort and helps increase ROI. Innovative and pathbreaking ideas help transform the processes and make them more efficient and resilient, thereby ensuring business sustenance. Thus, integrating these two vital processes will future-ready your workforce and help them tackle the evolving demands and uncertainties with ease.

Monitor and improve processes regularly

A cross-functional team leader should make sure to stay on top of tracking the project’s progress on a regular basis. Constantly analyzing and determining if the methodologies and workflows set for the project are effective is also necessary. Regular audits of these processes and operations help identify the ones that did not yield the expected output. If and when these setbacks are identified, managers should critically analyze the reasons like excessive time consumption, negligence, mismanagement behind its inefficiency. Accordingly, they should also take the teammates’ feedback and then devise a more effective and efficient alternative method. It will aid resources to perform better and seamlessly execute project tasks.

Leverage advanced tools and technologies

Equipping your cross-functional teams with the latest tools and technology is imperative to streamline project execution. Advanced technology such as AI, ML, IoT, ANN, among others, elevates the automation of routine admin tasks and makes room for creativity. One thing worth considering here is that a tool inventory is unique to every organization and its needs. So, you should choose the one that aligns with your requirements. However, certain tools are a must-have in this inventory. Project management apps and workflow automation software, for example, help outline to-do tasks, streamline their execution, and reduce redundancy. Furthermore, video conferencing apps help connect with teammates across various geographies in real-time. Finally, one of the most important tools for an enterprise is resource management software. It gives enterprise-wide visibility of resources which makes it possible to manage the workforce efficiently. You can add more to this list based on your domain and industry needs.

The following section explains in detail how resource management software helps empower cross-functional teams and utilize them efficiently.

How resource management software boosts the productivity of cross-functional teams?

A resource management tool can be a potential enabler in empowering cross-functional teams by providing myriad functionalities and forming a strong team. We have discussed some of them here.

The 360-degree visibility gives an overview of all the resources’ profiles, including competency and skills. Using the advanced filter of the resource management tool, you can pick the best-fit resources and create your cross-functional team for a project. It, thus, helps prevent the allocation of over/under skilled resources to projects. Besides, when the employees work on a project that aligns with their competencies and interest, it enhances their engagement, and eventually, productivity.

At the same time, comprehensive utilization reports can help assess the workload and distribute it uniformly, thus preventing over or under-utilization. Managers can use optimization techniques like resource leveling and resource smoothing to maintain this uniformity. These techniques help prevent overutilization and burnout and let resources limit their attention span to only critical tasks. It elevates their work rate and also ensures the quality of the deliverable.

With foresight into pipeline project demand, managers can gauge the skills gap and take proactive measures to bridge it. For example, initiating upskilling and training programs will allow resources to acquire new skills and fill these talent gaps. It will help them diversify their existing portfolio and promote them to work on multi-faceted projects. This will, in turn, enhance the sense of belonging in them and empower them to be more productive to attain project and career goals.

Additionally, managers can empower employees by letting them select the tasks of their preferences and interest. They can create a vacancy against a particular project task and allow members to volunteer and opt for it. Based on their profiles, managers can then select the best-fit resource.

All these functionalities will enable businesses to maintain the resource health index and motivate the resources and teams to add more value to projects and perform better.

Conclusion

In today’s fast-paced technology-driven business landscape, organizations are striving hard to sustain the fierce global competition due to ever-evolving skill demands. Therefore, companies have now realized that they can no longer rely on the structure of siloed departments and are embracing a culture of cross-functional teams to gain a competitive edge. Cross-functional teams are a great way to look beyond matrix boundaries and break silos. They help foster and strengthen an open-work culture where employees with diverse skills, expertise, and perspectives converge to achieve a common goal. It also boosts innovation, helps save resource costs, nurtures a high-performing culture, and increases profitability. With the above-discussed practices, you can empower your cross-functional teams, raise their productivity, and achieve your company-wide milestones. So, how do you empower your cross-functional teams?

The Glossary

The SAVIOM Solution

SAVIOM has over 20 years of experience helping multinational clients manage their resources efficiently and effectively. With over 20 years of experience, this Australian-based MNC has a global presence across 50 countries and has helped 100+ clients meet their specific business goals. Saviom also provides tools for project portfolio management, professional service automation, and workforce planning software. So, SAVIOM can help your business to establish an efficient system geared towards your specific business challenges.

A sudden shift to teleworking compelled organizations to revisit their workflows and processes and introduce new norms to navigate seamlessly through the transition.

Businesses started forming a robust tech repository that comprised tools for collaboration, real-time project and resource management, virtual onboarding, and so on. These trends made remote working hassle-free, and both employees and organizations began to appreciate the benefits that came along the way. Subject to this, work from home became a preference from just being a mandate.

Gartner’s research states that:

Almost 50% of employees will continue to work remotely in the post-pandemic era.

This blog highlights the journey and evolution of remote work from the pre-pandemic times to the post-COVID era and the work trends that will continue to rise. Let’s begin with diving deep into the history and emergence of remote work.

Throwback to the pre-covid times & why remote work wasn’t a norm?

Multiple factors led to the resistance in adopting the remote work model. However, over time the benefits and presence of modern tools and technology overruled the concerns. Here is a glimpse of this journey:

Companies were wary of moving their data outside their premises

Due to a dearth of cybersecurity infrastructure in the previous decade, data security and privacy was a major concern. Companies were daunted by security breaches, spyware, or malware attacks during those times.

They were also concerned about hiring third-party vendors for data management because they would have less control over data in their distribution centers than over on-premise data. So, businesses refrained from moving their data or providing access to it outside their premises.

Evolution of the onsite-offshore model for non-critical activities

In an onsite-offshore model, an on-site team takes up the project, and part of the work is outsourced to off-shore teams. As the off-shore team is often from a low-cost county, it incurs fewer costs and expenses than the on-site model. At the same time, employers have the liberty to hire talent from across geographical boundaries.

Looking at the benefits, organizations took a step forward and adopted the hybrid delivery model. However, they initially started outsourcing only non-critical tasks to off-shore employees as data security concerns were still prevalent.

Creation of captives for critical activities with secured environment

While outsourcing non-critical tasks was their first step towards saving costs, organizations were yet to find a way to increase profitability. They, thus, felt the need to devise a plan to outsource critical tasks to off-shore low-cost locations in a secured manner. Eventually, they introduced the concept of captive business units.

A captive center is a client-owned service delivery center, generally in an off-shore and low-cost country. It provides service resources to the client organization.

The client unit conducts critical operations as a part of its own. Despite being performed remotely, these activities are not outsourced to the vendor’s premises. Hence, the client has better control over risks associated with intellectual property theft through advanced security measures.

Reluctance to adopt the work-from-home model

Companies thought that remote work would be a deterrent to team members’ productivity. They were also skeptical about giving autonomy to the workforce while working remotely due lack of complete trust in employees.

As employees weren’t acquainted with the work-from-home model, they also were equally hesitant to embrace it and doubted its viability. So, although access to data outside offices and outsourcing of business tasks had started, the evolution of remote work to its present form was still far.

How Covid-19 changed the global landscape of work culture?

When Covid-19 struck, worldwide lockdown, strict travel bans, import-export restrictions, etc., turned the business environment chaotic. Global business leaders had to shun their routine work culture due to mandated office shutdowns. Despite significant data security and productivity concerns, they had to resort to remote work to survive the crisis. Besides, the work culture and management practices evolved in several ways.

For instance, organizations embraced video conferencing applications like Zoom and business collaboration tools like Slack, MS Teams, etc., to streamline communication and exchange necessary documents. They also leveraged resource management tools to manage and keep track of the workforce dispersed across boundaries. Virtual onboarding and team-building sessions became part and parcel of the work culture to foster a sense of belonging and keep the team connected in a distributed workspace.

Future work trends to look out for in the post-Covid era

The mandated work from home model brought forward a myriad of workplace trends that will continue to grow even in the post-covid era. The reason is they provide end-users with multiple benefits, including workplace flexibility, reduced infrastructure costs, better work-life balance, location independence, and more.

Below is the list of the trends most likely to last in the post-Covid era due to their high utility.

Growing preference for a hybrid work model

Glassdoor’s recent survey states:

Nearly 9 in 10 employees say they would prefer remote work for part of their person-days even after offices reopen.

The fact highlights that inclination to hybrid work arrangements among employees has soared globally. Organizations are catering to this growing demand as it provides mutual benefits to both employees and employers. Businesses can save a significant amount on infrastructure, maintenance, and utility costs. At the same time, employees have the flexibility and time to fulfill their personal commitments better. When employees strike a better work-life balance, they feel valued, which directly influences their engagement level, and increases their productivity, thereby benefiting the company.

Increased importance of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DE, &I)

As businesses moved online, companies realized that they could consider expanding beyond domestic boundaries to hire talent. Now that enterprises are hiring employees from various countries, ethnicities, and cultures, it has diversified the workplace further. Remote work emerging as the new norm has also brought about myriad job opportunities for differently-abled individuals.

Moreover, more employees bringing their expertise to the table has also opened the door for innovations. All these changes have compounded to make the working culture all-inclusive, collaborative, and high-performing. Due to all these benefits, enterprises are ready to sustain this reinforced diverse and all-inclusive culture in the future.

Higher investment in employee wellness programs than ever

Gartner’s survey finds:

Over one-fourth of the employees surveyed are mentally depressed as a result of the pandemic.

Isolation, anxiety, and a sedentary lifestyle have led to increased mental and physical health issues amongst individuals. As a result, they have become more health-conscious and started taking initiatives to lead a healthy lifestyle. This growing awareness for physical and mental well-being led organizations to revamp their employee wellness strategies accordingly.

They are offering paid-day offs, fitness sessions, career counseling, and so on. For example, Starbucks announced to provide 20 free mental health sessions every year to its U.S. employees and eligible family members.

More job opportunities for professionals from small cities/country towns

Earlier, companies would often hire all their employees to work on-premise. As their offices were typically in tier-1 cities, professionals from country towns would find it challenging to relocate there. The reasons often comprised monetary constraints, family priorities, health issues, etc. However, the upsurge of remote work has brought about a monumental shift in their careers.

As a result, remote job roles gained more impetus. Several giants like Amazon and General Motors rolled out permanent remote jobs to adapt to changing times. Small-scale businesses also followed suit. This change paved the way for more job opportunities for professionals from small cities and country towns. It, thus, provided them with a fair chance to grow in their respective careers.

Better preparedness for business continuity

One of the vital lessons that companies learned from Covid-19 is to develop business resilience alongside business efficiency. They have, therefore, started drafting a business continuity program to detect potential threats and eliminate them ahead of time with efficient strategies. They first pick critical resources in various departments, including marketing, finance, etc., to act as risk managers.

They then create a Business Impact Analysis (BIA) to identify and quantify critical risk threat scenarios next. Next, a plan for alternative actions to mitigate the impacts of risks is formulated. For instance, a manufacturer can identify secondary suppliers to serve as backups in cases of primary supplier constraints. Finally, team members are trained to form a business continuity plan to make them resilient and ready to tackle risks head-on. They are also trained to hone their emotional intelligence, teamwork, and other soft skills to stay calm and confident during adverse situations.

Minimized operational costs by adopting cloud infrastructure

The mandated work-from-home has escalated the prominence of cloud computing. Enterprises are now looking to replace physical tech infrastructure with cloud deployment models. Cloud computing doesn’t require a large in-house IT staff solely to install, repair, and maintain storage infrastructure. It, thus, helps a company cut down on huge upfront installation and maintenance costs, unlike traditional on-premise systems.

Additionally, as cloud computing enables seamless and secure data sharing, businesses consider it a trend they can keep following. Moreover, a company can allocate IT resources to more technology-intensive tasks and align their efforts with its long-term goals to boost profitability.

Emergence of new tools to facilitate virtual team building activities

As employees are dispersed across varied geographies, the need of the hour is staying well-connected to ensure smooth functioning of the team and completion of projects. Hence, organizations are using several management tools to enhance collaboration and bring remote team members on the same page. Enterprises are also implementing tools to streamline business processes like resource management, project management, and others.

They are taking steps to keep their remote team members’ engagement levels high using virtual conferencing tools like Zoom and Skype for team-building sessions. Further, virtual employee recognition programs and celebration events are being held extensively to enhance communication, strengthen relations, and develop a sense of belonging to raise productivity.

Conclusion

The Covid-19 outbreak forced companies to rethink their organizational framework and policies and adopt new work culture trends. It also re-emphasized the importance of focusing on not just business efficiency but also resilience to stay afloat amid a crisis.

Over time, they experienced that the adopted work trends are the best fit for the “new normal” post-Covid. So, while things may have started becoming normal again, large-scale work culture shifts and trends are here to stay.

What workplace trends would you follow post-Covid?

The Glossary

The SAVIOM Solution

SAVIOM has over 20 years of experience helping multinational clients manage their resources efficiently and effectively. With over 20 years of experience, this Australian-based MNC has a global presence across 50 countries and has helped 100+ clients meet their specific business goals. Saviom also provides tools for project portfolio management, professional service automation, and workforce planning software. So, SAVIOM can help your business to establish an efficient system geared towards your specific business challenges.

By 2025, 36.2 million Americans alone will be remote, an increase of 16.8 million people from pre-pandemic rates.

This data signifies that remote work will continue to be a popular trend in the coming years and beyond. It provides advantages like better work-life balance, flexible work hours, and no commuting hassles for employees. At the same time, organizations benefit from access to a diverse talent pool across geographies and lower overhead and admin costs.

Being physically distant, however, can also hinder collaboration and innovation at times. If not checked at the right time, it can later turn into a significant productivity issue for remote teams.

Therefore, it is vital to manage your remote employees efficiently to keep productivity challenges at bay.

This blog talks about a few strategies that can help raise remote teams’ productivity effectively.

Let’s begin:

Effective Ways to Improve Performance of the Remote Workforce

Productivity is a huge concern when it comes to working remotely. As managers can no longer walk over to the employees’ desks and keep a check on them. With the right tools, processes, and guidelines in place, managers can ensure the productivity of their remote workforce.

Here are a few standard practices that can bolster your remote teams’ performance effectively.

Establish clear rules and means for remote communication

Since the global pandemic ushered in the trend of remote work, communication has moved online. So, defining new communication rules clearly is the need of the hour. First, you need to decide on the communication channels to use across your organization. For instance, synchronous channels like Zoom, Google Meet, MS teams, etc., can be used for meetings, training, and more for real-time communication. On the contrary, asynchronous channels like emails, Slack, etc., can be used for instant messaging, document sharing, casual communication, etc.

You can also set protocols for away messages, email alerts and have one-on-one check-ins with teammates. Thus, defining clear rules helps avoid confusion and conflicts among team members. It also saves time from unnecessary calls or long-winded email chains and improves employees’ efficiency.

Look for any signs of distress or depression in employees

According to a survey conducted by Aetna International, a leading global health benefits provider:

74% of the remote workforce admitted that poor mental health has impacted their productivity.

Therefore, it’s crucial to get clear visibility into remote employees’ mental health. Consider sending out anonymous employee satisfaction surveys to your resources to let them share their concerns without any inhibitions. These surveys can be enterprise-wide where you can ask for remote employees’ opinions about the work culture, whether they feel motivated, etc. You can ask more specific questions about a particular project, the experience of members involved, and roadblocks through project-specific surveys.

Compiling and analyzing all this data helps you know your resources’ general opinion. Further, you can observe their behavior and appearance to detect signs of stress during video calls. If you notice any distress symptoms, you can use an empathetic approach to interact with the resource(s). For example, to keep remote employees de-stressed and productive, management can facilitate one-on-one meetings, team encouragement sessions, paid day-offs, etc.

Establish a balance between discipline and autonomy

Remote work management can’t be the same as in-office management. It’s because replicating the exact office settings in every aspect is also practically challenging. Therefore, consider providing your resources with more flexibility and latitude in their remote working conditions. Make sure that you don’t resort to micromanagement at any rate and at any point in time. It’s because it does far more harm than good.

A recent survey by Trinity Solutions, Inc, Peachtree City, Georgia, finds:

79% of respondents said that they experienced micromanagement, and it interfered severely with their job performance.

With more control over what your resources do instead of frequent check-ins, instructions, and interruptions, their focus and engagement go high. It, in turn, helps them perform at their best and enhance their efficiency. However, it’s equally essential to reinforce organizational discipline to prevent misuse of the autonomy granted in any way.

Convey objectives and goals clearly

Defining clear goals is a crucial practice that becomes even more important for remote work. When working remotely, video calls, phone calls, or messages aren’t always feasible to convey expectations and objectives. They take up a significant chunk of an employee’s working hours and impact their productivity. So, lay down key responsibility areas (KRAs) for each resource right at the outset. Besides, enumerate project-specific key performance indicators (KPIs), including timeline KPIs like cycle time, on-time completion percentage, or budget KPIs like budget variance, return-on-investment (ROI), etc.

Setting a clear set of goals, expectations, and milestones eliminates conflicts and confusion in remote employees.

Additionally, it provides them clear visibility of objectives and milestones to reach. Moreover, knowing how their role is pivotal to the company’s growth boosts their engagement and commitment to work towards common goals. It, thus, enables them to synchronize their efforts better with the organization’s vision and increase their productivity.

Empower resources to take up projects of their interests

Often, managers resort to saving costs by allocating employees to various projects without knowing their interests. As a result, it results in a dip in their work engagement, productivity and causes unplanned attrition if continued for long. A resource management tool can help you avoid this predicament. While fulfilling project resource requirements, managers can publish open positions using specific details like skill, competency, experience, and cost. These positions are notified to all relevant resources across the enterprise.

Managers can then assign the positions to the best-available best-fit resources who express their interest in filling those open positions and allocates them. Giving remote teams the work suiting their competency and interest engages them and helps them stay productive. It also boosts task ownership and reduces the need to check in on the resources’ performance too frequently, saving time. This way, it benefits both the manager and the resources and boosts overall productivity.

Engage resources with virtual team building activities

Remote work deprives an employee of regular lunch-time talks, short strolls, stress-buster chats during work, etc. In the prolonged absence of these off-the-topic light-hearted conversions, stress at work starts building up.

According to Eagle Hill Consultant’s report on the US employees published last year:

58% of Americans reported burnout. With 47% of them reporting workload as the reason, it turned out to be the most significant factor behind burnout.

So, it’s recommendable to consider virtual team-building activities to engage your remote teams better. These activities can be in the form of group discussions, online meetings, brainstorming sessions, casual meet-ups, online games, and more. They help the remote employees to unplug from their monotonous schedule and regain energy to work ahead. They further help boost their morale, eliminate internal friction, conflicts, and miscommunication issues. Remote teams, thus, start working more cohesively towards the end goals, enhancing overall productivity.

Reward good work to inspire your team to perform better

Acknowledgment and appreciation of good work are essential to motivate resources. It becomes even more critical when they are working remotely as the chances of good work going unnoticed are higher. Therefore, the onus lies on you as the manager to appreciate remote teams’ members who outperform others. For instance, you can send a “Thank You” email or card to good performers. Besides, you can consider social media shout-outs to admire your remote workforce’s efforts and contributions publicly.

Moreover, timely virtual appreciation meet-ups, surprise meal deliveries, free technology upgrades, bonuses, paid vacation, etc., also form good recognition ideas.

Rewarding high performance makes resources feel valued and inspires them to perform even better.

At the same time, public recognition inspires not only high-performers but also the rest. It sets and raises benchmarks for everyone to cross in the organization. This way, with every individual aspiring to perform better get rewarded, remote teams’ overall efficiency soars.

Use tools to track and evaluate real-time performance

Real-time performance tracking keeps managers informed of both individual and project-wise progress. Using a resource management tool, they can analyze billable, non-billable, and strategic utilization levels. If they encounter cases of underutilization, they can reallocate resources from non-billable work to high-priority billable tasks. To improve billability, they can also implement on-the-job or “shadowing” opportunities to allocate fresh recruits to a project under a senior’s supervision.

In cases of over-utilization, they can redistribute workload among team members or deploy extra resources to achieve uniformity. Furthermore, forecasted vs. actual reports can help compare the actual time spent on the tasks against the forecasted time. These reports let them find gaps between forecasted and actual time and identify reasons behind them. Accordingly, they can implement appropriate resource optimization techniques, bridge the gaps, and enhance remote employees’ output.

Conclusion

Remote work culture is there to stay for long across the globe. So, it’s high time that organizations revamped their resourcing strategies to adapt to the evolving hybrid working culture. Some challenges may get in the way and hamper remote resources’ productivity. One can always combine the general practices mentioned above with a resource management tool and streamline the process to upkeep remote teams’ efficiency.

What productivity challenges do you encounter with your remote teams?

The Glossary

The SAVIOM Solution

SAVIOM has over 20 years of experience helping multinational clients manage their resources efficiently and effectively. With over 20 years of experience, this Australian-based MNC has a global presence across 50 countries and has helped 100+ clients meet their specific business goals. SAVIOM also provides tools for project portfolio management, professional service automation, and workforce planning software. So, SAVIOM can help your business to establish an efficient system geared towards your specific business challenges.

According to recent Gartner research, “By 2030, the demand for remote work will increase by 30% as Gen Z will enter the workforce.”

While working from a brick-and-mortar office space, employees had the privilege to socialize at cafeterias, office desks, or work events. However, with the rise of remote work, communication and bonds between colleagues are slowly becoming strained. Therefore, organizations need to keep their virtual teams aligned with company culture while ensuring their productivity.

As rightly quoted by Bang Gae, “teamwork makes the dream work,” companies must organize virtual team building activities that leverage team empowerment and employee engagement. It includes weekly activities, happy hours, coffee meetings, virtual games sessions, and fun challenges. These practices reinforce employee morale, strengthen team connections, and maximize productivity.

This article will cover some best practices and benefits of virtual team building activities.

Let’s begin with understanding what exactly is virtual team building.

What is Virtual Team Building?

Virtual team building is a continuous process of bringing remote teams together and creating bonds with teammates through various communication technologies in a similar office environment. Since communication is not in person, trust and transparency are crucial.

Virtual team building activities require specific initiatives to be taken by the team leaders to keep the team on the same page. 

For example; Virtual lunch can replicate cafeteria lunch, casual coffee meetups, video streaming, stress busters games, and more. It helps teams connect personally by bringing human interaction to virtual work.

Now that we know the basics let’s understand different benefits in more detail here.

Benefits of virtual team building activities for remote teams

Regular virtual team building activities help your workforce quickly adapt to a new remote work lifestyle. It helps minimize the negative impact of online workplace cultures, such as the inability to separate work time from personal time, loneliness, and the added stress of a global health crisis.

According to Gallup research, “Virtual team building activities lead to an increase in employee performance rate, claiming 41% lower absenteeism and 21% higher profitability.”

Here is how virtual team building activities can benefit you:

Boosts Employees’ Morale

Constantly pushing teams to deliver work and adhere to deadlines can cause disengagement and burnout. Thus the ideal team leader must encourage the team to function cohesively by conducting virtual team building activities such as group discussions, online meetings, brainstorming, casual meetup, and more. These team bonding practices empower the team with positive reinforcement and make them feel valued.

It aids in developing mutual respect amongst employees, boosts employee morale, and eliminates internal conflicts.

Promotes Workforce Collaboration

Projects cannot succeed without team efforts as most tasks are interdependent and demand coordination between the resources. In a concrete workspace, it is easier for team collaboration. But when employees are working virtually, it gets challenging to align the team with the project’s progress. There are greater chances of discrepancies in communication.

Therefore, conducting virtual team building drills proves beneficial. It helps employees stay connected with coworkers and promotes them to work cohesively. It also makes resources aware of each other’s strengths and weaknesses and enables them to coordinate and complete tasks according to their competence, saving time and additional effort.

Supports Innovation Management

Innovation is a key to gaining a business advantage in the competitive industry. Virtual team building is a medium to bring all employees under one roof,  promote creativity, brainstorm, and foster innovation. When there are multiple perspectives, any idea can lead to a breakthrough innovation for a firm.

The innovation management strategy will boost team collaboration and allow people to interact, share, and receive constructive feedback. When employees look at an issue or challenge through the lens of innovation, they become more involved in achieving the company’s long-term goals.

Increases Productivity

When teams are siloed, chances are they don’t have a clear work direction which can lead to lower productivity. But virtual team building activities allow team leaders to explain organization goals with utmost clarity.

When employees have a sense of purpose, it motivates them to work with all their might to reach the goal. It, in turn, results in improving the resource pool’s performance index without any form of employee burnout.

Encourage Versatility

Several organizations now demand a versatile workforce to respond quickly and effectively to ever-changing developments. Thus, organizing team-building activities enhances resource skills and expertise in more than one discipline. It is also a safe zone for employees to try new tasks and make mistakes without the fear of repercussions.

technology, and people.

Reinforce Positive Work Culture

Using the diligent intuitive tool, organizations can ensure that remote teams have clear insight and visibility of all ongoing work. It will make all team members accountable for producing quality work.

Regular office catch-ups, work-related discussions all lead to a significant influence on employees, thereby reinforcing positive workplace cultures. Virtual team building games, lunch or a coffee break, book/music clubs, contest nights, virtual happy hours, birthday celebrations can boost positive work culture in an organization.

Build Diverse Relationships

The best work culture leverages resources from different time zones, embraces diversity (cultural/gender/race difference), and celebrates it. Thus, virtual team building activities help organizations build meaningful relationships and connections among geographically distributed teams and develop cross-generational relationships. It exposes virtual teams to new ways of working across boundaries through systems, processes, technology, and people.

The advantages of team-building activities are substantial. Let’s now look at some of the best practices that support virtual team-building with it.

Best Practices For Virtual Team-building

Team leaders can avail the benefits of the virtual work environment and promote team bonding  by following some tips given below: 

Regular check-ins & feedback with teammates

It is easy to check in on employees in traditional workspaces and keep a tab on their work rate by just visiting their cubicles. However, it gets challenging when the team is dispersed across boundaries. Managers must therefore make it a point to conduct regular check-ins with employees. It will help resources enhance their performance and get a clear picture of the process and scope of improvement from their perspective.

Aside from support, most managers’ and employees’ critical need is to find a shared understanding of what work to prioritize. The one-on-one conversation with employees will help managers understand how best to support employee’s work, productivity, growth, and success.

Foster virtual water-cooler chats

From casual office breaks to impromptu chats at a colleague’s desk, physical office space provided several opportunities for interaction with colleagues. To replicate this experience, managers can schedule virtual water-cooler discussions weekly where team members can indulge in a casual conversation or icebreaker questions over a cup of tea or coffee.

These simple yet effective initiatives can positively impact remote employees’ mental well-being and help them feel less isolated.

Conduct employee wellness programs

Employees are struggling to embrace the sudden shift of virtual work culture due to the challenging times of pandemic. As both of these factors have a significant impact on employees’ wellbeing, companies should consider investing in 3 domains of wellbeing initiatives, i.e., mental, physical, and social wellbeing.

Companies can provide wellness packages to employees and introduce the concept of mindfulness. Other supports include free and accessible counseling for mental well-being in remote employees, reimbursement for fitness activities, etc., to address employee’s stress, work concerns, and challenges.

Provide Recognition and Awards

Team leaders can deliver praise and acknowledgment to well-performing employees by providing recognition and awards. The recognition awards such as employee of the month, team hero, etc., will boost employee morale and motivate others to perform better in tasks.

Beyond financial incentives, other perks for employees can include online training, workspace upgrades, a wellness package, technology allowances, etc. It will make everyone aware of the performance expectations and drive them to take ownership of their work.

Conduct Daily Stand-ups

Regardless of whether the team is working remotely across different geographical boundaries or co-located, organizing daily stand-ups will bring all employees to the same page. A short, consistent, and focused daily stand-up will align resources on the highest priority tasks before the day starts. The success of any stand-up meeting depends on team participation and effective communication. People can move in sync only when everyone is aware of the team’s objectives, project deadlines, and team member availability.

Conclusion

In a post-pandemic world, most companies are considering remote work culture as a permanent option. The employees can save significant travel time while the organizations can cut down on expensive real-estate costs. If the activities are well-coordinated, it can be a win-win for both parties.

Thus, team-building drills can help organizations to prepare their workforce during this impromptu work transition period. It is known to be more effective when it is intentional and has a purpose as it transcends cultural and physical barriers. It also allows employees to participate without typical corporate hierarchies and across diverse geographical boundaries.

In a nutshell, team-building activities are essential to building a stable remote workforce for any business. By creating a fun and collaborative virtual environment where transparent communications are encouraged, you can help your team thrive and gain business profitability, even when they’re working virtually.

What are the key team-building practices you have adopted for your virtual employees?

The Glossary

The SAVIOM Solution

SAVIOM is the market leader in offering the most powerful and configurable solutions for managing enterprise resources efficiently and effectively. Having more than 20 years of experience, this Australian-based MNC has a global presence in over 50 countries. It is also popular with more than 100 customers and helping them to achieve their business goals. SAVIOM also has products for project portfolio management, professional service automation, and workforce planning software which can be easily customized as per business requirements.

Mandated lockdown across the globe has forced companies to make some organizational changes to increase sustainability and adapt to the new normal. The sudden turn of events has compelled decision-makers to hit the reset button. 

Amidst the social distancing, technology has allowed teleworking to become feasible for businesses. Going forward, the most significant social experiment of our time will substantially alter the nature of work and it’s methodologies. Due to these challenging times and to stay relevant down the line, organizations are reinventing themselves in different ways. 

Let’s have a look at them: 

1. Cross-departmental talent exchange

The pandemic has inflicted economic upheaval on industries. Due to the complete market shutdown decision-makers have had to make some harsh calls in order to safeguard their firms. In addition hiring freezes has led to a shortage of resources with required skill sets.

How do businesses combat this? How do they tap into the potential talents of their existing workforce? How can they save jobs during the ongoing financial crisis? 

A cross-departmental talent exchange allows you to deploy resources beyond one’s job role. For instance, your firm’s sales department is under-utilized. These resources can be retrained and assigned to roles in other departments under heavy demand. The upside here is, managers are saving resourcing costs and helping the workforce to broaden their skill set. What’s more? Leaders are bridging the skills and capacity vs demand gap! 

2. Changing customer experience

Not only employees, but consumers are equally affected by the unrest caused by the crisis. Unavailability of essentials, closure of e-commerce, and regular services have added to their anxiety. Call centers are swamped with calls and queries 24*7. However, with extreme social distancing and shutdown of services, addressing these countless questions manually is not always feasible. 

Companies are turning to AI-powered digital tools like chatbots with Deep Learning and Natural Language Processing (NLP) to provide instantaneous answers. Self-regulation of repetitive requests and cloud-based interactive voice response (IVR) are their strengths. In fact, this virtual engagement is faster than ever and has improved customer experience. Given its efficiency and pace of response, consumers will not give up on their high expectations post-crisis. Ultimately, the exponential benefits of these AI-powered tools will be leveraged in reorganizing the business structure down the line. 

3. Leaning towards agility

The ongoing crisis has taught everyone to be responsive and adaptive to change. The best example is the limited supply of sanitizers and protection masks that led the alcohol companies to make sanitizers and clothing designers started making the mask.  A shift in their attitude and on-demand planning enhanced efficiency and made the system resilient. The benefits of being responsive to change do not just limit to one sector. One can avail of them in their respective organizations. 

Leaders are reshaping and modernizing their work landscape during this time of enforced remote working. A key to a successful migration from physical to virtual work culture is to become digitally agile. In fact, a recently conducted Pulse survey states that around 53% of organizations prioritize building a culture receptive of change. Collaboration with teams, streamlining project planning, data visualization, and interpretation and efficient capacity planning is only possible when you have efficient tools at your disposal.  Becoming an agile digital firm is the need of the hour to take advantage of the array of benefits provided by these tools.

4. Empowering remote teams

A sudden shift from office to home-office caused a massive transition in work culture. Leaders faced new team-management challenges. Some offices didn’t have a work from home policy and are now struggling to manage the remote teams. From transparent communication to getting things done, managing a distributed workforce amidst this havoc became tedious. After all, pushing the workforce to reach targets while addressing their emotional turmoil is a significant challenge. 

With no choice whatsoever, leaders have to step-up and empower their remote teams. With a strong technical infrastructure in place with the integration of intelligent resource management tools, managers can sustain communication and collaboration to enhance team productivity. Beyond the challenges, reduced operational costs, increased flexibility and improved work-life balance will make remote work the new normal in the future. 

5. Embracing risk management

Leadership skills are facing their strongest test in the current scenario. Businesses are disrupted on a large scale and a long-term solution to combat the financial losses is crucial. For instance, leaders are taking the risk of losing their talent pool who can be of prime importance in the future. This is a temporary fix! Curated risk mitigation backed by instinctive decision making and a smooth transition plan distinguishes a low-maturity organization and highly matured one. 

The firms with business continuity and risk management plans in place could easily transit and tackle the challenges In order to stay future-ready and beat such grim times, quantitative risk analysis and contingency plans play an important role in organizations. Learning from their mistakes, leaders will incorporate them in the future while restructuring their organizations. 

The summary

Having a notable impact on every industry, the current pandemic has challenged even the strongest leadership team. The changes detailed in this article will gradually pave the way for change in the business landscape and become the new normal. A change in thought and perspective will help you bring the dynamic transformation in action and lead successfully. Dynamic planning and risk management plans are essential to stay future-ready and deal with such tough times. Step up your game and embrace the new benefits of the business methodologies!!