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These tools are great for real-time collaboration, but just like email, they quickly get out of hand and can become an unrelenting stream of distraction and notifications. Collaboration is far easier when everything is on a single platform. That’s why we recommendHelpCrunchfor remote teams who want to communicate with their customers on all platforms.
Nevertheless, regular conversations increase employee satisfaction and help improve work practices. Remote collaboration promotes communication skills within the team. It’s also not really a process until it’s organized, presented, and updated regularly.
Get in the team collaboration mindset with virtual team building activities
Linear is a streamlined and modern issue tracking tool for software teams. It’s quickly becoming a favorite for smaller teams as the antithesis to Atlassian Jira, which has been the industry leader for years. We use Linear at Himalayas because it has great UX, remote collaboration has easy-to-use shortcuts, is super fast, and is opinionated in all the right ways . It’s one of those “oh wow” tools you don’t quite understand until you start using it. Their ‘Team’ plan is $10 USD per user per month and includes pretty much everything.
In recent years, Figma has edged ahead of Sketch as the industry leader. Figma won the race for real-time collaboration which made it the obvious choice for teams, especially remote teams. 27% of remote employees report not being able to unplug as their biggest challenge.
Main Challenges To Remote Collaboration vs. On-Site Work
In an effort to stay connected, you may opt for frequent video chats and instant messaging. Now, the team feels connected and there are no problems with isolation. Workers have autonomy and freedom to create a schedule maximizing productivity, but the downside is they can often feel isolated. When working remotely, it’s sometimes hard to build relationships with teammates and management.
Constant notifications mean that remote workers spend more time checking messages and instant messaging. Nothing triggers an anxious breakdown for a remote worker as much as a Wi-Fi router that won’t connect. KPIs help keep remote workers focused and motivated by communicating as clearly as possible what the task at hand is and what remote employees should be working towards and prioritizing. Lack of remote communication gives rise to a myriad of secondary problems and challenges, such as reduced productivity, overworking, loneliness, and lack of work structure. The added benefit of asynchronous work is that distributed teams can operate on a 24-hour clock instead of the traditional 8 hours.
Turn off Slack notifications
With tools like Trello, Asana, and Basecamp, your team leaders can see the status of the tasks you and your teammates are working on. That way, they don’t have to interrupt your work to ask for an update. A project management tool also helps consolidate communications about any collaborative tasks https://remotemode.net/ within the platform so the relevant information is easily accessible. There are numerous challenges to working effectively with a distributed team compared to co-located employees. Slack is one of the note-worthy remote team collaboration tools both for synchronous and asynchronous communication.
Introverted colleagues should be specifically challenged in this context. Remote team collaboration means working together from different geographical locations. It is also possible that all the members of a team work from home. But if that team isn’t given tools to help it function as a single unit, there’s no capitalizing on the brain trust you’ve hired. Plus, without the right tools, your brilliant team members can be left feeling like they’re operating in silos, and that can lead to feelings of alienation and trigger eventual turnover. Helping them understand how the work they are doing is contributing to the overall objective of the organization will motivate them to perform better and stay productive as a team.