How businesses can improve remote collaboration in 2021

Since the outbreak of the pandemic last year, the rapid migration of business to remote work has accelerated the transformation of many organizations. Under such circumstances, many organizations must accelerate digital transformation, change business models, and adjust growth strategies. In response to these sudden changes, many organizations have adopted new remote collaboration and communication tools.

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Many organizations are working to improve the way they collaborate by adopting a variety of technologies and approaches. While team members have different experiences with remote work, organizations across industries are looking to improve in certain areas.

Here’s what organizations need to know to improve remote collaboration in 2021:

Data Point No. 1: Recording and Sharing Meeting Videos

Meeting videos need to be recorded, especially in group settings. This helps keep team members who are unable to attend the meeting for various reasons informed. Some organizations often forget to record the video when holding a video conference and share it with some people in the team. It is a work in progress for organizations to find the right processes and tools to use recorded videos more effectively.

Data Point No. 2: Adding More Office Hours

One of the great benefits of remote teams is the ability to work asynchronously, but this also presents some challenges. Face-to-face interactions (or at least virtual face-to-face interactions) whenever possible are very important for remote work. Making time for more interactions is a challenge. While there is no great way to experience the interactivity of face-to-face communication, saving time for team members to get to know each other better and exchange ideas is a good way to make team members feel more connected.

Data Point No. 3: Managing Offline Time

In teams that work remotely, it’s not uncommon for employees to send messages while offline. While organizations don’t need to implement formal processes for different time zones or offline message reception, they can prefix messages with “non-urgent” or other qualifiers if they know someone may be offline. Even adopting this practice as a routine is helpful, but organizations that can find a way to help manage this process will be better positioned to improve their collaborative practices.

Data Point No. 4: Organize Small Meetings

During the pandemic, many organizations have scheduled company-wide video conferences, which are a great way to bring all team members together. This is important, but meetings are often held for specific teams or in small groups. For organizations whose employees will not be returning to the corporate office anytime soon, reestablishing face-to-face communication at the right level is key. There is no better time to start building these types of interactions than now.

Data Point No. 5: Recognizing the Challenges of Families

During the pandemic, organizations that were already largely remote and distributed have made progress in some areas that may make the work transition easier—from knowing how to build a remote team culture to having the right IT infrastructure in place to keep employees safe. But for organizations that have changed the way they work in their home spaces during the pandemic, it’s a challenge. It’s important to work hard to create a culture that accepts the fact that employees are working from home, recognizing that employees’ children, spouses, or even pets may appear on Zoom video calls or occasionally request changes to work schedules.

Data Point No. 6: Codification and Recording of Cultural Customs

Over the past year, many organizations have responded to challenges like these through corporate culture and practices. The fact that they have solved the problems that arise from the sudden shift to remote work does not mean that they have solved them. By consciously adopting practices that work for employees (and adding them to corporate handbooks or other written guidelines), organizations can more effectively scale these practices as their business evolves.

Data Point No. 7: Remote Collaboration Challenges Will Continue

Regardless of the long-term or short-term impacts of the pandemic, as we head into 2021, many organizations’ employees will still be working remotely. From process adjustments to technology improvements, there are many ways to address the challenges facing remote teams. While organizational routines can provide relief, they can’t fill the structural gaps left by changes in the way employees work. Organizations that take the time to assess employee development going forward, understand how to improve collaboration, and incorporate some of those changes into lasting policies are more likely to develop collaboration practices that are welcomed and scalable.