Ada Hendren – CEO ShareCreators.
The Covid-19 pandemic has made more and more enterprises realize that conventional in-office work often no longer meets their and their employees’ needs. But whether they have fully remote workforces or operate with a hybrid model, collaborating efficiently has become a major challenge for many enterprises.
When you have employees across sectors and regions working on tasks together, it can often lead to productivity and efficiency issues, especially if you have to share a large number of digital assets. Consequently, your team’s overall progress and synergy can be negatively affected.
My company is headquartered in San Francisco, with branch offices in Beijing and Chengdu in China. For the last several years, we’ve been working on closely coordinating our groups in each location. Here’s my advice on how to collaborate efficiently when your teams are telecommuting.
Be prepared to go fully remote on the fly.
When the pandemic hit, many enterprises (and employees) were not prepared for remote work. They had to quickly adapt. Many employees are back in the office now, whether all of the time or just part of it, but it’s important for enterprises to be ready if the need for fully remote work ever arises again.
Ask yourself the following questions.
• Are we prepared to handle a remote working environment?
• Have we established a team cooperation mechanism?
• Have we optimized our team management and collaboration processes?
• Are we prepared to communicate with all staff members effectively and facilitate cross-departmental communication？
If you can come up with solutions to the above problems, then I believe going fully remote won’t be as much of a shock.
Clarify your goals.
What does effective telecommuting look like for your enterprise? What does clear communication look like for you? Ideally, cross-departmental communication should be just as efficient, and team collaboration should be just as smooth during telecommuting periods as they are during on-site working periods. What are your goals when it comes to information synchronization and the transfer of large files?
Break down tasks.
One of the most important aspects of remote collaboration is workload partitioning and milestone setting. On a team, no one is fighting alone. When it comes to coordination and division of labor, it’s important to plan and break down tasks and assign and manage them effectively.
Make sure you’re transparent about tasks at the macro level. This way, all of the people working on a project can clearly understand the situation and your progress, as well as their own part of the project. I’ve found that this greatly increases participation.
You can use this same process with strategic goals.
Identify your priorities.
Develop your own prioritization system for dealing with problems. Sort your problems according to priority, and then deal with them in different ways. Perhaps urgent things can be solved by using instant messaging tools, and the most urgent things can be handled by telephone. The remaining issues that are not time-sensitive can be collected and dealt with later. Not every problem needs to be solved right away, and interrupting a co-worker to answer a less urgent question not only disrupts the other person’s progress but also can make you seem less professional.
Use tools to improve your efficiency.
To paraphrase an old saying that’s often attributed to Confucius, “To do a good job, you must sharpen your tools first.” In our increasingly competitive world, collaboration software is a valuable tool for helping enterprises work more efficiently and become more competitive.
Nowadays, workplace communication software, such as Slack and Microsoft Teams, has become indispensable for enterprises. Such software enables teams to communicate and collaborate effectively.
If you require frequent and efficient sharing of a large number of digital files, digital asset management software can help you keep them organized and enable easy sharing. There are a number of these software solutions on the market today. (Full disclosure: My company has created one.)
There are many factors to consider when choosing digital asset management software. Most fixed asset management software providers offer trial versions. You can download them and try them out before you implement the software companywide.
As you try different software options, first determine whether the functionality of the software meets your current needs. Is the interface clear? Is it complex to operate? If the software is not easy to learn and understand, you may face a lot of operational problems.
The price of the software is also an important factor. However, I suggest focusing on whether the software meets your enterprise’s needs rather than simply considering the price.
The quality of the software supplier’s after-sales service is also worth paying attention to. After all, problems may inevitably occur in the process of using any software. Does the software supplier provide timely and helpful service? Ideally, they will be able to solve any problems on their first try.
Conclusion
In general, the biggest obstacle to telecommuting for many companies today doesn’t seem to be the tools but rather the need for a rapid shift in management thinking—you have to shift from the traditional work mindset to one that embraces innovation and from a boss-centric approach to an employee-centric one. This is becoming compulsory for many enterprises, especially small- to medium-sized enterprises. Tools can reduce costs and help you increase efficiency, but only if you use them in the right way. Otherwise, they will likely only increase the burden and pressure on employees and damage the cornerstone of employer-employee trust.
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