Here are six ways your business can support collaboration, whether the team is in the office or elsewhere in the world.
1. Use cloud telephony
Cloud telephony, such as Horizon, makes communication between remote teams and international hubs straightforward. Horizon has several elements to help everyone to stay organised and increase productivity, such as a feature for arranging timetables, and the ability to set up call groups, which lets you contact several people through a single phone number.
With Horizon, you will have the option to record calls, so you don’t have to worry about remembering every detail from important conversations, as you can just listen to them again. The Caller ID function provides relevant information on incoming calls from customers, which helps you to make the conversation more pleasant for the customer and makes it easier to find what they need. Plus, the Click to Dial option allows you to save time by calling a phone number simply by clicking on it.
Horizon is also versatile, as it can be used on a variety of devices, such as mobile phones, desktop computers and laptops.
2. Collaborate via Microsoft Team
Microsoft Teams is a useful tool for collaboration. Not only can you hold virtual meetings, but you can collaborate on documents and stay in touch throughout, which is a much faster way of getting things done than emailing back and forth. Working over Teams results in improved communication, as you can decide whether to hold a meeting or do quick check-ins via voice call.
3. Utilise smartphone apps
The Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Skype, and Slack apps, for example, allows everyone to stay in contact, take video and voice calls and join virtual meetings regardless of location. This has the benefit of saving time, as it doesn’t matter if someone is at home or in the office – they can collaborate from anywhere.
4. Make a plan and keep it up-to-date
Write up a plan and put it in a document that can be accessed by everybody who needs it. This allows everyone to make sure they’re on-task and find out what they need to do next.
Remember to update the plan regularly, so that it reflects any changes. It’s useful to have an adaptive mindset and to remind yourself that nothing is set in stone, and what’s best for a project as a whole might not perfectly align with a pre-written list of tasks.
5. Check in with everyone
In the office, it’s easy to find someone and ask how their work is going, but with remote workers, you need to take the time to get in touch and check if they know what they’re doing. This means any issues can be caught and quickly resolved before they impact a task, which lets you avoid confusion and has the potential to save time in the long run.
6. Be flexible
Be prepared to rearrange schedules and change plans if necessary – for example, if you’re in a meeting and someone has an idea that might mean changing who is assigned to which task. You need to be able to adapt in order to boost overall productivity.
