Why cultivating remote team culture is important for your company to flourish

It’s no secret that working remotely has its perks. Yet, there are times when we miss those in-person interactions — office banter, water cooler talk, or a quick coffee break with our coworkers. Especially with tight deadlines, feeling isolated from one’s team can be overwhelming, impact the quality of work, and diminish productivity. 

That’s why cultivating remote team culture is crucial for your company to be successful. And the best way is by facilitating active communication among team members — for the sake of work and for fun. Here are some ideas to get communication and collaboration rolling among your team.

Communicating with your remote team in an online workspace

Healthy communication is the key to any successful team, but it’s especially crucial for remote teams. When collaborating on high-stakes projects, it’s important to be in sync with your team members. With a project management tool, you’re able to streamline workflow and get reliable task and project updates. But what about the collaborative bridges these tools can’t inherently build? Are team members empowered to share different viewpoints and approaches to project goals? Is your team able to communicate freely to share ideas and feedback? 

Communicating in real time is pivotal to achieving the best results. 

Communicating for work

While working on time-sensitive projects, remote teams need to collaborate and share critical information in real time. Communication needs to be fluid to fit the situation, whether it’s one-on-one conversations or open forums with the entire team. Here are some strategies for effectively communicating with your team about projects:

• Organize project resources. You can store all of your project resources on a cloud platform and invite team members to contribute. This creates opportunities for active collaboration while keeping resources conveniently organized with their respective tasks.

• Initiate task-based conversations. When it comes to having a quick word on tasks, your remote team should be able to do it in real time, just as teams working together in-person might. Using a platform with built-in chat tools can help your team members feel more connected and more productive when working on projects. 

• Plan regular check-ins with your team. Keeping in touch about assigned tasks and deadlines is important to ensure a smooth workflow. Scheduling one-on-one meetings, as well as team meetings through Skype or Zoom, helps everyone to stay on the same page while working remotely. 

When your team is conversing mostly through emails and chats, there’s always the possibility of misunderstandings. Individuals have different conversational styles, and a team needs to be mindful of such differences to avoid confusion. This calls for more frequent, direct, and real-time communication among team members.   

Communicating for fun

In the rush to finish remote tasks in time, interpersonal relationships often take a back seat. Yet, those casual, non-work-related conversations are important, too, to help build rapport among team members. Setting aside time for casual events and providing your team with a remote platform to connect go a long way in motivating them and increasing overall productivity. Here are some ways you can help your team bond over casual conversations and events:

• Watercooler chats: You can create separate chat channels to facilitate watercooler talk. Encourage team members to share laughs over friendly banter, jokes, current events, personal news, pets, movies, books, hobbies, and more in a fun and respectful way. 

• Happy hours: Friday afternoons can often be lonely for remote team members while in-office teams often have casual drinks or host social events. A great way to change this is by scheduling virtual happy hours to bring team members together face-to-face for conversation over drinks.

• Shared virtual lunches or social hours: Catching up is important on a regular basis. Setting aside time for shared virtual lunches or social hours, even in the middle of a busy schedule, helps team members relax a bit while chasing deadlines.

• Playing games remotely: It can be fun to shake up the usual conversation during social hours. Playing online games such as Skribbl can make these events more interactive.

To keep your team well-connected and engaged, it also helps to celebrate teammates’ personal milestones and successes. Showing appreciation through emails and chat channels recognizes team members’ contributions and helps create a sense of connection and ownership.

An integrated platform to cultivate a remote team culture

When your team is scattered in different locations and time zones, you need reliable tools for team communication. Individual chat tools are helpful, but if they mean constantly toggling between platforms, team communication can start to feel cumbersome. An integrated platform that tracks workflow, facilitates collaboration, and lets your team communicate instantaneously can help increase overall productivity while creating healthy remote team culture. It’s a win-win solution to keep goals on track and your team members feeling great about company morale. 

With Flow’s all-in-one platform, your team can collaborate and communicate in real time. Learn how our powerful built-in chat feature can help you build a positive remote team culture. Start your free trial today!