Remote Collaboration Can Be Hugely Effective (If You Address Certain Issues)

Many businesses, having adopted remote work as a normal part of their operations, have found it to be a benefit to their goals. That being said, remote collaboration does come with its own challenges. Let’s discuss some of them, as well as how they can and should be addressed.

Let’s begin by identifying some of remote collaboration’s inherent issues, shortcomings, and obstacles.

What Challenges Does Remote Collaboration Bring with It?

There are numerous struggles that your remote team may encounter—both as a group or as individual employees—including:

• Overcoming distractions and the like: Unfortunately, there’s no shortage of stimuli in any environment to pull your attention away from your work responsibilities.
• Staying motivated: While a little less pressure can go a long way to make work a more pleasant experience, eliminating too much can quickly lead to a lack of motivation.
• Differentiating between work and personal life: One of the nice things about working in the office is that there is a clear boundary between work and home, making it easier to “turn off” and recuperate. When this boundary is gone, it becomes more difficult for your team to recover.
• Working productively, and tracking it: With a dispersed team, it becomes all the more important that you are able to confirm that your team is working diligently and on schedule. This isn’t a simple task, of course.
• Managing and organizing projects: On a related note, managing a dispersed team is a more challenging task in all ways, as communication is made more challenging.

Fortunately, the Right Technology and Practices Can Help You Overcome These Challenges

Let's run through the technologies that can be used to address these various struggles.

• A thoughtful workspace helps fight distractions: Establishing a dedicated workspace is something that every remote worker should do, as it helps to keep them in a focused and work-oriented headspace.
• Working with teammates can encourage motivation: Not everyone is going to be 100% gung-ho all the time, but when multiple people are working together, their varied energy levels can help maintain balance. Collaborative platforms and communication tools make this kind of balance easier to attain and sustain.
• Differentiating between work and home: While remote work offers a massive variety of advantages to businesses, it cannot be denied that it can easily lead to overwork. Putting project management tools in place that clearly define timelines and collaboration platforms that allow team members to define their working hours can help reinforce the difference between these times.
• Working productively, and tracking it: In order to tackle the challenges that remote work can pose to productivity, it is important that you have the tools needed to monitor how your employees’ time is being spent. Numerous platforms exist that allow you to do so simply and effectively.
• Managing and organizing projects: Likewise, these platforms allow you to assign tasks and schedule out when they are to be completed, effectively overcoming any communication gaps left by the distance between you and your workers.

We’re Here to Help You Implement—and Maintain—These Tools!

Trust us to ensure that your team is able to work collaboratively and effectively, no matter where they are working from. Give us a call at (978) 482-2020 to learn more.