After the pandemic launched much of the workforce into remote offices, many companies were surprised to find that productivity didn’t suffer. Cloud technology allowed for access to the right tools and corporate resources, and workers didn’t mind giving up their commute. Still, after the dust settled, many companies were still wrestling with how to establish professional etiquette across remote and hybrid workplaces. In many cases, collaboration tools are setting the standard.
The Technology
The kind of collaboration tools available through solutions like unified communications offers time-saving features. Employees can display their availability status so that others on their team know when they can talk shop and when they are in a meeting. Real-time document sharing shows edits as they happen.
Because all team members have access to up-to-date information, they can speed up decision-making and remove typical bottlenecks in project management. Unified communications solutions also make it easy to view interactions between parties without having to toggle between different formats. From email to chat to text message, all interactions are captured.
The Practices
Unified communications and other collaboration tools deliver the features, but it’s up to companies to implement practices that uphold etiquette standards:
Noise-Related Offenses: When in a videoconferencing session, it can be easy for the meeting to get drowned out by background noise. You can encourage employees to mute themselves until they need to talk, especially with many collaboration tools offering a raised hand feature that allows attendees to remain muted until they are called on by the facilitator.
Equal Voices: When in a hybrid setting, it can be tempting to relegate virtual attendees to more of an audience member than a participant. Be careful not to favor the input of in-person versus virtual attendees. Allow each participant opportunities to contribute.
Consistency: If you have a dress code in your office, require that your remote employees adhere to it when attending virtual meetings. You should also follow the same approach to punctuality that you would use for an in-person meeting. If it’s the usual practice to start five minutes after the scheduled time, stick to that practice.
Test: Take advantage of testing capabilities in your collaboration tools and encourage attendees to check their sound and other features before jumping into the meeting.
The kinds of collaboration tools available through unified communications and other technology can make remote and hybrid work a permanent solution with benefits for both employees and employers. With the right features, you can build an effective team that may surpass the productivity standards you enjoyed prior to the pandemic.
To learn more about collaboration tools to support your remote or hybrid work environment, contact us at ITBroker.com. We will assist you in identifying the specific challenges affecting your team and help you evaluate the solutions most likely to solve them.
