Ideas to Improve your Team’s Engagement Remotely Using Communication

A big challenge that companies are facing as we approach the anniversary of when our lives changed almost completely is how to keep our teams committed when they can no longer meet face-to-face.

As a response to this challenge, we can focus on various levers, such as encouraging a culture that values individual performance rather than physical presence, disaggregating company goals at the individual or group level, and measuring the results. Their achievement at that same level; have managers with autonomy to manage remotely and who know how to get the best for the team from each person; have online training itineraries and tools like Klaxoon.

If your team works 100% remotely, or if part works at headquarters and part remotely, or if each person alternates work at headquarters with work remotely, it is likely that it will be almost impossible to meet all of you in person.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t have team meetings. In fact, in these hybrid work models they are even more important, so that everyone is permanently informed of the progress of the project and the fulfillment of the objectives (or so that you detect any deviation from it as soon as possible).

1. Schedule a daily meeting, 30-45 minutes maximum, by videoconference, with everyone on the team.To do this, agree on the best time for everyone to attend: when the children are already in class, but not too late for the morning to “spread”, or early in the afternoon, to see the progress of the day.Keep in mind if there are team members connecting from other time zones.
2. Dedicate Monday’s meeting to review the progress of the project or projects that you have in hand and to distribute the tasks for each person during that week, seeking the commitment of each one with the fulfillment of it.Take a few minutes to convey corporate information to the team: company progress, news, official announcements, instructions, successes and recognitions, etc.
   And reserve a final space to know the state of mind with which the team faces the week. You can use mobile applications that allow you to launch questions at the moment, and each person to answer them anonymously or by name, as you prefer.

3. Dedicate the Friday meeting to each person telling how they have progressed during the week (“what am I on”, “what am I going to finish”, “what do I need to move forward”, etc.). This will allow you to analyze deviations, delays, advances, reinforcement needs in some tasks, etc., in order to distribute the loads for the following week.
4. From Tuesday to Thursday the meeting can be shorter, just to find out if there are news or incidents from any source (company, customer, supplier, anyone on the team…) that may impact the planning of the week.
5. Make sure everyone on the team attends the meeting on Mondays and Fridays. If someone cannot attend the rest of the days nothing happens: the important thing is to do it, even if you are not all there.
6. These meetings are led by you, but you must ensure that they are very participatory, to hear the voice of your entire team.
7. Take advantage of these meetings to recognize and celebrate the team’s successes and progress (partial results). If you have to correct someone, do not do it in front of the team: do it alone with the person affected.
8. When a team meets a relevant milestone or reaches a success, reserve a space for them at the meeting the following Monday, to present to the rest of the team.
9. Try to have an informal conversation with each person on your team at least once a month.It can be by videoconference or by phone. Remember that with the first (using the camera) you do not lose the information from non-verbal language.
10. But have a script of topics to discuss, starting with those closest to the person: how are you, how is your environment, how are you doing with this work model (what do you like, what not, what do you need to work better …), How do you see the project (what is going better, what can we improve, what can you improve, what do you need to improve…), how do you see the team, how do you see the company, etc.
11. If you are not used to using them, at the beginning, set rules (for example, “we must all write a message at least once a day”) and distribute roles that rotate weekly or monthly; For example, the person who publishes every day: an article of interest, a news item in the sector, a curious fact or curiosity (did you know that …?), a joke or a cartoon, an inspiring phrase or sentence, an anniversary, etc.

Ultimately, the new work environments force us, as team managers, to plan and offer constant and very direct two-way communication, which brings what, is happening in the organization to remote teams and brings the successes of those computers remotely.