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Last Updated on January 20, 2024 by Work In My Pajamas
Teamwork can be a pain, let’s be honest. It’s necessary for running and operating a small business though, even in the startup stages. Sometimes the startup stages require remote work and remote employees, due to lack of resources like office buildings and computer equipment. With the millennial generation, remote work and communication have become very commonplace as well.
When it comes to teamwork though, this can put a halt on some things, but the benefits of remote work are also immense, affording companies the opportunity to build more culturally diverse teams and have flexibility that more traditional office cultures do not afford.
So we must figure out a way to make remote teamwork operate smoothly, removing stress, providing greater options and increasing productivity!
I have a few ideas to help accomplish this:
- Utilize All Free Forms of Communication
Startup costs are aggravating. Google can take care of many of them that formerly would have had to be paid for through other third party agencies. Google Analytics and Gmail are both free, but so are Google Drive and Google Hangouts, two of the easiest ways to communicate with multiple people as well as work with them.
Google Hangouts allows video chats as well, but I’m not sure if they work for multiple people. But communication has been smoother on G Hangouts than on Skype for me recently. There are fewer audio pauses and cutting out. Of course, this will depend largely on your connection, so if you’re not doing physical presentations but still want a video, it may be the way to go (the video quality may not be as good).
- Try to Have a Meet Up In Person Once A Week
If you all live in the same town or general area, try to organize in-person meetings fairly frequently. I personally recommend once a week, but I think biweekly is pretty fair as well. Some things are just not solvable over a messaging system or over the phone. Face to face communication, I believe, is necessary for solid teamwork. It puts a face to a name and a voice to text on the screen. Things will hopefully get less frustrating in these cases.
The employers at the startup I work at actually have one mandatory day a week we have to come into the office. We do have people in other states that call in but primarily it’s the one day a week where any department meetings happen as well as personal mentoring and brainstorming sessions and fun team building activities like an escape rooms!
- Divide Tasks instead of Entire Projects
Instead of having entire projects fall on someone remote, it may be okay to micromanage a little bit in this instance. The way you can make sure each part of every project is executed accordingly, since most work will be done remotely. Let’s face it, teams are diverse and require a lot of different players, not carbon copies of the same person.
Teamwork isn’t always utilized to make things faster, but rather more efficient. People should be able to use their talents to manage what they’re good at, not entire projects that they may not know every aspect of. This way everyone is utilized to their best potentials rather than having to figure new things out every different project.
What is your opinion on workplace team work? Let me know in the comments.
