Tag Archive for: Remote Team Building

Garnering and Implementing Feedback From Remote Teams

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Developing Stronger Remote Teams Through Feedback

Feedback is an important element in any cycle. Especially in the context of business. Whether that feedback be between an employee and manager, between two colleagues, or from a company to a consultant; feedback is both necessary and valuable. In the last year, remote teams and remote staff quickly became the norm. This was, partially, due to the intersection of the COVID-19 pandemic and an economy already moving toward a digital age. Regardless of how we got here, though, here we are. By embracing newly established normals and the transition to a more remote workforce; it remains important to foster a comfortable, welcoming, and productive company culture.

One tactic managers and business leaders can use to nurture a functional culture, even remotely, is employee feedback. Employee feedback from remote teams is will highlight issues and problem areas in operations that could be easily overlooked by other staff with less intimate knowledge of that specific task or business activity. By encouraging employee feedback from your remote staff, however, your team opens the channel of communication allowing management and remote teams to address persistent issues together.

Build Feedback Forms Into Your Custom Enterprise App for Remote Teams

With the entire economy embracing the digital era; many companies have invested in custom enterprise applications. These applications serve a variety of functions depending on the company and their specific needs, but many of them contain a strong focus on internal and external communication. However, these custom enterprise applications also offer a rich opportunity to further cement the lines of feedback between the company and its personnel. For instance, companies can build feedback forms directly into their enterprise applications. The forms can provide anonymity to users who submit, and can be a platform for feedback of any kind.

By presenting your staff and remote teams with conveniently provided feedback forms, there’s a much higher chance that those forms be utilized. This is also the case with anonymity. Often-times, employees and staff (humans in general really), are nervous or timid about bringing forward issues in the workplace. Whether those issues are strictly operational, or deal with colleagues and co-workers; regardless, remote teams need a clear and concise way to deliver feedback to their employers, managers, and organizational leaders.

Listen, Implement, Benefit

By taking the time to listen to your remote teams and remote staff; problems within operations, innovations, and other workplace conflicts will be more evident. While airing dirty laundry, so to speak, is never exactly fun; letting it fester is much worse. By hearing your remote staff and actually implementing solutions to the feedback provided, your organization will develop longer-lasting relationships with more loyal employees.

Right now, building a reliable and dedicated staff of remote employees and remote teams will bring long-term sustainability and long-term value to your organization. The era of remote work is far from over, by creating a superb remote company culture now; your team will attract higher-tier-talent down the line.

Wrapping Up

Feedback from managers to employees is vital. Feedback, also, from employees to managers and organizational leaders is vital. Show your remote teams and remote workers that you truly are dedicated to creating a culture around them by cultivating, hearing, and implementing solutions to feedback provided.

For more information on custom enterprise application development, or anything else related to app development, keep browsing NS804’s content library.

Improving Remote Team Collaboration

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Further Improving Remote Team Collaboration

2020 has officially closed the door and we’re all-aboard moving forward. However, while hope is shining bright, a lot of the change from 2020 is likely here to stay. For example, the remote team, and the entire work from home environment will probably be the standard for the foreseeable future. As such, it’s important that managers, companies, and work-teams have the tools they need to successfully work remotely. On top of that, employees still need to feel connected, and projects need to be accomplished.

Pre-existing Options

In terms of remote team collaboration tools there are plenty to choose from. This is because working from home and the digital era were already well on their way. Although the events of 2020 certainly advanced those societal shifts. There are several options, though, already on the market for remote work teams.

These options range from popular communication applications like Slack to Zoom. Zoom is the app that historically rocked the charts last year. Slack is an internal communications application and instant messenger. Companies can use Slack to set up internal work-channels, establish direct lines of communication between staff members or groups of staff members, and offers other features as well.

Zoom, as we all know too well, is the popular video conferencing application that has been used by businesses and citizens alike. Zoom made it easy and accessible for anyone to video-chat with anyone. This allowed for businesses to keep lines of communication open all across the globe.

Develop A Custom Enterprise App

An alternate solution to employee communication and connection is to develop your own custom app. Developing a custom enterprise application benefits the remote team as well as your business as a whole. Having a custom enterprise app offers more customization to the suit of features included. This is good for you business and the remote teams they work with.

A custom enterprise application could combine the instant-chat features of Slack with the video-conferencing ability of Zoom to create an all-in-one solution. A solution specific to your business.

Team Building Exercises For the Remote Team

Another aspect of managing remote teams is to continue conducting team-building exercises. While the team may not be able to gather in conference room F anymore, there is still a virtual landscape that allows for employees to meet up and connect. For instance, one strong team building exercise can be a remote-dungeons-and-dragons campaign. The remote team can link up via applications such as Roll20 and have fun solving puzzles, overcoming obstacles, and most of all – blowing off steam and cracking jokes.

However, there’s a whole library of team building exercises you can choose from that fit your people.

Consistently Scheduled Collaboration

This is a balance. The goal here is to increase regularly scheduled collaboration while reducing everyday meetings. Giving employees a time and platform through which they can flush out ideas and collaborate on projects is good way to replace draining status meetings and other types of regular daily meetings. Instead, give your staff the chance to collaborate freely.

Wrapping Up

Empowering your remote team to succeed is a combination of equipping them with the software and technology required, as well as maintaining morale and promoting team-bonding.

For more tips on remote team management, or to explore a custom enterprise application, visit NS804 today.

COVID-19 Team Building Ideas

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It’s no secret that COVID-19 has radically transformed the work environment faster than we could ever imagine. Many companies embraced the new normal by allowing their staff to work remotely. Ultimately, they had to take remote team building far more seriously than before the arrival of the global pandemic to continue operating. And this trend will continue for the foreseeable future, as companies comprehend the benefits of work-from-home initiatives.

For many business leaders, remote team communication will inevitably become part of their strategic decision-making process. Furthermore, they’ll need to foster a team-centric environment despite remote working conditions while overcoming roadblocks whenever they appear. It’s also important to schedule regular video conferences to discuss the progress projects and ascertain that team members are attaining set goals.

Now, we understand that all this may overwhelm business leaders unfamiliar with dealing with remote teams. But it doesn’t have to be this way, and it can become a fun and meaningful experience with the right ideas and strategies. By incorporating D&D team building experiences, it’s possible to increase staff morale and productivity levels. Moreover, younger staff who enjoy role-playing games will appreciate the inclusion of corporate D&D, making them look forward to upcoming team meetings.

We’ll discuss these matters in more detail below and provide several ideas to ignite communication between team members.

Why Remote Team Building Is A Game Changer

The success of your company largely depends on how well your staff communicates and collaborates as a team. That’s why it’s essential to maintain a team-centric environment that’s robust enough to cope with massive changes. And if there’s one thing the recent COVID-19 pandemic has taught us, is that change happens when we least expect it.

Fortunately, it’s never been easier to move forward with your remote team building initiatives due to the emergence of enterprise apps built for communication. Most, if not all, of your systems, should integrate with your apps meant for internal and external communications. Furthermore, these apps should allow the relevant staff members to respond to queries regardless of their location or current working conditions.

Let’s not forget that humans are both emotional and social, so remote team communication allows them to fulfill these needs, albeit in a professional manner. Staff members will feel engaged and valued, instead of cogs in the corporate machine only meant to serve specific operational requirements.

Enhancing Remote Team Communication

It’s never too late to look at your current communication apps and strategies and make a few changes and integrations. Your ultimate goal is to ensure that staff members have the best tools available to complete tasks on time. But you want to ensure that they remain motivated, especially when working from home, where it’s all-too-common for them to lose focus and become disengaged.

We recommend enabling or integrating employee recognition functionality within your company communication apps. Not only will this enhance the overall company culture, but it also helps increase morale and productivity among staff members. By integrating well-known employee recognition apps such as Bonusly, Kudos, and TapmyBack, your staff will receive the feedback they need to grow and further contribute to the company’s success.

Also, it’s possible to make remote team building activities fun, which can ultimately strengthen online team relationships. A few of these activities include virtual happy hours that closely emulates a bar experience, creative brainstorms via videoconferencing that keep the conversation rolling, and check-in meetings that allow staff to express themselves honestly.

Making Online Interactions Fun And Meaningful

Whether your company is a new startup or an established market leader, you’re likely looking at ways to elevate the company brand. How clients and staff perceive your brand makes a massive difference in how they value and engage with your company. While slick marketing, great products, and positive company culture can elevate a brand’s prestige – you may need to do more to keep your remote staff members engaged.

The hard truth is that it’s often difficult to keep staff excited about the next virtual meeting or Zoom call. And introverted employees may find it difficult to communicate effectively when thrown in the deep end of any online interaction. However, it’s possible to turn the tables by introducing several fun team building activities. But do keep in mind that these remote team communication initiatives should always engage and surprise the intended audience.

Most of your staff are either young or young at heart, so introducing a few entertaining games is something that they’ll likely appreciate. Moreover, you can insert these games into your virtual icebreakers and recognition apps to overcome those awkward moments and get the conversation rolling.These games can introduce all kinds of unique themes such as critical thinking, dance party, game show, murder mystery, online quiz, snapshot sharing, and team sharing, to name a few.

Games should only last for a few minutes and help increase your remote staff’s engagement and excitement levels while reducing their sense of isolation. Quiz games that focus on staff members’ hobbies and interests increase team-bonding while adding a leaderboard makes everyone more competitive. And with the growing adoption of VR and AR devices, it’s also possible to make these games run on these platforms.

D&D Team Building Experiences

With the growing popularity of role-playing games based on the Dungeon and Dragons formula, it’s worth considering how this improves team building. Since D&D relies heavily on teamwork to complete campaigns successfully, this can incentivize your remote staff teams to partake in a bit of corporate D&D. Furthermore, these D&D team building experiences provide the perfect setting for staff members to socialize and bond while solving problems as a team.

Staff members will use their cunning, intellect, and skills to solve problems and ensure that the most suitable team member is assigned tasks that only they can handle. And given the dynamic nature of a D&D role-playing session, it’s always possible to throw unique curveballs that nobody expected. Therefore, team members will need to regularly switch up their strategies in order to complete campaigns.

Your staff will gain many valuable insights about each other and gain a clearer understanding of their strengths and weaknesses. They’ll come to appreciate how each staff member adds value to the team with the skills and capabilities that they bring to the table. And since practice makes perfect, it’s a good idea to hold these corporate D&D sessions on a regular basis. Also, don’t forget to introduce new themes to keep your D&D team building experiences exciting, as the same-old fantasy settings can get tiring.

Final Thoughts

When your remote staff members collaborate and communicate effectively, important projects are completed on time. Thus, establishing and maintaining a team-centric environment makes all the difference in the world. Take your team building initiatives to the next level by integrating employee recognition functionality in your communication apps, introduce unique games to keep staff engaged, and hold corporate D&D sessions regularly.

With years of experience in developing enterprise apps that help enterprises meet their goals, feel free to contact NS804 today about all your team building needs.