Thanks to the increase in remote working, you no longer have to give up on them. In fact, globally, 79% of knowledge workers work outside the office on a regular basis, so you are not alone when building a team of remote workers. The increase in remote working means that companies are balancing presence and remote work to ensure that productivity is not impacted.

Another important factor is building inter-team relationships to maximize collaboration when your staff is no longer sat together in the same room.

Out of sight, out of mind

A survey of 1100 employees conducted by Harvard Business Review found that remote workers felt they weren’t treated equally. Specifically, they worry that they are left out of important project discussions or that their office based co-workers say bad things about them. If not addressed quickly, these negative emotions can lead to productivity issues and increased stress for the remote worker.

Team building is important for a number of reasons, all related to ensuring that the productivity of the team is maximized. A group of individuals who are comfortable with each other are likely to be more creative. If they know each other’s strengths, they can distribute the work effectively to leverage these.

Building Trust

The best way to help a team of remote workers to function well together is to put measures in place to help build trust. It’s easy to assume that when employees first meet, they look to find each other’s strengths.

In reality, they’ll want to find a way to connect, normally through a shared interest or experience.

Due to the increased usage of geographically dispersed teams, communication between teammates is shifting from face to face chats at the water cooler to using online collaboration tools. The time that the employees spend together in one location is minimal. This means that team building activities need to be more engineered.

This can be achieved through encouraging the team to network, sharing virtual coffee breaks or including an informal “get to know you” section into team meetings.

A technique often used by companies with a large number of employees is to hold a group team building event, which brings together the remote employees in one location to engage in a series of planned activities designed to help the team get to know each other better.

Why invest in team building?

Teams are often made up of individuals from different backgrounds with different levels of experience. These people don’t get to choose who they are grouped with but are expected to work collaboratively to achieve a shared result.

Team building is crucial to the success of any business with more than one employee. It has been proven time and time again that spending time focusing on improving team communication can have long term benefits to the company.
Why wait? Invest now to help maximize profits, improve staff retention and empower your teams to be more mission focused.

Further Reading:

• How to Improve Team Communication: The Ultimate Guide
• The Benefits of Remote Collaboration
• How Top CEOs and Leaders Communicate With Their Team

The post Team Building In A Virtual World appeared first on Fleep Blog.

Engaging in a healthy work lifestyle can also be utilized as a team-building exercise as you and your colleagues can take walking lunches together and share healthy recipes and dietary  tips.

If your job requires you to sit behind a desk for the larger part of your day, you should take certain measures to ensure that your health isn’t severely compromised. While investing in a good-quality comfortable chair that offers support to vital areas of your spine is a good place to start, various other actions can be taken to keep you healthy at your desk.

Include exercise in your daily routine

Working exercise into your day at the office is a sure-fire way to ensure that you remain healthy while desk-bound. If your office is too far to walk to, consider getting off the train or bus a few stops earlier so that you walk more than you normally would. If you drive to work park a block or two further from your place of work than you usually do. Other ways to incorporate exercise into your working day are to take the stairs instead of the elevator or to do a couple of lunges or squats every time you go to the restroom.

Take walking lunches

Walking lunches are becoming increasingly popular among office-bound employees. Eat at your desk while you work beforehand or make sure you take a lunch that can be eaten ‘on-the-go’ while you walk. 30 minutes of brisk walking is more than enough to increase your heart-rate, giving it an important workout. Walking increases your serotonin and endorphin levels, making you happier and is also known to decrease your cholesterol levels as well as lower your blood pressure. Keep a pair of comfortable walking shoes in a drawer at your desk, pop in a headset if you are walking alone and take full advantage of the time you are allowed to leave your desk. Working and working out can go together!

Adjust your monitor

Staring at a screen for long periods of time every day can have a negative impact on your eyesight as well as cause computer vision syndrome (CVS) which include vision problems directly related to prolonged computer use. If you are forced to look at a screen for long periods of time try to adjust your monitor settings to avoid unnecessary strain on your eyes. The brightness of your screen should ideally match the lighting in your office. If a blank text document glows like a light source your monitor is too bright. Take every measure you can to lower blue light emission as much as possible.

Drink plenty of fluids

It’s easy to become dehydrated when you work behind a desk all day because subconsciously you might only relate liquid intake to physical activity. Regardless of whether you are physically active or sedentary, you need to drink approximately 8 glasses of water every day in order to stay healthy. Drinking enough water will also lead to more bathroom breaks which equates to extra steps being walked. If you have difficulty drinking water, try infusing it with your favorite fruit for added flavor.

You may feel like you are faced with a myriad of health-related obstacles when working predominantly behind a desk but there are plenty of choices you can make and actions you can take to ensure that your health never suffers as a result of your sedentary job. By making small changes to your daily routine you can improve your general health significantly even when sitting down for most of the day.

Further Reading:

• Coworking Spaces: Perfect Offices for Remote Collaboration
• Team Building In A Virtual World
• Top Apps For People Working At Home

The post How to Stay Healthy While Working a Desk Job appeared first on Fleep Blog.

Managing virtual teams

Statistics reflect a general global shift towards remote employment. According to West UC, 1.75 billion people over the world (that’s more than 40% of the globe’s employed workforce) will be working remotely by the end of this decade. One can only begin to imagine what the working world might look like by 2050. There is evidence that working at home boosts productivity. But even so, the virtual workspace is not all cupcakes and party streamers. Managing a team of remote workers can be a particularly challenging role and one that takes some getting used to.

Virtual managers may find the responsibilities of remote project management quite stressful if they’ve not been sufficiently trained to get the best out of their online team. Trying to pull all the people together virtually can be a challenge in itself. The good news is that there are a number of procedures and solutions that can help us become effective virtual managers, most of which are easy to implement and offer relatively speedy results.

Communication Tip no #1: Stay connected and offer real support

Staying connected and getting to know your team will also help you to gauge when certain members need more support. Not all employees speak up when they’re feeling unsure, unhappy, undervalued, or just plain overwhelmed. As managers, if we’re in constant contact with our members of staff, we’ll be able to pick up on any problem areas before they get out of hand and we end up losing a valuable member of the team to another company.

Also, as a manager, part of our job is to find solutions. There are tools that help manage distributed teams, but team culture is just as important. If our team knows how to contact us and receives relatively timely responses to all needs and concerns, we build a reputation as someone who can be relied on; a golden quality in a manager and one that most employees would be loathe to lose.

Communication Tip no #2: Choose your communication style wisely

Communication in a remote team is especially important. Conversations that relate to contractual changes, pay or promotions are best not handled via email, for example. As managers, it’s foolish to think that remote employees don’t deserve the opportunity to look us in the eye when discussing certain matters, particularly as there are so many ways in which we can choose to communicate.

There are team chat tools, video calls or even short recorded videos. When providing professional training or implementing a new process, for example, a video might actually be a much more effective way of engaging and communicating with our team, as opposed to a long, convoluted email.

Communication Tip no #3: Make an effort to understand cultural differences

One of the great advantages to managing remote teams is cultural diversity. If we’re managing a global startup and we want to reach a range of consumers worldwide, our global team can offer essential (and free) insight into the detailed intricacies of each market. At the same time, however, we are challenged as managers, because we must adapt to account for cultural differences within the workforce.

What might seem like acceptable manager behavior in one country, could actually be perceived as quite offensive in another. We need to research, ask questions and follow through with regular staff evaluations in the early stages to get a real grasp of what it means to work with each member of our team, whether they might be from Japan, India, Argentina, Italy or the U.S.

Communication Tip no #4: Choose your management tools and then actually use them

There’s nothing that can make the administrative side of our jobs easier than the correct selection of communication and management tools. Scheduling tools, audio and video calling, time tracking tools, chat for teams, screensharing, payroll systems and shared document folders and so much more.

We cannot manage the work of others remotely without having the right resources to hand. It’s also vital that, once we have these tools in place, we train our staff to make proper use of them. We must also remain a stickler for the rules by encouraging them to follow company protocol and communicate via the channels made available.

Communication Tip no #5: Make time for professional reviews and rewards

A remote team still needs to be motivated and remember, not everyone is motivated by money. Indeed, when professionals choose to make the move to remote employment, many of them are happy to take a pay cut if it means they can have more control over their working day. There are so many ways in which you can reward your team, above and beyond a pay rise or monthly bonus.

Consider the idea of providing all your employees with the cash needed to invest in a decent laptop, offer to install programs for free on their computers, reward with more vacation time (either paid or unpaid) and give them a valuable contract with job security, decent healthcare and the chance to invest in a private pension.

Whatever kind of reward you’re able to offer, the most important thing is to schedule regular (at least quarterly) professional reviews to give employees the chance to raise concerns and to give you the chance to tell them how fantastic they are. Everyone thrives on praise, so make time for it.

We hope you found these communication tips useful! See further resources below, if you’re looking for more on team communication and remote work or check out even more tips to help your virtual team stay productive.

Further Reading:

• 14 Team Communication Quotes to Inspire Your Team
• Deep Work and How to Shield Yourself From Distraction
• Does a Balance of Presence and Remote Work Increase Collaboration Results?

The post 5 Communication Tips for Successfully Managing Virtual Teams appeared first on Fleep Blog.

In America, around 45% of employees work from home and 53 million are freelancers. This contributes $715 billion to the U.S. economy each year.

Despite these figures, there’s still divided opinion of the effectiveness of working at home. Can a team be productive with people working at home? The answer is simple. Yes.

Working at Home? Technology is Key

Thanks to technology, employees can now enjoy the benefits of a virtual office at home. They no longer need to work in the same place or even at the same time. There are now a huge variety of apps for people working outside the office, including team chat applications like Fleep that help make sure everyone’s on the same page. Online document management, collaboration software, wireless internet, video conference calls and VPN networks means we can always stay connected.

Working at Home Means More Productivity

Working at home allows workers to have less distractions and spend more time focused on working. Inevitably this means companies will benefit as their employees are delivering better quality work and faster.

From 2005 to 2012, the number of Americans in work fell. But despite this, America’s telecommuting workforce rose by around 80%. In fact, in 2013, Stanford University carried out a study which determined that employees working at home outperformed office employees. The study also discovered that workers took less breaks and had less time off sick than their office colleagues.

Hiring the Best Talent

By allowing employees to work remotely, organizations can hire the best workforce, while not being limited by where they are based. Employers can attract very talented and skilled workers who prefer more of a freelance, freestyle way of working, but don’t want to source work themselves.

And it’s not just about letting your employees work remotely. Remote hiring can open up an entire new talent pool for you, along with all the benefits of remote work.

Besides good company culture, remote work’s benefits also extend to the bottom line. After all, depending on your agreements, remote employees may just mean lower costs related to their employment, from office space to the tools they use.

The Future of Working at Home

Companies have finally started to catch up on the working at home trend. Many offer employees the flexibility to work from home, for at least some of the time, if not full-time. This is completely changing the face of working.

Many remote teams have shown that it can work, and shared their tips on how to work in a remote team. However, it may not be for everyone and it does take a certain amount of organization and discipline, not to mention trust from the employer.

But it can save a huge amount of money for companies and be a big boost to a workers’ productivity. There’s no denying too that for employees there are bonuses. It allows them to be able to achieve more of a work life balance and provide more of an enjoyable working life. Working at home is a winner for everyone.

Further Reading:

• How To Find Your Optimal Work Environment To Boost Productivity
• Benefits of Remote Collaboration
• Increase Collaboration With Remote Work

The post Working at Home Boosts Productivity appeared first on Fleep Blog.