Productivity

How to deal with the organizational challenges that arise from the practice of remote work?

Mathilde SudanMathilde Sudan |

In 2020, companies have had to adapt to the practice of remote working. Today, many organizations are alternating between remote and on-site work. This new way of working brings some challenges to organizations. In many cases, an internal reorganization seems to be a necessary step in order to strengthen team building and to put all employees on the same page. What are the best practices to ensure good internal organization while promoting effective team involvement? Here is our advice.

Maintain the use of the new digital tools

In many cases, the adoption of new technologies and communication tools has had to be implemented in a rushed process. It is therefore time to leverage these investments in order to ensure the sustainability of solutions that facilitate internal organization. Collaborative tool, video conferencing system, internal chat platform, all these solutions contribute to the team spirit whether they collaborate face-to-face or remotely. Try to maintain the use of these tools, which all contribute to the emergence of a collective intelligence that will help you achieve your professional objectives. In addition, some tools also allow you to collaborate with people outside your organization, which again represents a significant advantage brought by digital solutions. However, the idea is not to multiply collaborative tools, but to select them according to the internal needs of each organization. With WEDO, in addition to internal collaboration, you can also work with external users to share meetings and tasks through collaborative workspaces.

If you haven't yet decided on a collaborative solution, it may be time to take a look at it to enable your teams to collaborate and communicate effectively in any situation. With WEDO, you can prepare your team meetings, write minutes in real time and track assigned tasks from one meeting to the next. The ideal solution for all teams that alternate between office life and remote work.

Encourage more remote work

This period has shown us that working from home is an alternative that has definitely advantages. Of course, working in a group encourages individual efforts, but thanks to the adoption of tools that allow optimal communication at a distance, it is clear that this team cohesion can be maintained with the help of adapted digital solutions. The distance between colleagues is therefore no longer necessarily a hurdle to good collaboration. Videoconference meetings have become standard and are now an alternative to face-to-face meetings. The trick will be to find the right balance between remote working and days at the office. In this perspective, it would be interesting to consult the opinions of employees in order to take into account their experience. Once again, internal communication is essential to establish new working practices and methods. As this practice is new for most employees, it is important to discuss and question the system put in place in order to readjust and improve it if necessary.

Create templates for workflows

Remote collaboration has probably revealed some organizational weaknesses. Indeed, how to ensure the follow-up of work processes that require the participation of several colleagues when they work from home? It is difficult in these conditions to circulate a paper document for each person to validate the tasks performed. Exchanging information by email is not ideal for effective remote collaboration either. To access this collaborative dimension, it therefore seems necessary to use a dedicated digital solution.

With WEDO, the Checklist templates functionality allows organizations to create models of their recurring procedures to ensure collaborative monitoring of activities. Create a template for each procedure and then launch checklists each time they need to be performed. From the template, you can list a set of tasks, prioritize them, schedule them, and then delegate them to different people in charge. Thanks to the templates and checklists, it is very easy to collaborate with several people on the same workflow. All employees have easy access to the standard procedure and can follow the progress of each checklist in real time.

Would you like to learn more about this feature?

For WEDO users who would like to explore this feature, please visit the Checklist Templates and Checklists collections in our Help Center.

Organize effective meetings

To avoid gatherings, virtual meetings will continue to be commonplace, perhaps even for employees working in the same location. Just like face-to-face meetings, virtual meetings must be carefully prepared to limit their duration. By preparing a short and complete agenda in a collaborative manner, you will limit the frequency and duration of video conference meetings, which can sometimes be tiring. Also, get into the habit of preparing agenda items to reduce the number of time-consuming distractions. The idea is also to keep track of discussions, even when they are virtual. So get into the habit of writing your minutes in real time to document and track discussions. WEDO is a solution that combines all these features with a task manager to make your teams operational and efficient right after the meeting. Each participant receives his tasks in his personal workspace and can consult the minutes of the discussions in just a few clicks. Give your teams the power to collaborate in the best possible conditions.

In 2021, more than ever, it is essential to make organizations agile by promoting collaborative work and collective intelligence, whether face-to-face or remotely. Tomorrow's managers must be able to bring their teams together to enable them to continue their activities in any situation. It is time to develop and establish a collaborative culture within organizations and digital solutions are there to facilitate this transformation.

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