7 Simple Teamwork Communication Strategies To Improve Collaboration

What is one teamwork communication strategy a company can use to improve collaboration within a remote or hybrid workplace?

To help you improve collaboration, we asked business professionals and leaders this question for their insights. From incorporating agile collaboration tools to creating chat rooms, there are several strategies to improve collaboration within a remote or hybrid workplace.

Here are seven simple teamwork communication strategies to improve collaboration:

• Consider an Intelligent Messaging Hub
• Incorporate Agile Collaboration Tools
• Encourage Casual Conversations and Relationships
• Consolidate Communication Tools
• Facilitate Daily Scrum Meetings
• Limit Meeting Size and Agenda Topics
• Create Chat Rooms

Consider an Intelligent Messaging Hub

We sometimes receive tons of internal and external emails, which can be a challenge to navigate while trying to prioritize daily tasks and responsibilities. By using a highly intuitive messaging hub, you can seamlessly aggregate all business communication. With people working in different locations and time zones, our Threads dashboard removes some of the challenges related to information overload by providing more useful information in the right place, to the right people at the right time.

Francesca Yardley, Threads

Incorporate Agile Collaboration Tools

Agile frameworks rely on collaboration whether remote or face-to-face. In the past, Agile Kanban boards for example, were created with sticky notes on black or white boards. However, with advancements in technology, there are many Agile collaboration software tools and platforms to enhance remote and hybrid workplace experiences. Tools like JIRA and Trello make it so easy to track process workflows. Other important aspects of Agile include daily standups, sprint planning and retrospective meetings, which are all great ways to improve communication and team productivity.

Debra Hildebrand, Hildebrand Solutions, LLC

Encourage Casual Conversations and Relationships

Encourage casual conversations and relationships. You don’t have to (and absolutely shouldn’t) force your employees to be friends, but when your employees have a foundation of trust with each other formed through positive daily interactions, it’s much easier for them to have serious or difficult conversations centered around work. Instant messaging platforms are a great way to facilitate this because they’re quick and easy to use, and employees can turn off notifications when they need to focus.

Jenn Fulmer, TechnologyAdvice

Consolidate Communication Tools

It's not uncommon for your company to be using a variety of tools and planners to work together depending on the team and project. This can really splinter communication and collaboration. Instead we'd recommend trying to move everything under one tool to help people work together more easily. For example, we use Notion for all of our Doc sharing, project management, and internal collaboration - this is after we consolidated Trello and Asana. Having 1 place for your employees to give feedback, propose ideas, and monitor statuses has been great for our team and makes collaboration much easier!

Sylvia Kang, Mira

Facilitate Daily Scrum Meetings

Teams can use the Agile framework to improve their communication. The Agile framework relies on team collaboration through Daily Scrum or Stand-up meetings. These meetings are pivotal to ensuring the progress of important client deliverables. By having an open and constant line of communication, our teams are able to reprioritize as necessary and address issues as they arise in a timely manner.

Rronniba Pemberton, Markitors

Limit Meeting Size and Agenda Topics

A company can improve collaboration within a remote or hybrid workplace by limiting the number of attendees per meeting, as well as drilling down into more specific agenda items.

Limiting meeting size helps keep meetings focused and ensures that only those who truly need to be there — either to contribute to the discussion or receive the information being shared — are present. Inviting the right people to the meeting improves participation and makes for more successful collaborative sessions.

Meeting agendas should be developed collaboratively so that each attendee understands their role in sharing relevant information or driving discussions, and can plan accordingly. Attendees should be held accountable for delivering specified materials or insights that will help the agenda items move forward, and they should have a clear understanding of their responsibilities.

Chris Thompson, Backdoor Survival

Create Chat Rooms

No matter where your teams are, the technology exists to keep them in constant contact with each other during the work day. Two different teams could even be on either side of the world, but with tools like Zoom, GoToMeeting, and Slack, you can collaborate in real time in chat rooms. This way a transition to a more remote or hybrid work environment can have a negligible effect on productivity and cross-functional collaboration. If done right, it can look seamless.

Ed Stevens, Preciate

Terkel creates community-driven content featuring expert insights. Sign up at terkel.io to answer questions and get published.

Sources:

• https://threads.cloud/
• https://www.hildebrandsolutions.com/
• https://technologyadvice.com/
• https://www.miracare.com/
• https://markitors.com/
• https://www.backdoorsurvival.com/
• https://join.preciate.com/en/preciate-home
• https://terkel.io/