Best forms of communication when home working
Working in an office environment opens the opportunities to freely communicate with the people around you or even calling one another from office floors!
Everyone knows that communication in a business is key. So, keeping open lines of communication is one of the ways in which you can try and maintain some ‘normality’ while working from home. Although working from home can present a few hurdles when it comes to communicating with one another, there are many technologies out there that can assist us in communicating with one another. So there is now little excuse to stop communicating once you are not all in the same building.
Look at those who’ve succeeded with remote working, and it becomes clear that it needs two things to thrive, and both boil down to good communication.
Here are some possible forms of communication (a lot of which we are using while we are remotely working!):
Video Calls
Sometimes a conversation needs to be had face to face.
A lot of our iHASCO Teams have been using this to have our daily catch ups and check-ins. We’re also using this for any face to face meetings we would normally do in the office!
For those with Apple phones/laptops/iPads you can FaceTime each other.
Skype enables both audio and video calls, messaging, screen sharing, and the ability to record skype calls too.
The free version allows up to 100 people to join a video meeting at one time. Zoom allows for video meetings, webinars, enables collaborations for conference rooms, phone calls, group chats and file sharing.
Webex is hosted by cisco and provides video conferencing, screen sharing, team collaborations, webinars, online training, and messenger.
Much like the rest you can video call, conference with up to 10,000 people, call and collaborate from anywhere! Unlike some of the above, this service does require a fee.
Last Friday, iHASCO attempted a 70+ people team meeting on Google Meets. We loved seeing each other and having a catch up (even though it mainly consisted of us all talking over one another!). It was a great way to have a little laugh and keep our spirits up! See our team meeting highlights below...
Phone Calls
Your phone (duh!):
Make use of your phone while you’re on breaks to catch up with people or simply call a colleague or manager if there is something you need to check in with, question, etc etc. Ensuring there is an open line of communication can stop errors being made.
Lots of providers now offer 4G calling. This is perfect for those who might not live somewhere with the best signal!
You can also call off many of the apps that are listed above in the video call section.
Group Messengers
A lot of the video call apps above provide an instant messaging service too, but here are some more...
We use Slack here at iHASCO to communicate with one another on an individual basis and as a group! It’s great to support one another in achievements both big and small and enables us to keep up to date with any changes. You can also have one to one conversations and share files/images/folders with each other.
Email:
Emails can be one on one or a group email!
This app works on every device, iOS, Android & Windows, it also works for people without smartphones as it can work via SMS.
You can have group messages of up to 256 people, as well as one to one messages. What a lot of people like about this service is that you can see when your message has been delivered and when someone has read it (if they have that feature turned on). You can also have video/phone calls on here too.
As well as various other helpful tools
Shared Drives:
Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, the list goes one, but being able to share projects, comment on one another’s work and share with multiple people at the same time allows you to share a piece of work the same way that you would if you were all in the same building. You could also access the same documents while on a group phone call with each other to discuss a piece of work
Calendars:
It might not be practical to have a giant calendar of 70 team members and what they're doing. But sharing calendar invites with each other to book meetings into each others days is a great way to ensure you don’t miss a meeting!
As you can see, there is an endless list of services that employers can provide their employees with now that they’re working at home. But the main thing to remember is, that no matter how you do it, open lines of communication with your employees is key. You should endeavour to talk to your team(s) just as much as you would if you were all in the office together - whichever medium you choose to use!
Head of Production