The rise of remote work has changed business landscapes forever and opened the door to plenty of new possibilities. However, it has introduced some obstacles too. Remote work communication challenges are perhaps the most significant, which is why every team leader must address the situation with immediate effect.

Research shows that in 2022 17% of remote employees have highlighted difficulties with collaboration and communication as their biggest struggle. Whilst 24% also highlighted loneliness as their biggest issue, which shows how devastating poor communication can be and how critical it can be for keeping employees engaged. 

In this post, we’re going to walk through some of the biggest communication challenges that remote teams face and how to resolve them.  

The Challenges Remote Teams Face That Can Impact Collaboration

Challenge: Lack of Non-Verbal Cues

It is commonly accepted that 55% of all human communication is attributed to body language. Consequently, working from home threatens to remove over half of all meaningful interactions, which makes it one of the biggest remote work communication challenges facing companies around the globe.

Without non-verbal clues, misunderstandings can become a frequent issue. Communicating through email and team messaging apps can bring the same problems, which can significantly limit the benefits of collaborative work. Furthermore, a lack of meaningful connections may lead to disengagement on an individual and collective level.

Solution: Utilise Video Conferencing

Video conferencing is the most effective way to overcome remote work communication challenges of this nature. Facilitating face-to-face interactions allows you to restore the main benefits of working together in an office. 

Participants can observe non-verbal cues such as body language and facial expressions, which enhances understanding and helps build a stronger rapport between colleagues. 

Challenge: Misinterpretation and Miscommunication

Miscommunication and misinterpretation is one of the most common challenges that remote managers can face. Teams often don’t have the same level of connection due to less time in each other’s company which can create a breeding ground for miscommunication. Worse still, the financial impact of it is an estimated £7,675 per employee per year. Add that up across all your remote teams, and by just getting a little better at it, you can potentially save your business a significant amount of money.

Solution: Emphasise Clear and Concise Communication

Using concise language to articulate messages clearly will remove the threat of ambiguity, thus ensuring that employees focus their energies on the most important tasks.

Quick Tips for communicating concisely:

  • Identify the key message you want to communicate beforehand
  • Choose the right method of communication to share your point
  • Don’t use 10 words when one will do.
  • Minimise distractions and keep communications limited to the necessary information and parties involved.
  • Reflex on the interaction and factor in any improvements to future comms.

Challenge: Time Zone Differences

Hiring remote workers provides access to global talent, which also enables you to provide 24/7 support to customers while simultaneously reaching out to new audiences. However, it is also the cause of remote work communication challenges linked to a lack of collaboration and the fact that colleague schedules are not aligned.

When workers do not have the time to communicate with each other, it becomes difficult to achieve a level of consistency. Moreover, it can lead to project delays if a worker needs an answer from someone that is not due back to work until the following day. Productivity and profitability will suffer as a direct result.

Solution: Establish Overlapping Working Hours

The only effective way to overcome this issue is to create an overlap of work schedules. By having a set amount of time when both remote workers are available to work, you’ll facilitate real-time collaboration and immediate feedback, despite being in different time zones or continents.

It also opens the door to clear communication through video conferencing or other forms of communication. Aside from actively boosting productivity levels and the sense of unity, it will help remove the threat of duplicate work and human errors.

Challenge: Information Overload and Digital Fatigue

Research indicates that 88% of all employees have recently experienced burnout. Both digital fatigue and an overload of information can cause this problem, and they each become particularly commonplace in remote work settings. In turn, employees may miss the most important information, which will negatively impact workflows.

When pondering how would you overcome communication challenges on a remote team, this is one of the most important issues to consider. When left untreated, the issue can quickly escalate into a long-term problem. Furthermore, there is a human duty of care to your employees that must not be ignored.

Solution: Practise Mindful Communication

A conscious effort to embrace mindful communication will soon solve this issue. To achieve this, you should encourage concise interactions, avoiding excessive emails or unnecessarily long meetings. It will promote productivity and reduce digital fatigue while simultaneously facilitating heightened absorption of information.

Top Tip:

Prevention is the best cure. So if you want to spot potential burnout and overload before it happens, you can use our Wellbeing dashboard. The dashboard looks at activity levels and their change over time which can be used to address burnout before it happens. 

Challenge: Lack of Social Interaction and Engagement

Working from home offers employees a range of benefits, including home comforts and the removal of commuting times. However, it can make them feel isolated from their colleagues.

A lack of social interaction will inhibit employees by discouraging them from deeper connections with their colleagues. This can lead to a lack of trust and confidence, which may bring disengagement and prevent workers from actively seeking support from their peers. The entire business may subsequently become disjointed. 

Solution: Foster Virtual Social Connections

Your business can encourage non-work-related interactions through virtual coffee breaks, team-building activities, or social channels. These initiatives help build relationships, foster team cohesion, and combat feelings of isolation. It will subsequently yield improvements in personal engagement and team unity.

Individual and collective improvements can be seen almost immediately, not least because happy workers are more productive workers. The fact that employees will be more confident in communicating with each other will translate to major rewards too. 

If you’re looking for some employee engagement activities then you can check out our post on 20 employee engagement activities for remote teams.

Challenge: Document Sharing and Collaboration

Remote work communication challenges can often be attributed to software issues and compatibility. When remote employees work on different software packages or versions of the software, it makes it very difficult for them to work on a single document.

Solution: Use Cloud-Based Collaboration Tools

Cloud-based tools like Microsoft Teams facilitate seamless document sharing, version control, and real-time collaboration, enabling teams to work together efficiently, regardless of physical distance.

In addition to the consistency that comes from having all employees working on the same platforms, it is a money-saving procedure compared to traditional software agreements. Better still, you’ll never fall behind your competitors and will also enjoy smooth onboarding when a new remote employee joins the team.

Challenge: Establishing Effective Meeting Practices

Mastering the best internal communication practices is an ongoing challenge regardless of whether you have a traditional workforce or remote-based workers. Team meetings are a particularly common source of wasted time, and remote teams are arguably at greater risk than their office-based counterparts.

While adding remote-based employees to team meetings is essential, it’s important to avoid letting this become a distraction. Otherwise, employees will struggle to stay productive while it’s likely that they will become overloaded with unnecessary information too. Similarly, engagement levels will become more likely to slide.

Top Tip: If you want to measure how effective meetings are across different teams you can use Analytics 365 to measure the number of meetings that overran, time spent in meetings as well as other meeting habits. 

Solution: Set Clear Objectives and Agendas

To achieve streamlined meetings, you should set clearly defined objectives, share agendas in advance, and assign responsibilities to ensure productive and focused discussions. This helps maximise meeting outcomes and time efficiency.

Challenge: Maintaining Regular and Transparent Communication

Allowing employees to work autonomously and with added responsibility can yield impressive results for the business. However, a lack of regular and transparent communication may see them lose direction. Managers may also lose visibility of what their employees are working on. This makes it impossible to deal with issues in a prompt and proficient manner.

A lack of transparent communication is particularly problematic for remote teams as it increases the risk of different employees completing duplicate or contradictory work. It is one of the most commonly overlooked remote work communication challenges but can be rectified quickly by implementing the right response.

Solution: Establish Communication Routines

The only way to overcome the issues linked to a lack of communication is to communicate frequently and with clarity. You can implement regular check-ins, stand-up meetings, or weekly updates to maintain consistent communication. It builds trust, encourages collaboration, and keeps everyone informed.

To take the benefits of regular communication to the next level, call analytics and opening feedback loops are the perfect solutions. It will promote improved performances for one-to-one and group communications alike.

Challenge: Enhancing Active Listening

It is suggested that verbal communication generally accounts for just 7% of interactions. Naturally, there is a far greater emphasis on verbal communication when working remotely. All parties must appreciate the fact that listening is just as vital to clear communication as speaking.

Whether remote workers communicate with colleagues, team leaders, and clients throughout the day or on a less frequent basis doesn’t matter. Promoting effective listening is one of the big communication challenges remote team management authorities are set to face. Without it, employees will do things their way without the context of the company’s objectives.

Solution: Practice Active Listening Techniques

Active listening focuses on the concepts of showing empathy, paraphrasing to confirm understanding, and asking clarifying questions. It subsequently fosters effective communication, minimises misunderstandings, and encourages collaboration.

When done well, active listening is shown to reduce misunderstandings by 40% while it can also lead to faster workflows. For true success, though, you will need a company-wide buy-in. Start the process by developing your own listening skills before subsequently encouraging employees to embrace the most effective techniques.

Challenge: Promoting Written Communication Clarity

While catching up with employees and teams is vital, it is harder to achieve this when you have a global team. So, it’s vital that you make the most of your written communications.

Writing with clarity and purpose helps prevent a plethora of mistakes, which is why 73% of employers actively seek employees with strong written communication skills. Given that a large percentage of interactions with remote workers will be conducted through text-based digital platforms, it should be a priority when working with remote workers. 

Solution: Leverage Communication Tools with Chat Features

To achieve the desired results, businesses should utilise chat features in communication tools to promote quick, written communication that allows for clarity, reduces miscommunication, and maintains a record for future reference. 

The ability to maintain clarity across the workforce without causing distractions will lead to a host of benefits for the business. As well as one-to-one chat features, it is important to take advantage of group chats that can streamline the process of contacting multiple employees across various locations. It also means that every member is aware of project developments.

Conclusion:

Remote work communication challenges are an inevitable part of embracing WFH or hybrid models. However, overcoming them will lead to increased success for employees, individual teams, and the company as a whole. Implementing the actionable tips above will improve their remote communication skills, enhance collaboration, and build strong relationships. 

When managing remote teams, remember to encourage clear and concise communication while using the right tools and fostering social connections. In turn, you will unlock effective remote communication and overall team success. 

The future of business will rely heavily on the use of remote workers, and mastering communication now is sure to generate years of success. To find out more, contact the Analytics 365 team today.