10 Ways Remote Workers Can Improve Communication Skills [2023 Updated]

Looking for some proven remote communication tips? Keep reading this article. 🙂

When you work remotely, your colleagues can only hear you on calls and talk to you over Slack or e-mail. There’s no physical interaction. They can’t see you working at your desk, in the conference room for the meeting, and they can’t do a casual chat on their way to the coffee machine.

Here’s the List of 10 Remote Communication Tips

1. Create onboarding and training videos
2. Use diagrams and visuals to ensure processes are fully understood
3. Avoid boring text documents by using pictures
4. Adopt new communication tools
5. Prioritize video calls
6. Hone your writing skills
7. Respect the colleagues’ working hours
8. Don’t forget the “Water Cooler” chitchat
9. Commit to one-on-ones
10. Assume good intentions

You’re not working in a physical office anymore, so you need to build a unique way for your colleagues to get to know you personally.

And with people searching “work from home” and “remote working” at a five-year high. The majority of the workforce is working from home, so we need to sharpen our remote communication skills. There’s no doubt!

In this guide, you’ll discover 10 remote communication tips. Let’s get started:

10 Effective Remote Communication Tips

Here are tried and tested communication best practices for remote teams. Here, we’ll discover how to create effective communication plan for remote employees.

1. Create onboarding and training videos

Are you a manager? It’s challenging to train new employees while working from home. And new employees also have a lot of questions and confusion regarding the onboarding process and training.

You can get irritated by taking calls every time new hires have questions. So how can you save time and make your process easier?

Create onboarding and training videos that show how to use your company’s culture and standard programs. And share these videos with new employees. They can re-watch these videos when they have any doubts. Wonder how to create such videos without any hassle? Get a free PC screen recorder and capture your screen along with your voice and webcam. You can also add annotations, callouts, and can create attractive captions for your videos by using video caption generator to make your videos more interactive and engaging.

2. Use diagrams and visuals to ensure processes are fully understood

When I try to explain an idea, sometimes I doodle on a piece of paper. And I know if my explanation is making sense by checking the person’s reaction. How does this translate to remote work? 

A good practice is to use diagrams and workflow charts to ensure that process flows are understood easily. Graphical representations have the power to ease the understanding Using simple icons and short sentences, you can explain things simply. Furthermore, nowadays, you can use text-to-image conversion to create visuals that perfectly convey your message. 

When you can use diagrams or flowcharts: 

• Define a process. 
• Standardize a process. 
• Communicate an idea. 
• Identify bottlenecks. 
• Solve the problem.
• Improve the process.

Check out this example:

3. Avoid boring text documents by using pictures

While regular work can become very monotonous, you can do something about it with imagery. Often long documents become unreadable and impact the productivity of employees as well as their motivation. This is because it looks like a lot of work, and the human brain finds it hard to keep its attention sustained for an extended period. 

In such situations, it is also possible that employees neglect essential details about the work, thus impacting the overall project. Make sure you add pictures and visuals to ease the task. 

4. Adopt new communication tools

New team communication tools can help you say what you want but in a more transparent manner. For example, while many teams use Hangouts to communicate, there are better tools like Slack they can explore. Slack is a better communication tool because it manages your entire workplace from end to end. Be it your Google calendar, monitoring people’s birthdays, or asking their opinions now and then. 

Adopting remote team communication tools can help a lot in engaging your team and communicating with them more effectively. It can also help break the ice between teammates and make collaboration more seamless and productive. 

5. Prioritize video calls

Video calls aren’t meant for spying on you. Most employees keep their videos shut during a meeting as they don’t feel very comfortable. However, while connection issues are genuine, you must connect with your team via video calls once in a while. 

This is because facial cues are the best in displaying emotions, which are, in turn, the building blocks of effective communication. When you can see people around you, it feels more like a physical workspace and enables you to communicate ideas more clearly. 

For employees, this can be an excellent opportunity to understand the concepts being conveyed better. After all, it is always better to look at the speaker than starting at dark screens. 

6. Hone your writing skills

Writing skills are an essential aspect of communication, no matter what, and sometimes you might even consider using an essay writing services to improve them. In an organization, you might not always be able to call people and explain the situation. 

Most of the formal work has to be sent via emails and other forms of written communication. Even if you are creating a document for a job assigned to you, writing skills become fundamental to complete it. 

Therefore, you must try to hone your writing skills to avoid ambiguity and help people understand more effectively. 

7. Respect the colleagues’ working hours

Always respect your colleagues’ working hours. Your colleagues might have different work hours. They will wish to wrap up the work within the time and spend time with their families doing something they like. 

While you should have the same approach in a work environment for a healthy work-life balance, you must respect your team members. This means scheduling meetings, asking for any feedback or report, all within their work hours.

8. Don’t forget the “Water Cooler” chitchat

Water cooler chitchat is an integral part of the work-life balance. While you get to do that in a physical environment, it is difficult in remote work culture. Nonetheless, you can use technology to the rescue. 

Pair up teammates for random coffee during the work hours. A 5-10 minute break with another colleague will help them catch up on various things and feel refreshed. 

Use tools like Trivia to play remote games and virtual quizzes with your colleagues.

9. Commit to one-on-ones

One of the best practices for effective communication is one-on-one chats with your teammates. Employees might not be comfortable sharing everything in a group, which is why you must talk to them personally. 

Ask them about their day, how they have been feeling lately, and whether they face any challenges. Not only will it keep them motivated but also increase their productivity, knowing their problems are being addressed and efforts recognized. 

10. Assume good intentions

One of the challenges remote workers may face is the lack of physical interaction. While you can build rapport with your colleagues and get to know them no matter where they are, when most of your communications are written or asynchronous, there may be times when you read more into the message than is really there.

Light-hearted tones, silly humor, and sarcasm don’t always come across in an email. So, always assume good intentions on the part of the sender. When in doubt, take time to confirm your clear understanding of everything that’s being said.

Conversely, try to keep the same thing in mind when you send out your message. Consider adding emojis to help get across your silliness or offbeat humor.

FAQs

As you can see, effective communication while working remotely doesn’t have to be difficult. Just think smart and follow these ideas.

Do you have any other remote communication tips to improve communication skills while working remotely? Drop your thoughts here.

Originally published on Oct 09, 2020 5:42 PM, updated March 26 2021