There are two sides to communications within a working team. One is technological – there are huge amounts of productivity tricks and tips which work now because we have the technology available which simply wouldn’t have happened a few years back. The second is the ‘soft skills’ side, the people element. Both are vital.
Collaborating over the Internet has expanded dramatically since someone first had the idea. It is possible and very desirable to allow people to work on files and projects simultaneously. Two products to consider include:
These are cloud versions of office suites, and contain in the case of the Google offering a word processor, a spreadsheet, a drawing program, presentations and forms. The great advantage of this and the Microsoft offering, which is of course guaranteed backwards-compatible with other Microsoft software and depending on the version you opt for it includes Sharepoint and other collaborative systems, is that people can work in real time.
Teamworking communications: in the cloud
‘Shared doc’ is a phrase you hear so often it can fade away into complete meaninglessness, but it’s genuinely useful. It means that if you work on a presentation and save it and I open it up in the cloud, then work on it, the ‘new’ version becomes the only version available. It’s as if you’d worked on it, put it on a memory stick, deleted your own version of it and given me the memory stick so that there is only one copy available, but it’s been made available universally. In this way you eliminate the dreaded ‘multiple versions syndrome’ immediately.
If your need for a customer relationship management system is sufficiently substantial you might want to look at Salesforce.com which as well as a powerful contacts database has a great online chat facility. Resource On Demand is a cloud recruitment firm and uses Chatter from Salesforce.com and Google Docs. Operations director Theresa Durrant explains how useful the Chatter concept actually is:
“Chatter enables us to declutter our inboxes and become more effective with our internal communications,” she says. “We find it especially useful when working on documents and presentations. Through a combination of Google Docs and Chatter we regularly collaborate on internal documents, with each person making changes in their own areas of expertise simultaneously, then when it’s finished we circulate the document via Chatter for ease of access when we most need it. Online collaboration has transformed our business and streamlined the way we work.”
Team working communications: costs
Underpinning this there must of course be solid communications technology. Broadband is a given by now, but the form it takes will have an impact on both the costs and efficiencies. Bizgene sponsor Vodafone’s One Net Express is an example of a system which will unite landline and mobile costs so that there is only one bill to worry about.
Teamworking communications: people skills
Underpinning all of this has to be a new attitude to business. Kevan Hall is CEO of Global Integration, and he comments: “Remote and virtual teams have become the norm for many organizations. They often cut across distance, cultures and organizational boundaries, and building and managing virtual teams requires a different skill set to working with traditional hierarchies within organisations. All team members have to manage using influence rather than authority, and develop trust rather than control.”
This is quite a cultural shift for a lot of businesses. Sarah Evans, senior account manager at Blue Leaf, a website design organisation, manages a lot of it at the coalface. “The main thing for me with teamworking is making sure that all members of the team completely understand the goal they’re looking to achieve – if there’s a lack of clarity, the goal is much less likely to be achieved,” she says. “It’s also important that everyone understands the part they play in the team and how they can influence results.”
This really involves a lot of understanding what motivated people and how they can be enthused to work in the new environment. “I’ve been studying psychology recently and was interested to read about ‘social loafing’ – how people are likely to put in less effort when they’re part of a team and completing a task, than when they’re on their own,” says Evans. “This is because they think that others may be putting in less effort than them, so the effect of this could be reduced by all team members being made aware of the role they play in the team and what they can do specifically to achieve the end goal.”
Teamworking communications: management
This is where a number of other good management practices come into play. Making sure remote workers feel like part of a team – it’s subtle but if, say, there’s a notice up about a forthcoming fun social thing happening at work and it’s on the noticeboard, there needs to be a way of ensuring absentee staff see it so that they don’t feel excluded.
Video conferencing is great when a meeting is going to be short but the essence of successful collaboration is about people and how they relate to each other. The technology that is available is brilliant and will add a lot to an organisation but must always be supplemented by getting the management basics right first.
Guy Clapperton
