How does your team work together from home?

Because of the Coronavirus, the majority of Belgium is working from home for the time being. Working from home can be challenging when you're part of a team. How can you work together the best you can when the whole team is working from home? Global Knowledge gives tips for excellent team work from home in this article.

Working together as a team can be challenging at the office. How do you make sure everyone feels the same way about a decision? Now imagine having to work in a team when you're both at a different location, working remotely. Because it was already challenging before, imagine what it's like now.

Global Knowledge can help you out - we're working from home as well. Because of this, in this article we'll give you some tips for better online team work.

1. Make sure you have a daily online meeting

During a daily online meeting, you see how everyone is progressing with their tasks. What challenges do your colleagues face? How can you solve issues together? If you need help with certain tasks, you can discuss this during this meeting. Make sure you're working with a solution that enables you to call with multiple people at the same time.

An online meeting also has a social purpose: many people are currently working from home because of the spreading of the Coronavirus. During a meeting you get to talk to your colleagues - that's not only effective to get work done faster, but it's also nice to talk to some people. This can be a great motivator to pick up your work afterwards.

2. Keep track of your work (preferably where everyone can see your progress)

For a successful online collaboration, you'll need a scrum board. On this board, you can see who's doing a certain task and what their progress with this task is.

A great solution for this board is Microsoft Teams. In Microsoft Teams, you can use the Planner plug-in to build a scrum board. That way, you are able to track everyone's progress. You can read all about these and other advantages of Microsoft Teams in this article.

3. Give each other space

The great thing about working from home is the rest and quiet. But the quiet environment you're working in can easily be disturbed by a pushy colleague. Sure, everyone needs to stick to the deadlines you agreed on, but there is no point in sending your colleague endless messages about the progress of a certain assignment.

So give each other space - don't send an endless stream of messages to someone.

4. Make sure there is something to laugh about

Working from the office is not only efficient - it's fun too. When you're getting coffee, there's time to joke and catch up with your co-workers. So make sure you make a coffee corner in your online work space. Share great gifs and video's with each other and still ask your co-workers how their weekend was. This bit of small talk guarantees everyone is still enjoying their work as much.

5. Be disciplined

Don't flood your co-worker with messages - but do set deadlines. Assignments still need to be finished and you need to be disciplined to work from home accordingly. There are lots and lots of things to distract you here.

By agreeing on deadlines, you make sure everyone does their work on the time you agreed on. If the assignment is due on Friday, it's due on Friday. Make sure everyone makes these deadlines - keep your team disciplined.

6. Hold the sarcasm 

Sarcasm doesn't always work in the online world. After all, your colleague can't see your facial expression when you're saying something. Make sure the vibe in your team is good and hold the sarcasm for now. You never know how someone else might interpret your remark.

7. Follow a training course together

These tips are a starting point, but much more is needed for great team work from a distance. Follow a working together in virtual teams training course at Global Knowledge to develop your team working skills. You can also follow this training course via Virtual Classroom. If you book a Virtual Classroom training course now, you'll receive a 25% discount or an Apple Watch or Garmin Venu Smartwatch. Learn more about this offer via the button below.