During this pandemic, many businesses are working remotely. Working remotely has many benefits, but it also has many challenges. For example, what’s the best way to effectively communicate with your employees when you don’t see them in person every day? Here are some things to remember when communicating with your employees who are working remotely.
Formal Channels
One of the most important things to remember is to communicate through formal channels. These might be emails, phone calls, video calls, etc. These are channels that your business has established work well for communication and require a little more effort than a text message. When communicating through formal channels, think of the message that you want to send to your employees. If you’re not careful, errors in an email can cause major problems. When sending formal emails, reread them before you send them. Proofreading professional emails can save you a lot of hassle and prevent miscommunication and other mistakes. Formal channels are just one method to communicate with your employees who are working remotely.
Send a Text Message
But sometimes people don’t respond immediately to formal channels as they want to think about the specifics of what they want to say before they answer. When formal channels aren’t fast enough, consider sending a text message. Over 90 percent of text messages are read within three minutes. People respond faster to text messages as they usually have their phones on them and text messages don’t take as much effort as a phone call, a video call, or even an email. If you want near instantaneous communication with your employees while working at a distance, text messaging may be one of your best options.
Avoid Miscommunication
But with all communication to your employees, you need to do your best to avoid miscommunication. When working at a distance, it is especially important to make sure that all communication is clear and effective. This might mean that you spend extra time in a video call or phone call explaining the details of an assignment and then asking your employee to tell you in their own words what you asked. Miscommunication is difficult to work with, especially when you’re all working from a distance, so do your best to mitigate miscommunication with your employees.
Technology allows businesses to continue operating even during these difficult times, but it does mean that you as a business owner will need to be extra careful as you communicate with your employees to avoid miscommunication.
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