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10 simple but powerful ideas to boost team collaboration

10 simple but powerful ideas to boost team collaboration

by | Aug 27, 2020 | Collaboration

If you want to succeed in your business, you need to treat your team members as your biggest assets – which they are. There’s no power in the whole world that can stop a team that knows how to collaborate. As a manager, a decision-maker for your business, you need to push your team to create a healthy and productive work environment. Here are a few things you can do to achieve that.

  1. Laying the Ground Rules 

When we join a team, we assume that all its members agree with our opinions of what’s right and what’s acceptable. But more often than not, this doesn’t happen, so if you’re a team leader, it’s imperative that you lay the ground rules explicitly and help each member opinionated in a way that aligns with your thoughts.

  1. Communicate Your Expectations for Collaboration 

When team/employee expectations go berserk, the surrounding air gets heavy with tension. But effective communication is the way out to collaborate with your team at the granular level. Companies that have annual reviews struggle to implement changes in their culture and work ethics, and it gets apparent from the thoughts that their employees have for their bosses.

Clear expectation was the key in CholaMandalam’s ability to ensure business continuity during the countrywide lockdown. They are managing a diverse workforce and associated processes while working remotely for the first time for over 20,000+ employees through Zippi.

Download the Case Study.

  1. Define and Communicate Your Team’s Goals 

When you inspect the inner workings and behaviours of a team, understanding goals and having open communication becomes paramount. It’s vital that every team member is on the same page, and that’s the responsibility of the team lead. Ensure that your words carry the same meaning for all your team members, and if anything is missing, ensure that it’s quantifiable.

  1. Promote A Community Working Environment 

Your employees need to be a part of something bigger than themselves and have a sense of belongingness in a community. This feeling can lead to your employees or team members to stay together for long. A working environment with a sense of community will boost productivity and collaboration.

Build a collaborative working environment where employees are encouraged to share ideas and knowledge and driving their energies to getting things done quickly. Zippi allows seamless storage integration and secure file sharing to ensure that the information seamlessly flows throughout the organization.

  1. Foster Open Communication 

Clear and open communication is critical to upgrade your task management routine in your team. It becomes all the more necessary if the team is working from home and using online collaboration software.

With Zippi, you can use the pre-designed employee-groups for all your divisions to help employees connect better. There are options to create smaller squads that can solve the whole communication problem for your company with agility.

  1. Encourage Creativity 

If your team is on an enterprise collaboration system, it’s your responsibility to keep a bird’s eye view over the daily happenings. If you and your crew promote creativity at work in collaboration, productivity is bound to improve.

  1. Share Knowledge 

If you share your insights with your team regularly, they’ll feel more attached and closer to you, and it will empower them to make significant contributions to their individual fields. But more than that, when you’re using workplace collaboration tools, give your team a chance to share their knowledge and ideas with the other team members.

  1. Lead by Example 

Sharing ideas and enforcing them in your team has been the crux of how things have always happened everywhere. To rope in a dynamic work environment, you have to practice what you preach and demonstrate your ethics and prowess every day in your work.

Coming Back to Work: Productivity Lessons We Will Carry Back Post Lockdown

  1. Appreciate Successful Teamwork  

Learn to appreciate every little feat that your team member achieves. Your perception of success shows what kind of leader you are and the sort of people you attract. Rewarding your workers every once in a while, the act of letting them know you care, and making them believe that they can make a difference can go a long way.

Make your employees feel valued with Zippi, simply provide the required limelight to your star performers, and build an environment of mutual respect and recognition.

  1. Invest in A Collaboration Tool 

Now, this one’s a game-changer. Going digital and taking your operations digital along with you is perhaps the best decision you can make as a decision-maker. All businesses with huge revenues are using some form of business collaboration software to engage their employees even when they are physically unavailable. One such communication and collaboration solution is Zippi, which is steadily transforming the way all modern businesses conduct their operations.

A collaboration platform like Zippi from PeopleStrong will help your crew effortlessly ideate and collaborate digitally. You can talk to your contractors, freelancers, suppliers, and all other agencies, (and your team, of course) from a unified platform. Now, can collaboration tools get any better?


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How to manage highly productive remote teams?

How to manage highly productive remote teams?

by | Aug 27, 2020 | Productivity

What is productivity?

Productivity is the energy on which a business’s run. The more efficient your teams, the faster work gets done and the healthier your margins.

Productivity can mean different things for different organizations. It’s a corporate jargon you often hear, and yet remarkably, many people who make decisions every day about improving efficiency don’t know how to answer this simple question. Let’s begin with what productivity is not.

  • Productivity is not about wages
  • Productivity is also not about hours spent doing work
  • And it is not about keeping an eye on your employees and finding out what they’re doing as they work remotely

How to measure Team productivity?

Productivity = Units of Output / Units of Input

But this is easier to read than applied in a real situation with complex team structures. To measure productivity in today’s changing world, we suggest you keep an eye on these 3 ways:

  1. Set Goals that are SMART

Set the goals that motivate you – Before you start the process of goal-setting, take a closer look at what you’re trying to achieve, and do you see yourself accomplishing those goals? Make sure that you have your entire focus on the outcome and how to achieve it.

  • Set SMART Goals –
    • Specific – Your goal must be clear and well defined.
    • Measurable – Include precise amounts, dates, and so on in your goals so you can measure your degree of success.
    • Attainable – Make sure that it’s possible to achieve the goals you set.
    • Relevant – Goals should be relevant to the direction you want your life and career to take.
    • Time-Bound – Your goals must have a deadline.
  1. Revenue per employee ratio

To add contours to your productivity discussion, calculate revenue per employee ratio by looking at employee cost (salaries) and the revenues coming in. As you do that, take this number with a pinch of salt as some employees are necessary for the overall business but do not generate revenue.

A better way to do this would be to calculate a Revenue/Department cost which gives you an idea of how each department is performing (Technology & Development vs. Sales vs. Customer Success vs. Marketing etc.)

  1. Productivity Tracking Applications

There is a host of tracking apps that identify what individuals are working on at any given time. Zippi helps managers look at the overall tasks for the team in a calendarized manner to identify high, medium & low performers.

Why should organizations not only think about an individual but also team productivity?

As per a report by FlexJobs, 66% of professionals think they would be more productive while working remotely than in a traditional way.

Most organizations measure individual productivity one way or another, but when it comes to measuring team productivity, they fall short. Add to it, the complexity of working remotely, a change accelerated by COVID-19, organizations are struggling to measure and raise team productivity. Measuring team productivity is very important in today’s changing environment because:

  1. Gives insight into how teams are performing concerning other teams.
  2. Answers questions about managerial capabilities and opens a discussion about key challenges.
  3. Team goals are more aligned to organizational goals and therefore give you a more accurate picture of how efficient people are in the organization.

What makes your employees less productive at work?

“The average worker is productive for less than three hours a day”

So, what are they doing for the remaining five hours? A survey from Voucher Cloud found that when not working, employees are (in descending order) checking social media, reading news websites, chatting with colleagues about out-of-work activities, and making hot drinks.

Now let’s assess these facts when we put people in a forced WFH scenario and identify key things leading to lower productivity:

  1. No clarity on what employees are supposed to do – As per SAP report, a mere 7% of employees today fully understand their company’s business strategies and what’s expected of them to help achieve company goals.
  2. Low motivation: Is my work visible? I have so much to do at home. – In India, 95% of Millennials say that they are stressed, primarily due to work-related factors.
  3. Not feeling rewarded for a job well done – According to research, only 25% of managers have incentives linked to work strategy.
  4. Frequently distracted at home/Bad Time Management: No designated area for work; children and other family members around, homeschooling, and other household responsibilities.
  5. Mental Health Issues due to WFH – A study involving over 6,000 employees in multiple cities in India, found that 80 percent of the respondents exhibited symptoms of anxiety while 55% had symptoms of depression.

How can you improve team productivity?

  1. Getting started on the right foot

Onboarding right sets the right expectations for a new hire. This process gives them all the arsenal needed to hit the ground running. Most organizations think about onboarding as the time to pull out corporate presentations and collect relevant documents but treat this process with more care and you will have set productivity expectations that would go a long way. This means structured, comprehensive training; onboarding about the company’s culture and attitudes; and a workable task system with deadlines, names of team members responsible, and documentation of these processes.

2. Set communication expectations & Selecting the right tools

A lot of successful businesses thrive on effective communication. While senior leaders must communicate, your line managers must understand its importance. A manager must ensure effective communication prevails in a team. Communication plays a big role in helping team members to understand their job responsibilities. And, if there is any communication-gap, it can lead to multiple confusion within a team. You need to onboard new employees, deliver employee training, or have a place to house important information, consider creating an online course to keep everyone aligned.

For teams working remotely to operate in a fully functional way, organizations need to provide the artillery of tools and software’s to drive productivity in the organization. What Zippi brings to the table the ability to integrate a host disconnected systems into one platform for faster & efficient communication

3. Be Transparent

It sounds like a big claim, but transparent environments help in developing a feeling of connectedness and understanding within an organization. Open and consistent communication lays the foundation for an authentic and productive workplace. It drives employees to connect, share ideas, and suggesting, and eventually inspires organizations to work as a cohesive unit.

Transparency was key in CholaMandalam’s ability to ensure business continuity during the countrywide lockdown. They are managing a diverse workforce and associated processes while working remotely for the first time for over 20,000 employees through Zippi.

Download Case Study.

This collaborated and performance-driven work environment allowed the seamless flow of information throughout the organization by conducting virtual polls, townhalls, managing tasks, and tracking individual performance and ultimately driving transparent and productive conversations.

“I see Zippi & Jinie playing a very big role in the Hi-Tech part of the HR Connect within an Organization.” – Venkateshwaran Balaram- Asst. VP-HR, Chola Mandalam, Chennai.

4. Foster Task Management

Whatever tool you may use to manage your tasks, whether a simple to-do-list or a comprehensive task management tool, the whole idea is to complete them. It all depends on how religiously you work and most importantly how well you prioritize them. This involves actively making decisions for your tasks to accommodate changes that can occur in real-time.
It becomes really important to foster the habit of task management and goal creation to enable teams and individuals for the successful completion of implemented projects.

According to PMI’s Global Project Management survey, 37% of executive leaders said, “the primary cause of failure of projects in their organization was a lack of clearly defined objectives and milestones to measure progress and a lack of discipline when implementing strategy.”

AEON Credit India has been actively practicing task management via Zippi where they assign, track, and review tasks in regular time intervals throughout the implementation of a project at hand.

5. Praise a job well done

A kind word and appreciation can go a long way in boosting morale. Management might not track the impact of appreciations, but it surely has a deep-rooted impact on an employee’s approach towards work. Whether it’s a small start-up or a big conglomerate, there is nothing better to be valued for the work you do.

6. Encourage them to decompress
We know there is work, we know it must be finished before the deadline, but we must also know that employees are facing burnouts achieving it. Every organization must realize the pressure their employees are dealing with currently and prepare light and friendly work environments, remotely! Having a range of collaborative activities like team-building exercises, polls, virtual games, hobby sessions can deflate the burden of work and can increase employee engagement and collaboration.

Zippi empowers organizations with numerous possibilities to connect and engage over such conversations and activities.

7. Give each other feedback

Last but not least is to introduce a feedback mechanism for your organization. Building an excellent work environment depends on the organization’s ability to give adequate and timely feedback without fail. Your teams may be looking for guidance and support, even if they are straight away asking for it.

Once you have assigned the goals and objectives, it becomes highly important to keep an eye on their status as well. With remote working in place, your goals are driven to be more outcome focussed, but you cannot ignore the effort it requires to achieve those numbers.

A constructive feedback mechanism not only boosts employee’s morale but also encourages the culture of open dialogue that will make future collaborations easier than before.

Conclusion

The world has seen a rather radical shift in the last few months. Productivity was a difficult concept to grasp and apply even before, now the denominators are changed and organizations are at a loss of how to measure and track productivity. Some have resorted to employee monitoring which allows company administrators to monitor and supervise all their employee computers from a central location. The problem with this method is that while it tells you what people are doing; it rarely ever solves the problem of productivity & efficiency which the heart of this matter.


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The What-Why-How of Workplace Collaboration

The What-Why-How of Workplace Collaboration

by | Aug 27, 2020 | Collaboration, Zippi

The meaning and importance of ‘Workplace Collaboration’ has changed drastically over the last few months. The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way organizations across the globe conduct daily business, and this calls for newer, more intelligent ways of running daily ops and especially calls for more efficient methods of communication between teams and team members.

But it’s not just the pandemic that has given rise to this need for more modern collaboration processes and tools. Businesses today are much larger and diverse, and also dispersed around the world. And we already know that leaders are not born, they are made. And thus, managing a large workforce that works from different locations is not easy. In this article, we cover all the little nuances and methods of establishing a highly productive workplace environment.

But first, it’s important to understand how crucial it is to perfect employee collaboration within an organization.

Why should you care about Workplace Collaboration? 

 
  1. Because collaboration makes cool workplaces

About 75% of employers rate teamwork and collaboration as “very important”, yet only 18% of employees get communication evaluations at their performance reviews. A company with good collaboration processes can recruit talent from anywhere in the world. This opens up opportunities to fill a role with the best-suited candidate. Building a team of highly talented individuals, no doubt, will greatly improve productivity and quality of delivery. The important factor, however, is that the organization ensures these teams can collaborate without hiccups.

  1. Because better Collaboration = More Accountability

Without strong collaboration, it’s difficult for employees to understand the impact of their work on the team and the project. This can lead to tardiness and a lack of responsibility. If an employee does not know that the project is getting affected by their work, they are not going to be driven to be more efficient.

A collaborative process like a simple daily stand-up meeting (online or offline) will make employees accountable for their actions and work, which will automatically drive them to be more productive.

  1. Because Right Timing removes delays and delivers results

The number one reason for delayed delivery of projects, especially when remote teams are involved, is the lack of transparent communication. Sometimes it’s time zone conflicts, and sometimes, it’s carelessness, but it’s always disastrous for timelines.

Communication challenges can easily be overcome with proper collaboration processes. Using messaging platforms like Zippi instead of email, for example, is a simple way to expedite communication between team members. Using bots for asynchronous communication is another way to bridge the gap between disjointed teams. All of this results in smoother workflows and faster delivery of projects.

What happens when there is zero Workplace Collaboration?

 
  1. Lack of direction!

Without a strong collaboration system in place, it is difficult for top-level management to effectively communicate and direct the teams. Either the message doesn’t get through, gets diluted, or gets misinterpreted. All of these can lead to ambiguity and hence delay in the execution of plans and strategies.

  1. Misinformation & wastage of efforts

One harmful outcome of the poor collaboration is misinformation. The project or client’s need is sometimes not correctly interpreted by the team, and the mistake is only identified after tasks are delivered. This results in wasted time and effort – a wastage that can be eliminated by putting in place transparent communication processes.

  1. It’s not really a TEAM

Poor collaboration leads to employees feeling isolated. They don’t feel part of a team and don’t feel the impact of their contribution to the project or organization. This results in a lack of mental and emotional investment in the organization and impacts the outcomes.

How to build Excellent Workplace Collaboration?

 
  1. Find a tool – That is simple to use and easy to onboard users 

Now that you have understood the repercussions of ineffective workplace collaboration. It’s time that we think about what our teams want and how should we deliver it to them. The basis of a great collaboration depends upon the ease of onboarding, simple workflows, self-explanatory user interface to focus on getting this done. The essence of collaboration lies in the idea of getting along your external network of employees, freelancers, vendors on board without any hassle of creating work email ids whatsoever.

In BFSI, almost 70% of distributed employees do not have official email ids, check out how zippi solved collaboration puzzle for them.

Download the Case Study: How Cholamandalam collaborated with its last-mile employees during the lockdown.

  1. Define the Collaboration Charter that works best for your teams

The next step is to define a collaboration charter i.e. the purpose of the interactions between the members of a team, department, and primary stakeholders. Teams should come together for tackling specific deliverables and must be clear about their roles and responsibilities. This becomes even more important with teams working remotely and not interacting directly. It revolves around bringing people from different teams to come together for a common goal, making collaborative decisions, and sharing feedbacks.

  1. Facilitate Transparent Communication

Communication is a separate and important factor today because nearly every team in the world today employs one or more remote workers. At the very least, they allow employees to work-from-home. As teams veer away from offices and cubicles, communication gaps emerge, and communication is probably the most important need for efficient teamwork.

Putting in place systems that facilitate constant and productive communication is key to having a collaborative workforce. We mentioned Zippi before, which is a real-time messaging platform that the entire team can use to stay connected. Many such tools allow text, audio, and video communication, so teams can stay connected at all times.

Read Remote Collaboration with Zippi.

  1. Centralize Data Access 

Data sharing becomes time and effort consuming task, especially when teams are dispersed. Employees need to find out who has the data they need, how to transfer it, and then actually get it. This rigmarole can be avoided by centralizing organizational data. Not to mention, this is also the more secure and safe option for data transfer.

There are simple cloud solutions that can be used for free or more complex options like setting up an organizational server farm that employees connect to. Irrespective of the method, data centralization facilitates better workplace collaboration.

  1. Clearing the clutter!

Whatever collaboration tool a team or company is using, it is there to give you a better overview and understanding of what you are doing and what your employees are doing or what the other teams are doing and how you all can work in harmony. Technology today makes collaboration easy.

Tools that help teams communicate in real-time and asynchronously and stay connected during work hours are the ones that we need right now. Numerous slivered tools solve various aspects of workplace collaboration such as communication and data transfers, project/task management, performance tracking, audio/video conferencing.

Slack – A collaboration platform for text-based communication, audio calls, and video conferences. Entire teams can be on-boarded and then divided into groups by channels. Conversations within channels stay private, and employees can also have one-to-one conversations.

Microsoft Teams or Zoom – Both are excellent video conferencing tools that have free and paid versions (depending on the size of your team and the features you need). With easy-to-use interfaces and features like file sharing and text chats, these become important for real-time collaboration.

Read Jinie And Microsoft Teams: Story Of Bot And The Beast.

Dropbox or Google Drive – While the best method of centralizing data and facilitating sharing is by setting up an internal server, that can be an expensive option. For smaller organizations, leveraging cloud solutions like Dropbox or Google Drive is the more efficient option.

Trello – There are many multi-featured project management tools available today, but for teams looking for a simple solution to track tasks, Trello works perfectly. With an easy-to-use Kanban board, teams can drag-and-drop tasks across the workflow. This creates high project visibility for the entire team, especially since it is visual.

The Big Question – Do you feel overwhelmed with all these individual platforms?
…
And What if there’s an All-Encompassing Collaboration Solution?

While all the above are great collaboration tools, implementing many can turn out to do more harm than good. As the saying goes, too many cooks spoil the broth. A smarter solution is to implement one collaboration tool that can provide the benefits of many –

  1. Communication platform
  2. Data sharing
  3. Task management
  4. Recruiting & hiring
  5. Lead nurturing
  6. Ticketing & customer support
  7. Knowledge sharing

And more. Zippi is a collaboration tool that does exactly that. Zippi facilitates secure collaboration between multiple organizational teams – IT, Marketing, HR, Support, engineering, and more. Zippi also houses an AI-powered – Personal Assistant to deliver everything you need to get work done.


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5 Essential virtual leadership skills that create a thriving remote culture

5 Essential virtual leadership skills that create a thriving remote culture

by | Aug 27, 2020 | Productivity, Remote Work

Businesses all around the world were gradually adapting to the rapid pace of digital transformation.

However, the COVID-19 outbreak drove the final nail in the coffin. It has been established that the disruptions will have long-term effects on the psychology and dynamics of traditional workplaces. A staggering 54% of businesses believe that the aftershocks of the global pandemic will continue through 2020. So, it is high time for companies to embrace the remote work model.

As a result, there is a growing need for leading the change in the virtual work environment. Virtual leadership can help foster a solid work culture that will set your business on track for success!

What is Virtual Leadership?

As the name indicates, virtual leaders are in charge of virtual teams. A virtual team comprises of professionals operating from different physical locations.

A virtual leader carries out all the roles and responsibilities of a traditional leader. Hence, virtual leadership plays an instrumental role in determining the success of any project.

The Rise of Virtual Leaders

The demand for virtual leadership is not a new concept. Studies and reports dating back to 2009 have highlighted how remote teams can outperform on-site employees in productivity and task management, provided that they are under stable virtual leadership. According to Gartner, the number of remote employees rose by 4% from 2012 to 2016. Nearly 43% of this overall workforce operate remotely in the US alone! While the development was slow yet sustained, companies faced challenges in the form of trust deficit, unmet expectations, work stereotypes, and technological limitations.

As technology started to catch up with the industry demands, there was a proportional growth in the demand for virtual leadership. It emerged as a silver bullet that helped overcome these obstacles. Virtual leaders emphasized communication and collaboration to nurture trust. Similarly, they assigned specific roles to outline a defined work structure, which boosted employee productivity while meeting business objectives. Finally, they helped with the integration of technology through collaboration software for efficient task management and disposal.

The imminent maturation of virtual leadership ushered in the age of remote working and virtual teams, making it the new normal.

5 Essential Virtual Team Leadership Skills

Now that we understand the crucial role of virtual leadership, it is time to review the qualities and characteristics to emerge as a successful virtual leader.

Here are five crucial skills that every virtual leader should hone for efficient task management:

  1. Communication

Remote interactions are robbed of the personal touch that comes with one-on-one conversations. Resultantly, there is a higher scope of missing out critical details.

Virtual leaders must convey instructions, feedback, and guidelines clearly and concisely. Any ambiguity will contribute to confusion.

Set aside an appropriate frequency for conducting structured meetings, while also leaving room for impromptu catch-ups. Communicate consistently with your virtual teams and the team members.

The trick is to strike the perfect balance. If you check in too often, you may make the employees feel like they are being micromanaged. On the other hand, hold meetings too infrequently, and your employees will slip off the routine.

Setting up channels for synchronous and asynchronous communication will help teams even if they operate in different time zones. Incentivize collaboration, and your project will be rewarded accordingly.

Do not limit the conversations to mere “work stuff” and encourage employees to replicate the traditional “water cooler.” In this way, you will be adding to the work culture.

   2. Empathy

For several organizations, adapting to the remote working model has been tough. Naturally, there will be a few employees that may struggle with the technological aspect. Similarly, isolation, lockdowns, and quarantine may also take a toll on your employees’ emotional and mental well-being. On the other hand, you will have to deal with employees who cannot maintain the work-life balance.

An ideal virtual leader can identify such issues through social cues, even without learning about them explicitly. It could be in the form of loss in employee productivity, change in work behavior, and other indicators. Virtual leaders must locate these setbacks by tapping into their social awareness and relationship-building skills and mitigate the risks through proactive remedial measures.

Simple, empathy-driven decisions such as getting in a VC with the troubled employee or giving them some timeout to recover from burnout can help your team members.

  1. Transparency

Information silos will slow down your team’s productivity. For this reason, you must maintain cultural transparency in all your business operations. Whether it is access to the company database or assigning tasks to a team – virtual leaders incorporate transparency everywhere.

Fortunately, you can bank on several tools and software that make use of technology to add this layer of transparency. At the same time, constant communication also lays the foundation for transparent operations.

Maintaining transparency will help with employee engagement and will also hold them accountable for their work. Eventually, it will contribute to social cohesion that will glue your virtual teams together.

Read: Coming Back To Work: Productivity Lessons We Will Carry Back Post Lockdown.

  1. Trust

Cultivating trust in a virtual environment is one of the major challenges of virtual leadership. Make your team members an integral part of the decision-making process and keep them in the loop for updates.

At the same time, instill the belief that you trust your employees to carry out their tasks even if they do not have a boss hovering over your shoulders. Rather than stressing on the number of hours your team members put in, shift the focus to the overall output and impact. Once again, if you notice a dip in productivity, feel free to discuss the issue sympathetically.

  1. Inclusion

Virtual leaders will have to be considerate of all team members. As stated before, involve your team members at every stage of the decision-making process. Virtual leaders must consider the team as an integral part of the project, right from planning to execution.

On an individual level, you can pair your experienced employees with the freshers to make the freshers feel included in all the business transactions. It helps overcome the common issues that newbies face during the onboarding stage.

Through this two-pronged approach, you can be sure that you are including and empowering everyone.

The Final Word

To sum it up, virtual leadership is the life and blood of a remote system.

Virtual leaders play a critical role in fostering trust, boosting employee productivity, encouraging open communication and collaboration, outlining goals and procedural guidelines, and keeping the team morale high. To meet these goals, virtual leaders tap into an array of collaboration software and tools that grant seamlessness even in remote work environments.

Having a trusted and reliable virtual leader in your team can boost your company’s chances of success!

Click HERE to explore Zippi to help boost your organization’s productivity.


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The What-Why-How of Workplace Collaboration

Remote Collaboration with Zippi

by | Aug 27, 2020 | Collaboration, Remote Work, Zippi

Over the past few years, remote collaboration opportunities have found their way in various industries. While some of the more lucrative jobs had the ‘work-from-anywhere’ scheme for their employees from the very beginning, the pandemic of 2019, COVID-19, turned out to be a harbinger for the WFH Revolution, transforming the add-on into a necessity.

But are we ready? 

Spoiler alert: Yes, we are.

The Challenges of Alternative Workspaces 

A little over a couple of decades ago, AT&T experimented. On the fateful day of September 20, 1994, about 32,000 of its employees sat back at home and commuted to work through telecommunication.

Today, AT&T is a world leader in Virtual Offices and Alternative Workspaces. But this can’t be said for all the other organizations that failed to prepare for a situation.

The common challenges faced by these companies include:

  1. The Industrial Culture 

Our traditional organizational structure is designed for intensive face-to-face interactions. Remote collaboration is a different ballgame altogether. Employees tend to lose a sense of common identity and the touch of company culture. Peer-influence vanishes, and the procrastinating workers eventually end up with low morale and connection.

  1. Communication Barriers in Team Collaboration 

Asking for updates and general information from colleagues in offices is pretty straightforward — everyone is just a few physical steps away. But collaboration is a real challenge when every team member works remotely. The transparency within the team falls steeply. This leads to confusion and conflict among the team members.

  1. Linking Tasks with Productivity 

The effects of remote work from home have been discussed extensively, and many say that it may not be a viable option in the long run in terms of the employees’ morale and productivity. This is all the more challenging for big organizations as they are bound with pre-set processes even though investing in task trackers or other productivity tools to boost their organization’s yearly yield.

  1. Investment in Tools & Training 

Many companies that didn’t take their infrastructure online (cloud-based) faced a lot of trouble when they were asked to continue their operations remotely. Investing in the right kind of technology was the biggest challenge for almost every company in today’s time.

How Zippi Can Make A Difference 

Zippi by PeopleStrong is the most competitive business collaboration software an organization can hope to find. Used by more than 350,000 people all over the world, the service supports over 250 companies in their revenue growth.

Download Case Study: How Chola Leveraged Zippi during Lockdown by Agile Collaboration

  1. Fosters Workplace Communications

Clear communication between the team members is the most fundamental requirement for a collaborative work environment. Irregularities in approach within an organization can cause unforeseen problems for the company. With Zippi, you can use the pre-designed employee-groups for all your divisions to help employees connect better. There are options to create smaller squads that can solve the whole communication problem for your company with agility.

  1. Goal-Oriented Approach 

As companies shift their approach more towards the output without caring much about the process, it’s the perfect opportunity for companies to grant their employees a certain degree of freedom. With Zippi, organizations will never drift from their goals as the employees will be alerted about their deadlines and objectives regularly.

  1. Digital Collaborative Tool 

If your work requires people with different skill-sets to work together, Zippi can help you achieve that with agility, while keeping the company culture in mind. With intuitive functionalities such as group assignments and threaded conversations, Zippi is easily the best task management software out there.

  1. Bridging the Gap Between Planning & Execution 

Through Zippi, the C-Suite, the managers, the workers — all of them can use and work on a common platform, bridging the gap between planning and hands-on execution of the tasks.

Moreover, features such as appreciations and polls acting as reinforcements ensure that all the employees remain connected and engaged even if they’re miles apart.

  1. AI-driven Collaboration

Apart from offering task management and collaboration solutions, Zippi diligently makes use of Artificial Intelligence through our inhouse Chatbot – Jinie that answers all the employee queries, nudges about your pending tasks, periodical reminders on unread emails, integrate with existing HR systems and much more

Round-Up

Ever since the industrial revolution, work became more and more demanding as companies shifted their approach to becoming actively goal-driven. It became all the more demanding when we started working remotely.

Today, companies come up with better and more innovative solutions for remote collaboration; so that there’s a fire to showcase their output. This has led them to neglect the process and become more goal-oriented. In today’s uncertain times, companies demand an integrated, connected, and collaborative systems to drive productivity across the organization.

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