By Shiv Passap
Director
BTT
YOUR team are working during a highly stressful time to keep the business running. Working remotely can be a challenge for individuals to adapt to because some people crave social contact or benefit from motivation and support from team members they are used to seeing daily.
That is why it’s important to ensure your company culture translates to your remote working environment. All you need is a good unified communications tool which is also a great tool for your business operation.
Unified communications enable businesses to operate and collaborate, seamlessly, using one application, regardless of your location. You can send instant messages to your whole team or individuals, share files, share calendars, conduct voice and video conference calls; all from one application which can be accessed via any device.
Most unified communications tools take it further by enabling you to collaborate externally as well as a host of other great features to ease the running of your business.
Keep the culture tips
To maintain our company culture and using our unified communications tool, we are rolling out the following:
* Banter Chat – This is a chat purely for the day-to-day banter we would normally have in the office. In this chat are pictures of the team’s lunches, jokes and funny videos. This keeps the social element whilst not clogging up the other chats.
* Internal Video Calls – We are encouraging our team to have video calls with each other to maintain ‘face-to-face’ contact.
* General Announcements Chat – We have a chat that is for general announcements such as getting paperwork in on time or express gratitude for certain team members going above and beyond.
* Happy Hour – This is where, at 4.30pm on a certain day, we get together via video and chat, laugh and have a drink. We are looking at rolling out games and quizzes during this chat, too.
* Fun Polls – The team can vote for a team member (who has volunteered) to do something funny and record it. For instance, one suggestion was to get the bosses to do the Baby Shark dance. Where appropriate, we will even circulate them on our own social media.
* Health and Wellbeing Support – we want to encourage our team to remain healthy so we are sending out reminders such as: ‘Don’t forget to drink six glass of water today” or sending a picture of a stretch that can be done at the desk to ease sore muscles.
It is extremely easy to set-up unified communications; there is minimal set-up time and it can be rolled out very quickly. In most cases, to utilise a unified communications tool, you will simply need a good broadband connection.
Thinking of implementing unified communications? Get in touch for a demo. Call Shiv on 0330 222 0330.