How Effective Hybrid and Remote Team Communication Can Reduce Stress and Improve Collaboration

Effective communication and collaboration can improve remote employee well-being, reduce conflict, and help staff feel better supported.

A recent TELUS survey echoes this sentiment. Experts found that collaborative employees reported a Mental Health Index score of 68 — nearly 3 points higher than the national average.

Streamlined communication can improve productivity, too. Folks are far more likely to buy into the business when they understand their role and feel connected to the team as a whole. This can help foster innovation while simultaneously reducing burnout and turnover. 

Effects of poor communication

Poor communication isn’t just frustrating for employees — it can completely undermine your day-to-day operations and cause you to lose sight of your goals.

Without a clear communication strategy, staff will be left without clear guidance or an understanding of their role. This can lead to missed deadlines, cost overrun, and a slew of other issues that could jeopardize the success of your upcoming projects.

A lackluster communication strategy can lead to burnout. Common causes of burnout include:

• Insufficient support
• Conflict with peers
• A lack of control 
• Working in a high-pressure environment

Left unchecked, prolonged burnout can weaken employees’ immune systems and cause health conditions like chronic fatigue, depression, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease. 

Stress-alleviating conversations

As a leader, you can address communication issues, alleviate stress, and improve collaboration by hosting supportive conversations. For example, if you’ve recently completed a project but failed to meet your targets, consider running a project post-mortem with your remote team. A project post-mortem will alleviate stress and improve future collaboration by:

• Identifying common communication errors
• Surveying clients and consumers to evaluate external communication 
• Giving employees a chance to share their insights in a judgment-free space
• Empowering staff to take action and make meaningful changes to current collaboration policies

When holding conversations, reassure staff that they are free to share their feelings. A weekly stand-up meeting may sound like a great idea, but few will participate if they feel insecure when sharing. You can further facilitate honest communication by using anonymous survey tools like OfficeVibe.

Communication amongst remote teams

Remote work is extremely helpful for most modern companies. Staff can skip the lengthy commute, and businesses don’t have to pay to purchase or rent office space. However, employees may find that the reality of remote work leaves them feeling isolated from their peers.

Combat isolation and supercharge your remote collaboration by investing in the right tools for the job. Investing in remote tools may increase your overhead, but the long-term costs of an ineffective tech stack can be far more costly. You wouldn’t send a carpenter to a worksite without a level, so don’t force your staff to WFH without the right remote collaboration tools.

Start by installing remote work tools like:

• Workflow management software like Hubstaff
• Team communication tools like Slack, Skype, or Zoom
• Remote access programs like WebEx and Mikogo
• Cloud-based tools like Google Docs and SimpleMDE
• Employee survey tools like CultureMonkey

You can install these tools on all your employees’ devices and will help facilitate real-time collaboration. Workflow management tools can be particularly helpful if your team is feeling stressed and overwhelmed. Tools like Hubstaff Tasks help employees visualize upcoming projects.

Remote and hybrid communication tools and best practices

If you’re new to remote work, you may find that your meetings start to run over time or generate low engagement. Get more out of remote meetings by following the best hybrid meeting practices.

You might decide to:

• Set a clear agenda. Review it before you open the meeting and start getting off-topic
• Use conference links. Don’t wait until the meeting starts to create a link.
• Double-check settings. Check your settings to ensure everything is working. 
• Break the ice. Introduce everyone and give folks a chance to reconnect before you start.
• Cameras on. For larger meetings, video helps you pay attention to attendees’ behavior and makes it easier to welcome them into discussions.

Even with these strategies in mind, sometimes teams function more efficiently just by simply reducing meeting time. With Hubstaff Insights, you can access various workforce analytics features designed to help remote and hybrid teams maximize their time.
With this add-on, you’ll see real-time updates for:

• Utilization rates. See what percentage of your team’s total hours are spent on billable hours.
• Website and app usage. Classify apps as core work, non-core work, and flat-out unproductive, and see how much time is spent on each. 
• Meetings vs. focus time. See how much time and money you spend in meetings to assess if teams have enough time to complete core work. 

These simple steps can streamline your time together and reduce remote meeting fatigue. This is particularly important if you’re looping in more senior employees, who may have a schedule filled with back-to-back remote meetings.

Conclusion 

An effective communication strategy can reduce workplace stress and improve productivity by empowering employees who work from home. Even implementing small changes (like encouraging teams to test their audio equipment before joining a meeting) can make a big difference to morale.

If you need to make more significant changes to your communication strategy, be sure to survey staff regularly. Based on your findings, consider tools like Hubstaff to help you identify time-wasting tools, foster healthier communication habits, and reduce stress for better work-life balance.