From apps that boost focus to trivia that builds team morale, here are our top recommendations for remote working tools to keep distributed teams at the top of their game. Lilly Shor, Content Manager, Craft.io With the pandemic still in full swing worldwide, teams that turned remote overnight are now grappling with the ongoing challenges faced by distributed teams. And at least for the foreseeable future, it looks like remote work is here to stay.
As a researcher interested in teamwork and team effectiveness, March 2020 was a fascinating moment for me. Around the world, knowledge workers at organisations large and small were suddenly forced to work from their homes. As we scrambled to get a read on the effect this was having inside Atlassian, we also commissioned an international, multimodal study to capture and make sense of the impact on individuals and teams across a range of industries as they grappled with these extraordinary changes.
Chances are, your company and team priorities have changed since the beginning of this year. And you’re not alone—45% of global companies say their goals have changed at least once since moving to remote work. Without a clear communication strategy, it can be difficult to know how these new priorities impact individual work. Communicating team goals and aligning as a team is already hard to do when you’re working together in the same office.
For some organizations, the transition towards a more flexible working environment has been slow to get off the ground, with many managers fearing a lack of collaboration between the team members in separate locations. Undoubtedly, the events of 2020 have prompted teams to trial new ways of working that may previously have been met with a degree of hesitation. But now, as we become ingrained in this new culture, are key stakeholders any more convinced of the effectiveness of remote working?
Some companies are struggling to keep up with our new normal. Research from Asana reveals nearly half of employees surveyed globally said company-wide goals had been deprioritised since remote working began, with 47 per cent saying those goals have changed at least once during that time – and 60 per cent haven’t increased communication on such issues. “I think the current new normal is coping,” says Alex Hood, CPO of Asana. “The next normal is thriving.”
Trying to find ways to inject some fun into your remote team’s work days? With COVID forcing employees to adopt remote working, communicating with teams via apps like Slack and Zoom has been on the rise. But staring into a computer screen all day without any work colleagues around can take a toll on an employee! So, what can you do to help your team have a bit of fun? How about trying out some Slack games?
Mike Cannon-Brookes, co-CEO of Atlassian, joined Stewart Butterfield, CEO of Slack, to paint a picture of the future of work
The debate about the effects of the recent global pandemic and lockdown is ongoing. Experiences differ, but at the end of the day, we’re still all in the same boat – trying to navigate the new remote work reality. To understand how these events have impacted the industry and our clients, we ran a Work From Anywhere Survey. The results are in, and we’re ready to share the findings with you.
See why adopting Slack just isn’t enough for your remote workflow. Talk is cheap— except when it’s getting in the way of productivity, as then it becomes rather wasteful. The most common mistake when working remotely is to think that discussion is the same thing as collaboration, when in reality it’s only one component of it.
