Negosentro.com | How To Keep Your Business Connected Online | Running your business in the modern world requires you to leverage the internet. Whether you want to market your brand or collaborate with your team, you need to be online. Many businesses are moving to remote-working models, using the internet to stay connected. This can be advantageous for many reasons. However, it is also challenging to operate over the internet when you are first starting.
Get Everyone Connected
The first and most important part of working online is ensuring that everyone is connected properly. Depending on your organization’s IT needs, you may want to have people connect to your systems using their home internet or with a virtual private network. Alternatively, you may need to provide wireless internet to your team to ensure they are connecting securely.
Once everyone is connected, you can start working effectively. In some cases, working remotely can be beneficial for your business’s success. For example, if you are working on an IoT device using cellular internet, you may get a better sense of the product’s efficacy when using home internet rather than a powerful business network.
Organize Your Team
One of the challenges of working through the internet is that you have less oversight of your team. In many ways, this can be a positive thing because it empowers people to take responsibility for their own results. However, it can also make staying organized more challenging.
Getting your team workflows and responsibilities properly organized will help to ensure everyone is on the same page. In many cases, this process can help teams be even more productive than they would be working in the same office.
Leverage Collaboration Tools
There are numerous tools online to help with collaboration. For example, you can coauthor documents together, instant message each other, track project progress and more. Taking advantage of these collaborative tools will help you with staying organized together.
It is worth spending the time to find the right tools and processes for you. Even the best tools in the world are not very helpful if you use them consistently and effectively.
Set an Appropriate Meeting Schedule
When you are working online, you need to set touchpoints for checking in regularly. When you are working online, you miss out on the opportunities to check in throughout the day organically. Therefore, it is essential to set up a structure for interacting consistently.
However, it is also important to avoid dominating everyone’s time with meetings. You don’t want to create an arrangement in which everyone is talking about what they will do and not actually doing it. Striking this balance is one of the main challenges of online work.
Communicate Effectively
Good communication is doubly important when collaborating online. Knowing when the right time is to speak up is essential to good remote work. Leveraging communication tools like instant messengers and online meeting platforms can help you to stay connected. However, you also need to be especially proactive when communicating online.
Research suggests that team members spend a large amount of time looking for information. Getting in the habit of actively pushing that information out can help to ensure everyone is working together effectively.
Set SMART Goals
Goal setting is important for every organization. It is even more important to have well-written goals when collaborating remotely. The SMART framework requires that goals be specific, measurable, action-oriented, realistic and time-bound.
The more rigorous you get about writing great goals, the better your team will operate. Excellent goals can help to keep everyone on the same page and working towards the same purpose at a consistent rate.
Learn More
Discover more about working together online. It can be a very valuable opportunity for your team, giving you to chance to tap into a global workforce. However, it also requires some hard work to get organized.
