They say “no man is an island.” But it can definitely feel that way with everyone going remote.
It’s almost like everyone has to be their own entrepreneur. It doesn’t necessarily have to be that way, however…
Your focus in an increasingly remote world needs to start with collaboration. And collaboration is taking new shape in today’s workplace. Today we’re going to talk about different ways a business can facilitate collaboration.
Mobile work certainly makes a job less hands-on. So coworkers will need to tap into their verbal and other soft skills to get the job done.
Technology is coming to the rescue in that department, and business leaders paying attention to the latest tools and trends don’t want to be left in the dust.
Let’s talk about what has changed in the collaborative work environment and how you and your team can best adapt to working in the brave new world.
New Solutions for Remote Work
New collaborative solutions are coming to the workplace in the form of artificial intelligence, machine learning, CRM and other data repositories.
Everything is going to be data-centered, and that is going to inform everything, from top to bottom, about how employees join companies, track projects, collaborate, communicate, write, recruit, and reach out to customers.
There are now all sorts of configurations your workplace can take on with the tools available. Especially facing a global pandemic, business leaders will want to do their research to stay ahead of the curve. With businesses everywhere going remote, the various tools that need to be sharpened for a functional workplace include:
Communication channels
A great, polished website
Online Presence with social
Online recruitment systems
We’re going to get into each of these as we cover what every business leader needs in order to keep companies running remote.
Hire a Communication Specialist
Your website logos and copy need to be top-notch if you want to attract the right customers and employees. You want to do everything you can to ensure you are found on the search engines.
This requires a fast website, as well as the right keywords on your site to show the search engines you are answering the questions your people are asking.
Something people often miss here is improving website speed. A self-hosted WordPress site is typically faster than other hosting services.
Google is trying to optimize the user experience, so faster websites will show up first in the results.
Look into hiring a web developer familiar with SEO, and copywriters to optimize the user experience.
Hire Someone to Perfect Your Website
This applies to hiring anywhere. You ultimately want quality work, so recruiting new talent is not a time for penny pinching.
The return on investment on a good employee will well outweigh the loss on a “bargain” that you picked up because it was timely or affordable.
You want the best for your company, and that means hiring only the best people.
Even if the higher-ups complain about cost, this should be the talking point, and it is a hill to die on when hiring people. Someone asks for a $10k higher salary, but has 10 years mor experience? Go for it!
Hire a Social Media Manager
Your social media reach has far more of an impact than you think.
Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube are some of the most untapped resources where many businesses fail to reach both new customers and new employees.
Apart from your website, these have the potential to become your entire business, now that in-person meetings are all but taboo.
To improve your social media presence, first find a social media manager. You could always do it yourself, but it might take away from other priorities.
If you are serious about pursuing customer and employee engagement, whoever is running social media needs to be engaged.
It’s basically free advertising. This could get you more customers even than when it was okay to go out and shake someone’s hand. You can post jobs there and watch the candidates pile in.
Hire Online Recruiting Experts
Recruiting online will be the essential for your business to run. This is entirely the norm in this day and age.
Businesses need to establish themselves online as much as possible.
Posting jobs can automate your search for the right candidate. There are even AI tools you can use to improve your job descriptions and get the most qualified candidates for the job.
Wherever your company decides to recruit online, make sure you share as much information about the work as possible, so you can attract the right candidates.
An HR team can divide the responsibilities here between several people. Someone could set up profiles while another does prospecting. Someone could write the job descriptions while the other does outreach.
The possibilities are endless.
Conclusion
Running a company was already hard work before the world went remote.
Moving forward in today’s work environment will require the utmost adaptability and willingness to learn different technologies and new workplace practices to keep everything running.
This essentially boils down to one thing that all good businesses share: communication.
Learning the right ways to communicate will send your company far beyond the others struggling to make it in the new digital age.
