Communicating with remote employees
Before the Pandemic, remote working was the preserve of a few people who were lucky enough to be able to work from home, or maybe their jobs entailed that they work virtually from their office. But obviously, post Pandemic, remote working is something that we’re all much more familiar with. It’s something that we’ve probably all done at some point. Obviously there are some jobs that aren’t conducive to working remotely, but more and more people now are working remotely. As we sustain and continue with this remote working world, it’s really important that we think about how we communicate with people.
It’s very easy just to carry over what we’ve done in the past. So endless teams meetings and zoom meetings seems to be one of the things I’m hearing people complaining about at the moment and also the use of emails and instant messenger and some of the other technology that’s become available to us. So I wanted to explore what some of the modern challenges are that we have now with remote working and particularly communicating with remote workers.
That also brings in the topic of synchronous and asynchronous communications. Synchronous being where we’re communicating to people in real time, whether that’s virtually or face to face, and asynchronous being where it’s on demand, where we’re sending out our messages for people to consume at a time when they choose and in a way which they choose. I think understanding the difference between asynchronous and synchronous communications is really important for communicators and internal communicators and to recognise that each of those has its place. For remote workers it’s a different experience to the one it would have been when people were working in a fixed location. So that’s what we’re going to be looking at in this episode. We’re going to be exploring what synchronous and asynchronous communication is and looking at some of the ways that we can improve the way we use them and in particular in the context of supporting our workers who are working remotely.
Guest profile
Joanna Parsons is a remote working enthusiast with a passion for developing internal communication strategies that help you deliver on business goals. Joanna is also a Fellow of the Institute of Internal Communication with 10+ years’ experience in strategic internal communication.
As Regional Director for Ireland with the Institute of Internal Communication, Joanna has been elected to their Board of Directors. The proud winner of four awards for outstanding internal communication, including first place in the prestigious Public Relations of Ireland awards, Joanna is currently Head of Internal Communications & Culture at Teamwork.
Useful links
Link to a relevant episode of the podcast: https://thebigpicturepeople.co.uk/blog/podcast/communicating-with-offline-employees-s2-e16/
Joanna’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joannaparsons/
Running Remote – Build & Scale Your Remote Team
GitLab’s Guide to All-Remote | GitLab
How to make your meetings better with asynchronous techniques | Zapier