Welcome to our Productivity Safari! Join us as we discover the key areas within a business that can lack productivity. This section of our guide will take you through effective communication and the ways your customers can improve their processes.

Communication

Did you know that elephants not only communicate with their voice but also through vibration and touch? They’re using senses available to them to share messages with their whole clan. To ensure your customers’ teams are communicating as well as a clan of elephants, ensure they have the right tools in place.

Good communication tools have never been more important. With more companies moving to hybrid working and teams across the country or globe working on projects together, employers need to provide the tools needed for effective communication. From virtual meetings to instant messaging and sharing documents, people need solutions to ensure communication doesn’t break down due to hybrid workforces.

Climb offers a range of solutions that can help your customers ensure their workforce communicates effectively.

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Product Focus Area

MindManager simplifies information and knowledge sharing within teams and companies. The information is shared in an easy-to-understand way, up to date and available centrally at any time, which means understanding and communication improve significantly. The co-editing feature and integration with Microsoft Teams means team members can update important information at the same time and everyone always has the latest updates to hand, without having to send a copy around or save it in a central place.

Remote access ensures that no matter where employees are based or where they travel for business, they have access to the right solutions and documents to stay in touch with their teams. In addition, it helps IT teams easily support users with whatever they need, allowing for problems to be solved quicker and easier by allowing them to communicate with the users directly, while accessing their system.

Since the start of the pandemic there has been an increase of meetings in everyone’s calendar. Snagit uses images and videos to deliver clear, concise messages that move work forward without a meeting, call or long email. By using visual tools to communicate, businesses avoid long email threads, prevent repeat questions, free up calendar space and reduce back-to-back meetings. Need to show someone in the team how to use a new tool? Create a quick How to video instead of booking a meeting. Need to share updates? Use an image with annotations to visualise changes. Have a colleague in a different time zone? Send quick videos to update each other on progress on tasks, avoiding meetings across time zones.

The hybrid workforce is becoming more popular, with 83% of workers preferring a hybrid model (Forbes). This means businesses need to look at solutions to enable quick communication. Microsoft Teams doesn’t only include a chat option but also allows for meetings, webinars and file sharing (by using SharePoint). Microsoft Teams Phone System can be used internally to place, receive and transfer calls and can be connected to the Public Switched Telephone Network (PTSN) to facilitate external calling. Microsoft Teams has quickly become the most used platform during the pandemic and a hub for all the information an employee needs to work efficiently.

Find out more about our Microsoft Reseller Partner Programme.

Top Tips for Effective
Communication

Be more intentional with your communication

As many organisations have realised, employees don’t need to be all in one place to achieve their targets and deliver to deadlines. Hybrid workforces can have employees scattered across the country or even the globe. To ensure everyone has all the information they need, it is important to ensure information gets shared with the team, even if employees are in a different time zone. While tools, such as Teams, are great for quick status updates and instant communication, leadership needs to ensure that important messages are not lost in the middle of confusing back and forth and everyone is on the same page.  

Document everything in written format

Remote working brought in an increase in virtual meetings. While they’re great to stay up to date with everyone, anything said in a (video) call has the potential to be misheard or misunderstood; and if employees can’t attend the meeting, they have to rely on second hand information. This can lead to frustration and a loss of productivity. Taking a minute to share notes from a meeting, ensures everyone has the same information, deadlines are not missed and it gives everyone that wasn’t able to attend a way of staying up to date.

Match the message format to the information

A meeting isn’t always the answer. To get the best results, select appropriate communication channel. It’s especially important when working in a hybrid workplace. Face-to-Face meetings can be beneficial for crucial meetings or for new starters joining a team. However, meetings are not always efficient and can take up a lot of time. Want to check on the status of a task/project? Use instant messaging rather than sending an email. Need an urgent update from a supplier? Give them a call. Sending reports to management? Send it via email.

Use visual communication tools

More and more online channels get established in the workforce. Using visuals ensures information and knowledge get shared in an engaging way and grabs employees’ attention more than another text post/email. It can also help avoid confusion, as you can showcase what the problem is or how they can approach a problem. Tutorials, quick screen grabs and short explanation videos take away the need for meetings and ensure everyone is on the same page.

Tone is important

Awareness of how something comes across and lands with other people is especially important in hybrid workplaces. A big part of communication happens online via instant messenger or emails, which doesn’t allow us to see facial expressions or hand gestures. Making sure that communication is clear and empathetic avoids misunderstandings and conflicts. Companies that use written communication a lot, can benefit from establishing communication guidelines to support their employees and offer full transparency.

Resources

How to Transform Your Remote Communication with Image and Video

TechSmith

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5 secrets to effective remote team communication

MindManager

Read more

Case Study: Telecom Cook Islands

RealVNC

Read more

The Value of Visuals

TechSmith

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Infographic: The Value of Visual Communication

TechSmith

Download

Are you ready to increase your customers’ productivity?

Increase your customers’ productivity with the solutions that Climb has to offer. Get in touch with our business development team and find out how you can increase your margins with our productivity solutions.

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