Thanks to recent advances in technology, employees worldwide can work away from constraining offices and in the comforts of their home or wherever they want to be. Remote workers can now connect, communicate, and collaborate with partners, employers, clients, and customers anytime, anywhere. Only things needed are a computer and an internet connection.
Video conferencing is fast becoming the standard method of modern communication between remote teams. That’s because among other modes of communication, video conferencing is more genuine, and it’s as close as you can get to face-to-face interaction. It also helps remote work teams in many ways.
Fosters Better Connection and Collaboration
Compared to other modes of modern communication, video conferencing encourages more interaction and collaboration. It creates a setting where all attendees can actively participate in the conversation, ask questions, and give immediate feedback.
In a teleconference, there’s not just one person speaking. Everyone is open to voice out their comments and suggestions. And this creates an environment conducive for open communication, which, in turn, fosters better connection and collaboration.
Improves Team Efficiency
If you need the participation of the whole team, video conferencing is simply the quickest and most efficient way to include everyone in the conversation. With email communication, there’s a huge possibility that some members won’t read or keep up with the exchange.
However, video conferencing compels each member to listen and participate in the conversation. You can share opinions and ideas and get feedback real-time. Composing emails take more time since you must pay extra attention to your words, and you can’t ask questions and get answers there and then.
Incorporates More Creative Voices
In email exchanges, there are typically one or two people who dominate the conversation. Too many people participating can significantly slow down the dialogue and cause confusion. Although these problems can still occur when video conferencing, they can be quickly resolved by clarifying issues right away.
More brains are better than one. With that, more people can participate in the exchange, which means incorporating more creatives voices, smoother and fresher flow of ideas, and more innovations. Not only that, it helps remote-working employees be more engaged with the team and the process despite their distance.
Reduces Communication Issues
Despite the speed and convenience, email is not a completely effective mode of communication. That’s mostly because many people don’t read their emails. There are also nuances, like body language and tone of voice, that get lost in written communication.
Video conferencing enables team members to gather and interact face-to-face. This means that every person doesn’t have to rely on words to communicate their thoughts and ideas. This lessens misunderstandings during communication. Video conferencing makes it easier to directly address specific people without excluding other team members.
Although there are still communication issues with video conferencing, most of them are technical in nature, which can be mitigated by using high-end video conferencing equipment and proper testing and preparation before the meeting.
Final Takeaway
Seventy percent of knowledge workers worldwide are working remotely, says a 2015 survey by PGi, and if given the same job and pay rate, 60 percent of telemarketers all over the globe would quit their current jobs to work from home full-time.
As the years go by, more and more employees have become nomad workers, unshackled to any corporate buildings or offices. And this has been made possible by continuous advancements in technology, particularly in connectivity and real-time communication.
Video conferencing has become a standard in business, and as more teams move out of a central office, it will usher in new forms of communication to further improve connection not just between remote teams, partners, and clients.
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