How to Be a Team Player When Working Remotely

Companies around the world are transitioning and adopting a mix of hybrid work models with the advancement of technologies. With a blend of on-the-desk workers and remote workers, the adoption of connected devices and supporting platforms for telecommunication are redefining the spectrum. However, heeding to the phrase, “Execution of work you do matters more than a place you go and work in,” despite communication stability, it is becoming utmost challenging for the companies to keep its employees productive and engaged to become a team player.

The transition of remote working culture

As per a study, since 2019, more than 50% of the companies in the UK had adopted a hybrid mix work culture even before the Covid-19 crisis commenced. Also, more than 80% of the companies in Italy have reported the utilization of remote work culture models since the rise of the global pandemic worldwide and they are using remote worker tracking system for managing this remote work culture.

The companies who pursued to adopt the remote working culture model have found themselves in the benefits such as:

• Lower expenses towards infrastructure
• Employee’s satisfaction and happiness
• Serving to the eco-friendly cause by eliminating commuting
• Remote connecting to partners as well as office peers across different time zones

The negative rope of remote work culture

Working from home feels like freedom of its own, right? Working from your comfortable couch, bed, your local café, and anywhere with a stable internet connection and operational working equipment – it might seem fascinating, but are we prepared?

Working remotely has a few pros to count. Still, it also has identified a series of bummers that can hamper the working culture and the contribution of individual peers or the team as a whole. For example, there can be a slow communication rate, poor network connectivity, employee motivation to work, etc.

But, how do we overcome these challenges as an Individual and become a valuable team player?

How to be a team player while working remotely

To become a team player, you need to ensure that you are connected with your peers and critical personnel while working remotely. So let’s explore a these steps that you can implement and make you and your surroundings feel motivated and engaged.

Communicate regularly with your team members

An essential aspect of becoming a team player is communicating with all your team members as frequently as possible during remote work. You need to gain your trust in your peers as much as the physical office decorum would offer. You need to bridge the distance gap with dedicated communication channels and platforms so that the probable result of falling into mistrust is eliminated.

To be a team player, you need to be visible among the team members each day. The circumference of operations around remote working changes the framework a bit. So, you will have to make sure that your team members are approachable to you and can rely on you without hesitating.

There might be circumstances when the communication lines may clog and fill your inbox with dozens of email threads, creating chaos for you to stay connected. So make sure that you also prioritize the communication stream and network with your peers along with.

A reliable platform such as the NuovoTeam can be utilized for effective team communication and collaboration. With this suite, the entire team within the organization can seamlessly communicate and collaborate despite location or time zones barriers.

There are various other tools and platforms that you can utilize, but NuovoTeam has much more to offer than that, such as:

• Unified contact and directory of all the workforce who are part of the organization making it contact management communication suite.
• Real-time notification of activities and communications on all the managed devices using NuovoTeam.
• Interactive channels to communicate as well as collaborate for exchanging files and folders restricted to business-critical operations.
• Group collaboration with channels & groups such as open, closed, and device segregation.
• Push-to-talk app for quick communication during emergencies or businesses requiring the fastest vocal communication in a short span.

Indulge yourself with organizational activities

There can be instances depending on the nature of the personality of team members, or even yourself, that you might encounter a moment of isolation and be left out. This is very common in remote working culture. After a sudden change of working model in an organization, you develop those emotions and drastic shifting from on-the-desk to remote workplace.

You will push your limits and boundaries to engage in a communication stream with your team members through a standard tool or platform. However, to become an active team player, you need to make sure that your team members don’t feel left out by communicating with them and staying up-to-date with all the conflicts and updates in your department.

By doing this, you will add a badge of comradery and make your team believe that you are highly interested in engaging rather than remain non-existent.

There are other activities that you can perform as well to stay connected as a team player within your organization:

• Organizing or attending weekly or fortnightly training and engagement programs
• Train your peers the skills you are good at and learn what others are good in
• Organize an informal video call with your colleagues and strengthen the bond professionally as well as personally.

Achieve milestones through results, not time invested

The transition from a 9 to 5 working schedule to flexibility in remote working has eventually deterred the predetermined format of physical working and dedicated timing for operations. Most of the companies around the world are introducing cultural and engagement activities so that the balance between work and personal life is streamlined.

However, while working at a temporary yet dedicated workspace, completing your day-to-day task within the 9 to 5 schedule would always seem impossible. Therefore, you are bound to end up with extended working hours.

To become a team player, you need to instill this framework of time management within you and encourage your peers to do so. It should not be necessary for you or your peers to create a foundation to report at a stringent time rather than support a common and flexible schedule as long as all the operational activities are on a roller coaster ride.

Also, you should never achieve your investment with the amount of time invested each day, rather the outcome of those investments that you savor, the entire team, and the organization. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be using work tracking software to track your daily activities and pinpoint your most productive hours and which apps and websites are slowing you down while you’re working.

Create a dedicated workstation

In remote working, you should not just curl up in the bed and work the entire day. With freedom comes responsibility. You should commit to yourself, your family and dedicatedly work during a standard working hour proactively.

To attain this kind of commitment, you need to shift yourself from your comfort zone to a suitable yet dedicated remote workstation. You will have to experiment and find one corner in your house where you feel that the atmosphere is less distracting, and you can feel the wavelength as similar to your office cubicle.

Decorate that desk and walls around you with anything that can make you feel more focused. You will measure the difference in productivity between the comfort of working in the bed and a dedicated workstation.

Know when to stop

When you are working remotely or work from home, you need to make a pact and amend it. The pact of not meshing the personal and professional life just because you are not in the outline of the physical office framework. It might be a challenging step to align the coordination at the commencement of transition. Still, if a team player knows how to coordinate its operation with the team members and make them feel the essence of time management, you won’t feel guilty at the end of the day for staying as unproductive as you could have been until you knew when to stop.

Conclusion…

The real problem requires a modern solution, and to adapt to the changing environment of remote working; the trend is to embrace rather than deject. As per a study, it has been revealed that any organization with 60-80 percent employees working remotely has more engagement and productivity rates than the on-desk workers². You might be surrounded with pros but with boulders too when it comes to shining in the remote working culture. You will have to contribute to the responsibilities of your small workplace that might distract you for a while, but you will have to regain yourself and your focus back to your work.

You will also have to ensure that the communication between your team members is centralized and streamlined to focus on delivering your 100% input to the organisation. Don’t enter into the zone of non-existence and become a team player by engaging yourself with accountability, two-way communication, and trust through NuovoTeam – an instant messaging app for all the workforce.

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Author Bio

Ayush Maskara is a Junior Content Writer at NuovoTeam -Productivity App for Non-Desk Workforce. A media science graduate, a photographer, a fiction author, a storyteller, a fiction manuscript editor, and an avid self-help reader, Ayush has been penning the creative wisdom for six years and has stepped into the IT domain for further exploration and staying awake with technological trends across the globe.