Tools for Remote Collaboration
Recently most businesses big or small are incorporating various tools for remote collaboration. Prior to the pandemic, most people worked in traditional office spaces from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. As social distancing and remote work became the normal many businesses have adapted—and see themselves continuing—to work. It’s not just where we work that’s changed. How we work has also evolved along the way.
Digital Adoption
It’s probably no surprise that digital adoption is one of the major ways office spaces and employers have had to adapt.
While some say the lack of face-to-face, human interaction could lead to a decline in customer engagement, collaboration, and company culture, according to a report published by MIT’s Abdul Latif Jameel World Education Lab, switching to entirely digital structures offered more avenues for increased customized engagement for those businesses surveyed.
According to IBM, adaptability in the digital landscape is now a mandatory business competency. Online forms of communicating and collaborating, such as the cloud, have been in use for some time, but have now become essential for how teams work together.
“Cloud-based work has allowed companies to expand both their speed and scale while increasing their team’s collaboration,” the report said.
The report goes on to say, other online tools, such as communication platforms that had been in moderate use prior to going remote were used to a greater extent and quickly became widespread. This shift changed the way many companies reorganized themselves and introduced new ways of doing business.
Tools for remote collaboration were widely adopted and business travel came to a halt during the COVID 19 pandemic. Virtual meeting experiences both within companies and with clients became the norm.
We have yet to see if these will become long-term trends. Companies are weighing the impact of a remote workforce on business productivity and collaboration. It is really a business-by-business decision. Working remotely may be an introvert’s dream and an extrovert’s nightmare.
