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The corona crisis has thrown all of us into new and unfamiliar situations.

We hole ourselves up in the name of social distancing. We are washing our hands all the time. And we are fretting about grocery shortages. But many of us now also face a new professional challenge: working from home.

How to be productive when working from home? How to manage a suddenly remote team? These are questions that a lot of employees and managers abruptly have to answer.

It all comes down to one basic question: How to best communicate with your business associates, your colleagues, and your employees?

There is much that you can’t control right now. You can’t head to your office, workshop, or production lines to keep an eye on things. You can’t practice face-to-face customer relations.

But you can figure out how to optimize communication during this unprecedented situation. This will help you to maximize productivity and steer your business through the crisis with a steady hand.

So, here are the best tools you can use, and the most important practices to adhere to. Ultimately, they will help ensure frustration-free communication, and business success in the time of corona.

Tech’s got your back – These tools can help you now

There is one benefit to the timing of the corona crisis: It’s happening now, with communications technology at an all-time high.

Where technology is concerned, it’s never been easier to stay in touch with people.

Remote work too was spreading well before the coronavirus appeared on the scene. That’s why there is a ready-made arsenal of tools to facilitate working from home.

These are the best.

Video conferencing

Conference calls are a cornerstone of modern business communication. And a large variety of platforms offers conference calling services.

In terms of video conference calls, California-based Zoom has established itself as the de-facto standard. It out-competes the classic Skype with higher stability and reliability while requiring less bandwidth and disk space.

Zoom has another major advantage: No account and no installation are necessary to video-call people.

Instant messaging

Chances are that there already is a WhatsApp group for colleagues in your business. Now’s the time to harness instant messaging beyond sharing cat pictures and memes.

Classic messenger apps like WhatsApp and Telegram can provide instant communication between colleagues or with managers. Groups can be created for team communication.

Slack is a messaging platform geared at business needs. Here, you can create different channels and teams, send larger files, and structure your discussions with tags and threads.

Project management

Right now you can’t just stop by someone’s office for a progress update. So, it’s vital to keep tabs through a project management system.

Some solutions that are very popular right now are Trello and Basecamp.

Both programs allow you to create boards, set goals, assign tasks, draw up to-do lists and schedules, and share files. Basecamp also offers an integrated group chat.

Trello and Basecamp each have a large add-on selection, including connectors to cloud services like Google Drive, or marketing platform HubSpot.

VoIP

VoIP has matured as a technology for business telephony.

The acronym stands for Voice over Internet Protocol. That means that rather than using traditional phone lines, audio signals are transmitted over the internet.

The advantage? VoIP is much more flexible – one number can be used on multiple devices, none of which have to be physically connected to a PBX.

This technology also offers many additional features, like business phone, voicemail-to-email, instant messaging and conference calls.

Basically, VoIP complements remote work perfectly.

File sharing

Tired of sending different versions of the same document back and forth in email attachments?

You might want to consider online collaboration and file sharing options, especially now.

The classic way to go is the offer by Google – Docs, Sheets and Slides. Here you can collaborate on documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. And combine any of these into folders in the cloud platform Google Drive.

If your team works on Macs, Pages, Numbers, and Keynote also have collaboration options, and you can set up shared iCloud folders.

Another popular file-sharing option is Dropbox, which can make files available to anyone online.

Remote work etiquette to keep communication hassle-free

Now you’re all set for tools to keep your team above water during the crisis. But adapting your business communication to remote work goes way beyond knowing what tech to use.

It’s just as vital to adapt your behavior to the new situation, and the same goes for your colleagues and employees. Remote work requires a new kind of etiquette.

Here are some pointers.

Take stock of everyone’s situation

If you’re a manager, it’s vital to take stock of everyone’s home situation, but without being intrusive.

How good is their internet connection? Which particular challenges are they facing? Do they take care of young children or elderly relatives? Do they have any inevitable daily engagements?

This will help you figure out who can realistically take care of which tasks – and when. And who is available for group meetings at which times.

Establish guidelines for video conferencing

Talking about meetings – now’s the time to establish ground rules for video conferences.

Once you’ve figured out when everyone is available and able to keep distractions out, your guidelines should aim to ensure smooth communication.

That starts with keeping kids and pets out of the room (no matter how cute they are). Background – both visible and audible – should not be distracting.

Everyone is responsible for checking their tech ahead of meetings. And while they’re ongoing, the default mic setting should be mute.

Don’t micro-manage

Employees sprawling on their couch in their pajamas, munching Doritos out of the bag and binging on Netflix.

This horror vision currently drives many managers to make call after (video) call. You’ve got to keep track of people, right?

True, but not like that.

Your colleagues and employees want to be productive. And being stuck in an endless series of video calls is stopping them.

How, then, can you keep tabs?

Establish procedures and accountability trackers

It should be clear to everyone who needs to contact whom in which scenarios, and at which times, and on which platforms.

Trouble with the Cloud? WhatsApp the IT guy. Client complaint? Post a task on Slack and tag your supervisor.

In the same way, you can set down rules with which everyone can track their progress and document what they get up to.

Starting your week by setting goals and outlining workflows on Trello, or keeping a team to-do with assigned tasks on Basecamp can go a long way.

Conclusion

Completely adapting your communication to remote work is not easy.

There are going to be slip-ups and mistakes. There is going to be frustration.

But ultimately, it is worth it to put in focused effort, rather than wing it or wait out the crisis in the hope of going back to the way things were before.

For one thing – nobody knows how long the corona crisis will last. And you probably can’t afford to take chances.

More importantly: experts agree that the landscape of work is undergoing a lasting change. Remote work will remain extremely important after corona.

Improving your communication strategy can give you an edge right now, but you’ll profit from it far beyond.

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