How to improve virtual collaboration in the enterprise

Any team collaboration tool works only if employees use it, so it’s important to encourage engagement. Michael Klett, co-founder and CTO at online billing platform Chargify, based in San Antonio, said starting to improve virtual collaboration culture could be as simple as holding regular stand-up meetings over Zoom or encouraging employees to update their Slack statuses throughout the day.

Other tips for how to improve virtual collaboration culture include the following.

Establish video norms

Cultural norms in video conferencing vary from organization to organization. The key, according to DeVry University’s Campbell, is to make a conscious decision at the leadership level and clearly communicate expectations. “If I’m on the call, everybody turns their video on because they know I won’t start the meeting otherwise,” he said. “I want to see you, and I think we make a better connection that way.”

Sometimes, norms evolve organically. Based on staff feedback, for example, DeVry’s leadership decided passive participants in large meetings don’t need to use their cameras, “but if you’re engaging in the conversation, your video’s on,” Campbell said.

James McGlennon

Similarly, Liberty Mutual’s McGlennon said he always turns on his camera to create more personal interactions, as leaders must consistently model the digital behavior they want to see from their employees. “I think it’s important for us to lead Anecdotal evidence suggests many users don’t mind seeing their colleagues but dislike viewing themselves on screen. “Imagine if there was always a mirror in front of you whenever you were in a meeting,” said Modus Create’s Falkman, adding that Zoom participants can use the “hide self” feature to minimize those distracting “I look tired today” moments.

For some organizations, making video optional better aligns with their corporate culture. “We tell our employees that, if they don’t feel comfortable being on camera sometimes, don’t be,” said EDB CTO Linster. “We’re conscious that people are working full time out of their homes, and we want to respect their privacy.”

Another consideration: to mute or not to mute? “Encourage people to stay unmuted as that tends to be a good indication of overall engagement,” suggested Matthew Feeley, director of modern applications and data intelligence at Netrix, an IT services provider based in Chicago. Participants might initially worry about background noise, he added, but technology leaders should reassure them that noise suppression features on major platforms, like Teams and Zoom, almost always suffice.

Work out loud

Encouraging employees to “work out loud” also helps organizations get the most out of their team collaboration tech, according to Campbell. Sharing questions, successes and struggles “broadly and often” on group collaboration channels can break down siloes, build engagement, increase transparency and create persistent, contextual treasure troves of organizational knowledge for future shared reference.

“Culturally, that’s something we continue to work on, although we’re getting better,” Campbell said, pointing out that DeVry’s technology team has started moving standard Scrum meetings to a dedicated Teams channel. Eventually, he’d like to see all university employees posting relatively unfiltered status updates to project or even department channels. Working out loud helps teams feel more connected and enables leaders to see at a glance the areas that require their involvement.

“As much as possible, we take [conversations] away from email and direct messages and put them in public channels and shared workspaces, where other people can actually view them,” airSlate’s Shakhnovich agreed. In this way, virtual collaboration technology helps veteran employees stay on the same page and new team members get up to speed, he added.

Work side Today’s team collaboration tools have come a long way but still largely fail to facilitate the kinds of unscheduled conversations that readily take place in a physical office, where colleagues can informally chat about shared projects in person. “There really needs to be a better method of creating that virtual hallway where off-the-cuff conversations can take place as they would in a normal office setting,” EDB’s Linster said.

“That’s the biggest battle to fight,” Victoria agreed, adding he encourages his team to occasionally have open, agenda-free video sessions to recreate the experience of working together in person. “I’ve seen some teams just set up a Google Meet session and let it run all day with people dropping in and out as needed.”

Falkman said his team hosts similar co-working sessions, a tradition that began by accident one day when a weekly meeting petered out and the participants found themselves working on different projects while still on a shared Zoom. “This was probably the closest experience I have had to working in an office since the pandemic began,” he added. “We were just casually talking about nothing, in the Seinfeld sense. We all laughed when we realized we were all just working — together.”