Guide to Working Remotely Through Collude

16 April, 2020

Guide to Working Remotely Through Collude

As many businesses around the world move into unchartered territory in terms of remote working, more & more are turning to Collude to help them to collaborate and build online communities. This guide will give you advice about how you can effectively use Collude when working remotely.

Let your team know what is happening

It’s important that your teams have complete transparency/visibility to what’s going on, within the business. Use the feeds to let everyone know what’s happening, and use the news section to provide your community with any important news/updates.

Don’t just post random updates, make sure that they are relevant, and for any more specific updates you can create a dedicated group.

P.S You should also think about changing the section name from “Feeds” to something more relevant, such as Team Updates. Encourage your teams to share their work updates, such as any success achieved or lessons learned that day.

Quick Tip: Share something new, with someone new every day – you can do this in the feeds or chat.

Create dedicated team/department groups

When your teams are spread out across the nation or world, its important to have dedicated spaces, so that each team can continue to connect and discuss their key work topics. Collude groups gives your teams a space to connect certain groups/teams talking, sharing and updating each other in creating synergy across the business.

Pro Tips:

1. Create groups for each of your departments/or functions. It’s important to have a leadership team, so that the heads of each department/team can come together on a frequent basis.
2. Only discuss and share information related to work within groups as it should not become another social chatting space (that’s what the feeds are for).

Organize and promote your virtual training events and team meetings

Just because you’re working from home it doesn’t mean that you can’t still run effective training sessions and social events. You can use Collude to promote your events and make sure that all team members turn up, and then you can use free software like Zoom to conduct your meetings.

Pro Tips:

1. Give your team members an adequate amount of notice for any events, so that they plan their attendance accordingly.
2. Have a bit of fun, during these challenging times its important that you help to keep your team’s spirits up. If your team has a monthly drinks social, plan it, then promote it via Collude, and then run it using software like zoom.

Have quick chat with your colleagues

Working from home can often feel extremely lonely, as no one likes burning the midnight oil alone.  Therefore, it’s important that your team & community members support each other, on a regular and personal basis. You can use Collude to chat with individual members.

Our Chatting Tips:

1. Have a weekly catch up with each member of your team.
2. Every week assign each team member a buddy, with whom they have to chat to and support.
3. You call also call your team with Collude, by simply clicking on the phone icon next to their profile.

Ask Questions

If you have a question don’t search google for hours – Use collude. Your team members may be able to answer your questions or they might even have the same questions as you. The forum section is the perfect space for asking questions.

You can develop forum headings based upon the type of question and users who will benefit from it most, such as brand questions, that the marketing team members will be able to answer.

P.S. You can even rename the module from Forums to Questions.

Top Tips Recap – In relation to COVID-19

 Many of you may be reading this advice as the pandemic that is COVID-19 continues to spread rapidly around the globe, so here is a recap of our top tips, along with some COVID-19 specific advice, to help your teams make the most of Collude.

• Remember sharing is caring – the more information, advice, and news that you share with your team, the more your team will feel supported. P.S think about setting up a mentoring or buddy scheme amongst your networkers. Also keep your news feeds positive.
• Just Listen –Don’t just scroll through your fellow networker’s updates, take the time to read it and respond, with your wise words of wisdom.
• Have a schedule – Working from home has significant benefits (especially during the COVID-19 pandemic). To try and avoid a decrease in your work productivity it’s important that you maintain a schedule. When developing your schedule think about when you will need to be available for meetings, when your colleagues will be online and when you work most productively.
• Even though you can’t sit at lunch and have a chat with your other team members you can use Collude groups to come together.
• Everything doesn’t always have to be about work, especially during these tough times it’s important that you continue to lift your team’s spirit. Share some jokes on the feeds and organize a virtual social games night.