Every effective team needs to develop strong working relationships. By getting to know each other better and learning more about their own particular strengths, team members stand a much better chance of working well together and improving the quality of results, while this increase in morale can also boost their productivity.
By maintaining regular communication and encouraging collaboration, your business can foster healthy relationships between colleagues, clients and customers. Although face-to-face meetings have previously been essential for preserving these relationships, businesses can now keep people connected through just a simple conference call.
Reducing travel costs and providing you with a constant, convenient line of communication, modern web conferencing platforms can help you bring teams closer together in 2019.
According to a study carried out by Virgin, almost 100% of people believe that face-to-face communication is essential for creating stronger relationships. However, that same study also found that 84% of professionals prefer remote meetings, with 83% working remotely at least some of the time and 70% of millennials believing they don’t need to be in the office every day.
Since more than half of message interpretation comes from body language and facial expression, the need for face-to-face meetings will never be fully eradicated. However, the rise of web conferencing has significantly lowered their importance, with modern platforms allowing you to reduce the lengthy travel times and costs involved with communicating face-to-face.
More importantly, reducing the need for travel means that colleagues and clients are no longer restricted by long distances. Instead of communicating sporadically through confusing email chains, entire teams can now come together through a simple conference call to discuss project progress, create new ideas and provide feedback to one another.
Since so many businesses now have teams based all over the world, this flexible form of communication ensures remote workers never feel isolated and employees can seamlessly work together anywhere. Through web conferencing, teams can join meetings from a multitude of devices and ultimately maintain strong relationships from opposite ends of the planet.
As teams no longer have to worry about booking out meeting rooms or lengthy travel times, web conferencing allows them to connect at any time. While differing time zones may prove problematic for some team members, colleagues and clients can now communicate at a time which best suits them; helping them to react quickly to urgent situations and deal with any issues without delay.
When staying connected is so simple, teams are much likelier to communicate on a more regular basis and develop stronger relationships. Since a recent LoopUp study found that only 12% of people feel as comfortable when on video calls, modern web conferencing solutions are undoubtedly the most effective method of allowing teams to connect at any time.
Web conferencing isn’t just about offering a quick and convenient solution, however, since it’s also a fantastic method of carrying out team building activities. For example, since you’re able to bring entire teams together on one call, this is a great opportunity for using icebreaker exercises and getting attendees to come out of their shells. By offering more memorable introductions, teams can quickly get to know each other a little better, learning more about each individual attendee and recognising how they can collaborate more effectively.
In short, team building activities such as games, trivia and brainteasers will bring a bit of personality to your conference calls, helping to motivate attendees and boost their morale. Perhaps more importantly, these online icebreakers will bring teams much closer together and provide a more productive discussion.
While traditional face-to-face meetings undoubtedly offer a superior level of communication, they can also severely hamper a team’s productivity and efficiency. Not only do participants have to synchronise their schedules and worry about booking out a meeting space, but physical sessions are often prone to distractions, delays and found to be particularly unproductive.
In addition to allowing teams to meet at a time and place that best suits them, web conferencing offers a much more interactive and activity-based meeting experience. Although teams will still be communicating solely via audio, they’ll also be connected through the internet; with modern platforms now allowing participants to share their screens with everyone else.
This is a particularly useful feature for anyone delivering online training or offering technical support, but it’s also a fantastic method of improving the focus and productivity of meeting sessions. Since there are usually so many people involved, it’s often incredibly difficult to keep track of the discussion during a traditional conference call.
The best web conferencing platforms will give you full visibility as to who’s speaking (allowing you to mute any annoying background noise as necessary), while screen sharing ensures attendees can always stay on track. Ultimately, this puts them in a much better position to truly participate in the meeting and contribute to the discussion, helping teams to collaborate more effectively and continue to push projects forward.
When teams are able to collaborate so effectively in meetings, their relationships will inevitably grow much stronger—and your business stands to reap the benefits.
