Social distancing and coronavirus-related lockdowns have caused well-established teams to fragment without the unifying factor of meeting in a physical office. However, organisations are starting to find new ways of fostering a feeling of membership and belonging for those still working from home. For many, of course, this isn’t new. Companies with global teams have kept in touch by non-physical means for many years and there are now more and better tools to enable workers to collaborate, participate and socialise.
Jason Lane
It’s not just the habitual metric of whether employees are being productive that matters. It’s also important to make sure employees feel engaged and part of a team that is fulfilling a mission. Research has uncovered that engaged employees are more productive and more likely to succeed at what they do, and some surveys have uncovered a substantial difference in the performance of teams that are actively engaged compared to ones that are not.
One survey from Gallup, for example, found that businesses that have engaged their workforce are 21% more profitable than the ones that have a poorly engaged workforce. The benefits come not just in profitability but also in productivity, with the same survey finding that engaged teams are 17% more productive than poorly engaged counterparts.
The challenge is to achieve that engagement over a distance. Video is one of the best ways to replicate real-world interaction. This is because so many of the communication cues that people recognise are visual. Smiling, looking confused or maintaining eye contact are all indicators of sentiment and responsiveness that simply don’t come across in text-based communications, even though we all rely on chat a lot and the popularity of WhatsApp and other messaging platforms gives that away.
“It’s really important to use multiple channels to keep connected with teams and foster employee engagement,” says Jason Lane, a Senior Employee Experience Business Partner at RingCentral.
“The rich capabilities of video enable the three main elements of verbal communication – the words, tone of voice and body language – to be used in an interaction”
“When all three are used together, the communication is likely to be clearer and provide a much richer experience, which is just what homeworkers need to truly feel part of their team and to keep those feelings of isolation at bay.”
The rise of video meetings is just one way teams are keeping connected and collaborative. Many companies are also using video conferencing tools to run virtual social events, conduct cooking and yoga lessons, and practice public speaking skills through programmes such as Toastmasters. That combination of visual and aural connection fosters an invaluable level of engagement in today’s disparate workforce.
Video has become a popular method of communication in business and personal interactions. The rise of TikTok is just one indication of this but, in the post-COVID world, the world of work has changed to the extent that the capabilities and warmth of video can provide stronger communication that truly drives employee engagement. Harnessing video communication tools to drive engagement provides obvious benefits both to the enterprise and the employees as the working environment becomes more fragmented and geographically distributed.
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