As a sales professional, your primary focus is to push your company’s products/services to your prospects and clients. The importance of being on the road and meeting clients face-to-face is to continue to build your network which is a huge part of a successful salesperson sales strategy. But what if we are not able to meet clients face-to-face and communicate our services? When COVID-19 hit, many industries began to see the cancelation of face-to-face meetings, conferences, and networking events. These cancelations impacted the way sales professionals networked within their industry. How are sales professionals able to communicate to their clients? Additionally, with offices being closed, individuals are reluctant to meet with you face-to-face during these unprecedented times.
The lack of face-to-face interaction also impacted internal communication within organizations. But how does working from home impact relationships within an organization? What challenges do employees face regarding communication? People can utilize Skype, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, or Google Talk to arrange a video meeting. But not having the ability to interact with people in the office face-to-face caused a challenge with communication. It is more difficult to build relationships and camaraderie through a computer screen. The so-called water cooler chats between employees talking about the latest office gossip is nonexistent. The lack of personal communication can lead to poor relationships within the workplace.
Another aspect that employees are facing is the lack of culture within an organization. Having the ability to not be able to attend company work events will also negatively impact the employee’s ability to build upon those existing relationships while trying to form new relationships. We see companies starting to implement things like virtual happy hours to improve communication and company culture, but as we can see there is no substitute for personal interaction.
In my past, I worked for a company that we played basketball every Thursday night. Every employee regardless of ability was invited to play. Afterwards, employees typically stuck around and shared a few drinks. We often heard from people not affiliated with the company that this was a great way to build interoffice relationships. But what people on the outside did not realize is that this weekly activity-built office camaraderie, strong interpersonal relationships, and teamwork. We can see how important these relationships are to an organization and the lengths companies go to grow these relationships.
Telecommuting can cause communication challenges within an organization. So how do employees overcome the communication challenges they face when telecommuting? The distinct challenges such as time zones, cultural differences to the sheer unfamiliarity of using web-based tools to communicate created obstacles that every virtual team must work through. But are these challenges going away? Despite these challenges are people going to be called back into their office any time soon. I believe it is in the better interest of the companies to implement measures to ensure that virtual teams have the training and tools they need to communicate effectively. This implementation would greatly enhance the ability to communicate both in a regional environment and globally. Additionally, we hear terms such as real time awareness when it comes to virtual teams. But we know that email is not an effective tool when it come to real time communication. Web based product such as team chats have given the ability to team to communicate in real time regardless of where they are located globally. These types of platforms hold each member of the team accountable and enabled team members to continue to collaborate in person rather than via email.
It’s time to focus on communication. It’s time to embrace the challenge that companies face with communications and lack of face-to-face interactions in this virtual word and start to utilize new technologies. In today’s world, companies have an advantage to open their open positions to candidates across the globe. Virtual teams in today’s workplace are essential to the success of the organizations. Time to embrace change in the virtual world!
References:
Blrt Team. 2016, May 11. In Better Living with Blrt. Retrieved from
https://www.blrt.com/blog/the-advantages-and-disadvantages-of-telecommuting/
Healy, R. 2012, November 1. 5 challenges of telecommuting and how to overcome them. Retrieved from
sra5313 says
Mpw5189,
You are right COVID-19 has prompted leaders from all organization types to think creatively in order to continue to lead their employees through this pandemic. While the pandemic has crippled the economy and put many out of business, it appears that those with an online presence through social media have found innovative ways to survive. Nearly every fast-food chain is now utilizing a “order ahead” feature, in addition to never-before delivery options from larger dine-in franchises. As you mentioned it has been difficult, Schein’s theory is focused on planned change, the current pandemic is an unplanned event, yet many of Schein’s ideas are applicable. Schein’s first theory explains that change involves learning something new, such as telework, telecommute, and leaders telecommunicating with employees (Penn State, 2020). The second being no change will occur unless motivation is present, the pandemic and desperation associated with the economic shutdown has been the motivation necessary for organization cultural change to take place (Penn State, 2020. Schein’s fifth theory that change is a multistage cycle with each stage negotiated before a stable change can be recognized as taking place also rings true to the current work environments (Penn State, 2020). While the new working landscape may difficult to adjust to as you said it is important that we embrace the new virtual working environment largely because it is revealing untapped financial benefits from savings in energy expenses, business rental space, and the time saved for every employee that no longer has to commute to and from work.
Reference
Pennsylvania State University (2020). Leadership in Global Context – OLEAD 410. Lesson 05:
Learning and Change in a Global Setting. Planned change. Retrieved from https://psu.instructure.com/courses/2075490/modules/items/29697176
nxk5156 says
You make some really good points on the difficulty of communicating during times when face-to-face interaction is nearly impossible. I work for an MNE that has always had some form of virtual communication capability so that we could interact with our associates that were not local to our home office. We’ve used a couple of different technologies but ended up settling on Microsoft Teams which has video and screen sharing features. Some of our challenges however, were not our software capabilities but our local broadband and internet connectivity which has been more robust in some countries than in others. During COVID, I think we’ve been able to keep the flow of communication moving with some techniques I will share below. I believe these strategies have been helpful in maintaining or even enhancing relationships during this time of isolation even as we have all been hyper-focused on working together to navigate this crisis both internally at work and externally at home.
One thing we have done to manage communication and relationships is use the video feature on MS Teams. When you use the audio feature only, you lose the ability to view nonverbal cues of your parter or audience. This is particularly important when trying to collaborate to solve difficult problems as we have been doing for COVID. We want to be able to see facial expressions and body movements (even if it’s only partial) to gauge the way our partner(s) may be feeling about the discussion. Having the video on during the meeting gives us the ability to see nonverbal cues and respond accordingly. We also use the video during the meetings simply to catch up, share how we’re doing or what we’re doing to pass the time in quarantine. Seeing each other face to face builds a connection that audio cannot provide. It’s also nice to ‘see’ people’s faces, smiles and laughter. It brings joy during this gloomy time which is a great morale booster.
Another approach we take to address communication challenges is using our internal social media platform to connect with others and build employee morale. We use Yammer, which can be used by all of our associates globally to share stories, words of encouragement or simply to say ‘thank you’ to someone. It’s been great to connect to other associates around the world. Our Communications team and other leaders will sometimes start a thread on a topic that inspires others to join. Around the April or May timeframe, when things were really bad, we started a campaign to say ‘thank you’ to those who went above and beyond while trying to move associates to home. At that point of the crisis, we were working tirelessly and seemingly endlessly to move people home who normally didn’t have the capability. This was a daunting task as associates actually had to move computers (PCs not laptops), keyboards and monitors to their homes so that they could work. There was one associate in Malaysia that strapped his computer and monitor to his scooter and drove it home. Talk about dedication to his job. Someone posted a picture of him on his scooter with the equipment on Yammer and I thought that it was an inspirational story to share globally so I recommend to our Communications team that we can share his story in our monthly newsletter.
These are certainly trying times and when you add the complexities of communicating across cultures, it can be very difficult collaborate. Fortunately, there are technologies that can be used like MS Teams or Yammer to communicate effectively and still work together to achieve our corporate and personal goals. But I have to be honest, I’m looking forward to COVID being over. The end can’t come soon enough.