Last month one of our team members moved out of Portland, all the way to another state! Social Media Maven Josselyn Haldeman now calls Olympia, Washington home. We couldn’t be happier for her, but working remotely can present unique challenges.
As a company, we value the personal connection and efficient brainstorming that can come with in-person meetings. It’s one of the reasons that we make an effort to have initial consultations with new clients before we even write their project proposals. In a typical week, though, we may not see each other’s radiant faces in person. We’re busy making marketing magic at Upswept HQ, in coffee shops and home offices, or anywhere we find ourselves with a speedy internet connection and a job to do.
We felt confident we could meet these remote working challenges head-on, mostly due to our strong communication. To that end, we’re continually refining our process of internal communication. We use a handful of tools to help keep us all connected and knowledgeable about the work.
TOOLS OF THE TRADE
If you’re looking for a task management system, we’re big fans of Freedcamp. Slack is great for multi-channel workplace chatter. Zoom Communications allows us to make eye contact over any distance, and share the documents we’re working on as easily as passing them across a table. We’re also big fans of the Google suite of apps that allow us to collaborate directly all in the same document. With all of these tools at our disposal, long-distance collaboration becomes much easier. Not to say that there hasn’t been a learning curve.
The best way for a team to use a tool or service effectively is to, well, use it! You’ll never know if the tool is right for your team if you don’t get everyone on board. On Team Upswept, we talk a lot about different protocols for setting up tasks and refining processes. This helps us all stay on the same page for how the service is meant to be used, and thus helps us use it more effectively.
We know that we can continue to collaborate with Josselyn because we already have an effective system of communication in place. Across town or across state lines, not a lot has to change. We credit the success of our communication plan first to a common dedication to openly collaborating and operating as a team. This is one of our core philosophies, both in working with each other and with our clients. So if you’re looking for more than an impersonal client/firm relationship, reach out to us and let’s get collaborating!
