Workplace Collaboration tools that close the gap
By: Rudyard Hopkins
Tags: Collaboration, Video Conferencing, Zoom, Instant Messaging, Slack

Don’t you fret. You are not the only one that has experienced a gap.

Instead of the cometic gaps, the kind of gaps that we are focusing on today is in the communication that happens or doesn’t happen in the workplace. Today we are going to focus on tools that will help to bridge that gap.

The quality of our communication is critical. There is a science to it. Too many words and we create confusion. Too few words and we leave gaps to be filled in. Too early leaves us guessing how to make sense of what was said. Too late and thoughts turn to what could have been avoided if we knew that information earlier.

What if you were never in person to communicate? This is the reality of many who work in remote roles and companies. There is no catching a colleague in the hallway to talk through something. No chance to sit down with someone to collaborate. Less of a chance to talk to someone and catch the tone and body language used. There are obvious benefits to communicating in person. Communication challenges that face employees, especially ones that are remote, are being addressed by some tremendous tools.

Here is the breakdown of two tools:

1.Video conference tool (Zoom)

Remote or co-location, trying to find a time and place to meet is hard. Finding an open room can be compared to the likelihood of finding gold dust. It almost requires magic. It may not only be finding an open room but also a room that is big enough for your group etc. Plenty of people resort to walking around the building 5 minutes before a meeting to checking to see if they can find a room where the scheduled meeting was cancelled.

Enter video conferencing. Not only can this a key solution for remote teams but is critical for co-located teams as well. Quick meeting creation, recording of meetings, annotation features to use during the call, chat feature and breakout rooms can all be tremendously helpful.

When team members or stakeholders not available for the call just record the call and share out the link

Record user research calls and use the dialog feature to go back through the recording and search for certain phrases used or key insights

Messaging someone and the point is not getting across, jump on a quick video call to enable there to be more questions asked and less assumptions made

Can’t find a room for a meeting? Do a video conference call

During a video conference call you are working on discovery work and need to break into smaller groups for an exercise. Create additional breakout rooms for those groups.

While sharing a design with the group you are trying to articulate your feedback but the other person can’t see where your finger is pointing. Use the annotation feature during the call to give everyone in the conversation context.

During the video conference call a topic is mentioned that brings to mind a valuable resource but the topic is not outlined in the scope of the meeting. Share a link to the resource in the chat feature.

2. Instant Messaging tool (Slack)

Email as a real time communication tool in the workplace doesn’t work. The format tends to be verbose and feedback loops on them get bigger and bigger. “I’ll respond when I get a minute” we say. A drive for clarity turns into a soliloquy. CC and BCC groups get fuzzy quickly. Overloaded inboxes become the bain of our existence. In person is always powerful but when in the world do you just find someone free at their desk across the office, on a different floor or a different state or even country?

Enter the new age of instant messaging. Facebook has Workplace. Microsoft has Teams. Atlassian had Stride (now migrating to Slack). There are no shortage of these tools. Instant messaging, integrations with numerous tools (Zoom etc.), channels and direct messages, pinning notes to a conversation, sharing context, building rapport and even reporting bugs in to engineering teams.

Need to get a message to a specific group of people but allow for others to have visibility. Tag the group and post the message in a channel.

A conversation with a colleague has some details missing and clarity is needed. Instantly start a zoom call in your conversation and continue the conversation in person.

Create a direct message to a new group of people that are collaborating on a new initiative. If the conversation and collaboration proves valuable, convert the direct message into a private channel.

Have notes or details from the last meeting etc. that are important to keep visible to a channel. Upload the document or post the message and then pin it to the top of the channel.

In one channel it is important to share the context of the conversation that happened in another channel. Copy the link for that conversation and post it in the channel you are currently in. Add to their context.

Challenges

While these are tremendous tools, there are two sides to every story. So what are the cons?