Having a global team can cut overhead costs and give you access to a greater pool of talent. It can also lead to a breakdown of communication and negatively affect productivity. Connecting your teams and making it easy for employees to work together—no matter where they are physically located—should be a top priority.

While most construction employees will need to be on-site, many of the administrative and planning positions can take place from anywhere. There are a lot of benefits to doing so, if you have good communication channels in place.

Today’s global workforce allows organizations to hire top talent from anywhere and everywhere. This is a wonderful way to increase productivity, impact, and revenue. However, it can also cause communication breakdowns that can be catastrophic. Leaders find that maintaining good communication within offices that employ remote teams to be one of their greatest challenges.

Studies report that between 20-25% of people work remotely at some frequency. Between working remotely and being away from the desk for internal or external meetings, managers spend around 20% of their day simply tracking down people for conversations, needed files, or to have a quick question answered.

There is nothing more frustrating for leaders and team members alike than sending the same message over multiple communication channels such as text, email, social media messaging, voicemail, etc.

The answer to crossing the communication divide is to implement a single means of communicating and sharing information. Before you make any decisions on the specific messaging application, learning platform, or file sharing service, survey your teams to see what they are already using. Most employees will use a mix of both company-sanctioned and personal applications to do their work.

Learning what people are already using is critical to the adoption of any technology that is implemented. If you lead a remote team that is already comfortable with Google G Suite, and you implement Microsoft Office, you may run into resistance or other issues. Finding that half of your team has been using Slack for years makes it an easy decision to invest in the software for the entire organization, helping all departments communicate seamlessly.

Crossing the communication divide is more than messaging and file sharing. It is about fostering relationships. The video conferencing tool Zoom is a great way to get your entire team—both in-office and those working remotely—together. Encouraging face-to-face meetings (even if it is done virtually) will help reduce miscommunication and encourage camaraderie.

By having the right channels in place, you can set your team up for communication success and reap the benefits of a global workforce.

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