Five Ways Microsoft Teams Can Empower Your Remote Workforce

Creating a remote team can bring many advantages to your organization, like lower overhead, a larger talent pool and more flexible operating hours. But there are a few limitations to keep in mind. The nature of remote work can limit social interaction and the innovative power of teamwork. Is it possible to still get the benefits of a remote workforce while addressing these challenges? With Microsoft Teams, it is. Teams offers powerful collaboration tools to help your employees connect in real-time, either through voice, chat or video conferencing. Here are five ways Teams can help you support and optimize your remote team.

Host Better Online Meetings
Meetings are an essential way to keep your team aligned and informed on company news. The problem is that not all meetings are inclusive. For example, when you have a meeting in the office but connect with remote workers, they may not feel like they're included or like they can even participate. Teams uses tools like video, chat and presentation capabilities to make sure everyone feels involved.

Brainstorm and Develop Ideas as a Team
A big benefit of working together in an office is the ability to collaborate and develop new ideas as a team, and whenever the need arises. It can be a challenge to get the same effect digitally. Teams is changing that reality with collaboration tools like the Whiteboard app, which allows your team to work on ideas together in real time from anywhere in the world.

Promote Social Interaction Across Your Remote Team
Social interaction improves creativity, mental health and job satisfaction. Effective social engagement can be difficult to achieve via remote teams. Teams addresses this problem by allowing you to create events that help your employees socialize and improve morale. Additionally, you can create channels dedicated to non-work topics to promote socialization and networking.

Train Groups of All Sizes
As a leader, you need to train individuals and groups of people. This can difficult since everyone learns in different ways and at different speeds. Adding geographic separation to training meetings makes it even more challenging. Teams provides helpful tools that help streamline remote training efforts. For example, admins can record meetings which can later be distributed to your team, converted into an easy-to-use document or a combination of the two. Additionally, the chat feature allows people to take their time to formulate and ask questions. These tools help trainers adapt the content to the unique needs of their team.

Organization and Integrations
Microsoft Teams helps you organize channels to fit project needs. Some companies organize channels by teams, projects or work type. Channels are also a great place to store documents relevant to the work your team is doing. This helps everyone spend less time searching for the information they need and more time working on what’s important. Teams can also integrate with other tools, like your favorite project management software, to keep everyone on the same page.

A remote team can give your organization the agility that few others have. But you first need to understand the weaknesses of remote work and take steps to solve them. Microsoft Teams to learn how it can promote teamwork and innovation in your organization.