9 Steps for Effective Team Collaboration in 2024

Are you struggling to put your ‘star team’ together?

In today’s competitive landscape where a team is the pillar of any organization, managers tend to focus only on their lineup.

But, what about their productivity levels?

As a leader and project manager, it’s equally important to look far beyond simply hiring a roster of high performers. Focus on introducing the best free team communication software to master the art of working together seamlessly without any geographical constraints.

According to the Workplace Productivity and Communications Technology Report, 67% of professionals spend an average of 6 out of 9 hours communicating at work. These numbers emphasize the importance of communication in any organization and how it can bring effectiveness to the team.

So, let’s fasten the seatbelts and dive into the world of open communication and the effectiveness of project collaboration tools to empower your team into a well-oiled, collaborative machine.

 

9 Steps for Effective Team Collaboration 

Here’s how you can bring effectiveness to your team collaboration-: 

1. Use online tools for team collaboration

Online collaboration tools scale up productivity by 30% and companies leveraging such tools have reported drastic increases in their productivity levels. So, are you ready? 

Well, modern projects demand modern software solutions. Yes, you hit the nail on the head; you cannot manage complex projects with simple spreadsheets. With your growing business, you need to switch to online tools for team collaboration keeping your team in sync with respective projects.

Leverage Kroolo and create as many workspaces as possible. Add members, define roles, and customize team settings for smooth collaboration ensuring efficient productivity.

2. Define everyone's roles and responsibilities

Want to bring effectiveness to team collaboration? Define everyone’s roles and responsibilities and keep everything clear. Don’t let your team get confused with their roles and purpose. Guide them and specify who is accountable to whom to promote smooth operation at the workplace.

Because the team you’re building should also understand whom to turn to in case if any complexity arises or during team conflict. 

But how to make roles & responsibilities clear?

Use Kroolo & manage your workspace and team in one place. Define the specific role for your team members, for example, as an owner, as a manager, as a member, or as a guest. Depending on the permission and access control, a member has a specific role to play in the team.

3. Make sure that everyone feels heard

No matter the area of interest, every member of your team must feel heard and respected. Your team is the cornerstone and lifeblood of your business that can help you generate greater profits.

Giving equal respect and importance often boosts their confidence and empowers them to take up any challenging project and deliver their best performance ever.

4. Communicate as much as you can

99.1% of employees want to be part of an organization that nourishes honest communication. This shows the importance of transparency and open communication within the team. Therefore, promote an open culture in your organization and make communication your strongest pillar.

Tag and ask your team for updates on any project. You can use Kroolo to set the status of your project and prioritize tasks to meet the deadline without spending much time on offline meetings. Moreover, share the document with your team and allow space for questions. The more people share their queries, the more comfortable and collaborative it becomes.

5. Focus on making meetings productive

Do you attend too many meetings in a week and thus, find it difficult to focus on your work?

Do you often fall asleep during a meeting?

Well, according to the Union of International Associations (UIA), 45% of meetings are pointless. An individual spends 24 billion hours annually on unproductive meetings.

Stop conducting monotonous meetings. It’s time to buckle up productivity levels with a pre-defined agenda. Gluing to your laptop screen to attend long sessions often demotivate employee and will waste your productive hours. 

Instead, hop on to a comprehensive project report and share it with your teammates; keep them updated before the meetings to avoid long-stretched discussions. 

Doing this in Kroolo – one of the remote team collaboration tools will ensure that every teammate is well versed with the status of your project and therefore you don’t waste time on sharing repetitive details in meetings.

6. Stay as organized as you can

According to Forbes ASAP, the typical executive wastes 150 hours a year, almost one month, searching for lost information. Therefore, it’s important to clear off clutter and keep your workplace organized and neater. You will have an easier time getting tasks done without many distractions.

As a good leader, pay close attention to your team management and regularly check on the status of the tasks assigned. You can use collaboration tools for virtual teams to connect with every individual in one place and track their tasks and activities intelligently.

7. Celebrate every small achievement

Celebrate every small achievement and give shoutouts outside the team. Some goals might be unattainable for individuals but when you celebrate wins and don’t hesitate to acknowledge, it empowers them to deliver beyond their benchmark.

Create channels in Kroolo and celebrate achievement within the team where every conversation is managed centrally. You can @mention, reply, react, forward, and attach files and important project reports in the threads as proof of accomplishment to motivate other team members.

8. Get everyone involved in a discussion 

According to Frans Johansson, author of The Medici Effect the most innovative ideas happen at “the intersection” – the place where ideas from different industries and cultures collide. So, working together facilitates idea generation and boosts your creativity to the next best level.

With multiple suggestions and ideas, leaders often access old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope to present the best version with some curious combination. So technically, in this process, members learn from each other collectively which boosts employee morale and motivation.

9. Promote team-building opportunities

Want to seize team-building opportunities? Arrange team events, meals, and icebreakers. This will help them understand each other, strengthening relationships at the helm. Set up a channel for team discussion or let them interact or collaborate through direct messages.

 

Best 5 Collaboration Tools for Remote Teams

1. Dropbox

Dropbox is a cloud-based collaboration software that lets your team create, share, manage, and track content efficiently. Such a platform is easily accessible and you can share files and documents with one click from a desktop or mobile phone. Leverage this tool to manage your remote team by syncing all your tasks and projects in one place with popular integrations like Zoom, RingCentral, or Microsoft.

Pricing

• Free plan available
• Paid plans start at $9.99 per user per month (billed annually)
• Essentials: $18 / month
• Business: $20 / user/month

 

2. Around

Around is a popular team collaboration tool that helps hybrid-remote teams create, collaborate, and connect seamlessly. You can attend pre-scheduled meetings and hop on video calls without any hassle. It offers dreamy backgrounds and ping-pong table games to add fun elements to the calls. The catch is that everyone stays engaged. No one steals the spotlight.

Pricing

• Free plan available
• Pro: $8.97 / month per user
• Business: $15.97 / month per user

 

3. Notion

Notion is among the best collaboration tools for a remote team that lets you maintain a repository of documents, and share access within your team to make changes in real-time. Typically, it’s a place to record and refer and keep everyone on the same page.

Pricing

• Free plan available
• Plus – $8 per user/ month billed annually
• Business – $15 per user/ month billed annually

 

4. Asana

Asana is a commonly used online project management software that offers project and individual boards and lets you create tasks and subtasks with utmost ease. Such a collaboration tool help the remote team to create a timeline, set deadline assign tasks, and set priorities. Moreover, Asana also sends you notifications on the completion of tasks.

Pricing

• Free plan available
• Premium: $10.99 per user, per month, billed annually
• Business: $24.99 per user, per month, billed annually

 

5. RingCentral MVP 

RingCentral MVP is a complete VoIP phone system for remote collaboration. It offers a one-stop solution for messaging, video calls, and connecting with your team to make communication clear and transparent. Besides, it lets you create, assign, and monitor tasks and upload and share documents with your team members at any point in time.

Pricing 

• Free plan available
• Core plan: $20 per user per month (billed annually)
• Advanced plan: $25 per user per month (billed annually)

P.S.: Check plans for video, events, revenue intelligence, and contact center