Even if you work as a part of a remote team, you might want to rent an office in Dubai to optimize your workflow. Most likely, your staff will become more productive if you have a chance to meet in person at least from time to time. A modern and comfortable premise will produce a favorable impression on your clients and contractors when they come to see you. In this article, we will analyze the best practices of organizing a virtual team collaboration and try to understand how to fit a physical office in such an approach to work.
Create Overlapping Working Schedules
Even though your team members might be living in different time zones, they should overlap online for at least 3-4 hours every day. It creates a sense of belonging and increases the loyalty of employees to the company. The workers feel more motivated when they can participate in group discussions in real time. The organization benefits from such an approach because problems that require collective actions will be solved quicker.
Experts in corporate culture say that you should invent daily rituals. This can be, for instance, a brief daily video conference. Alternatively, you can run a quick planning session in text format in your preferred messenger every morning. But these sessions or conferences must be informative. In case you have nothing to discuss, you’d better omit them. Also, if some of your staffers balance work and family life, it might be wise to let them have a more flexible schedule.
Standardize Your Communications
When team members share the same physical premise, it is much easier to establish efficient communication. You would be able to rely on your interlocutor’s body language, have informal conversations in the kitchen and feel the general mood in the room. To make up for the lack of non-verbal and informal interaction online, you should standardize and prioritize your communication channels.
Select your main messenger for private dialogs and group discussions. Compile a set of rules that all the members of the team should stick to — such as to always reduce background noises or warn in advance if they might be late for a virtual meeting. Also, everyone should understand which communication channel to use for which purpose. For example, you should call your colleagues only to solve urgent issues and send emails only when you need to attach large documents to them.
Enhance Your Accountability
To prevent procrastination and improve the collaboration within the team, ask all your staffers to compile reports at the end of each week. Send them out a uniform template that they should fill in with the lists of their most prominent achievements, the number of hours they devoted to different types of tasks and so on. Depending on the scale and sphere of activity of your business, you might want to make this ritual not weekly but daily or bi-weekly.
The mission of the reports is not to create competition or encourage the professionals to beat their own records. When the person honestly summarizes their own weekly achievements, it enables them to objectively evaluate their own progress. When the team leader glances through the reports, they better understand who has the largest workload — and who needs extra stimulus to attain better results.
Organize Face-to-Face Meetings
Today, it is quite possible to collaborate with remote freelancers who live thousands of miles away from you and whom you will never meet in person. Yet if you have a chance, it would be wise to organize face-to-face meetings with your team members. These are the three most important types of gatherings that you should strive to hold:
- The initial meet-up
- Regular meetings
- One-on-one dialogs
When getting started, it would be nice to invite the whole team to your office. Some entrepreneurs prefer cafes or even bars — but that would be more suitable for celebrations. Your first meeting with colleagues should take place in the work environment. The owner of the business should set the goals of the organization, explain its rules to the staffers and answer their questions.
For regular meetings, some part of the team might be physically present in the office and the other part might join through a video conference. This should take place when you are about to initiate a large project, or have just finished one and want to summarize the results, or open a new department. For lack of a relevant occasion, you can hold such gatherings a couple of times per year just to bring the team together.
One-on-one dialogs are vital if you need to discuss confidential information. Also, a team member might need your support or advice. Personal meetings are the best way to prevent and overcome crises. Plus, they serve as a highly efficient motivation tool.
As you see, even a remote organization would benefit from having a stylish and well-equipped office in Dubai. To rent one, feel free to get in touch with ThePlace specialists.
The Advantages of Renting an Office in Dubai with ThePlace
ThePlace specialists know Dubai inside out. They can offer you a superb office of any size and planning. It will be located in the center of the city so it will take you and your guests just a few minutes to get there either by car or on public transport.
The office will be able to boast of elegant design, picturesque views and all the necessary amenities: air conditioning, business-grade Wi-Fi, professional print station and a kitchen with a coffee machine as well as cleaning, security and reception services. You will not need to invest a cent in buying any furniture or appliances — just sign the contract and move in immediately. The conditions of the contract will be flexible.
You can contact ThePlace managers right now to ask them questions regarding office rentals and discuss your requirements. The premise that they find for you will let you maximize the efficiency of your team, expand your client base and boost your revenue.
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