This year it’s our tenth birthday! We’ve come a long way from the days of just two staff (our director and one freelance writer) and we’re enjoying looking back on the past decade and celebrating everything we’ve learnt.
As part of this we gave ourselves a challenge to share 10 things we’ve learnt 10 things about in 10 years. So far, we’ve looked at remote working and getting your messaging right. This time we’re talking about our top tips for working successfully with other people.
Ever since day one, Sorted Communications has been a remote business with no physical premises. That means many of our team have never met in real life and very few of us have met any of our clients face to face. However, working remotely doesn’t mean we don’t deal with people on a daily basis. In fact, it’s a huge part of what we do. Whether it’s speaking to clients, interviewing people or having team meetings, we all spend a lot of time interacting with other people and so our people skills have to be tip top. Here are our 10 key pieces of advice:
1. Communicate clearly
It’s important to be clear and concise in your communication with others and to actively listen to what they have to say. This is especially relevant when working remotely as, unlike when you work side by side with people in an office, there are limited opportunities for off-the-cuff conversations and knowledge-sharing in a remote team.
2. Demonstrate empathy
Being able to understand and share the feelings of others is essential for building strong relationships and working effectively with people. This is especially important for us when we’re interviewing members of the public as it can help to put them at ease and make sure we get the most from our conversations.
3. Show respect
Showing respect for others and valuing their ideas and contributions is important for building a positive work environment. We’re always keen to hear from our team about their ideas for how we can improve on any aspect of our work, whether that’s our processes and approach to client work or how we do things internally.
4. Work together
Working well with others requires collaboration, cooperation, and the ability to compromise. It’s important to be open to the ideas and perspectives of others and to work together towards a common goal. Despite being a remote team, we work really closely together and often forget that many of us have never met in real life! Our processes enable us to share the workload too, making sure that nobody is overloaded or twiddling their thumbs.
5. Speak up!
Disagreements and conflicts are a natural part of working with people. It’s rare for us to have conflict with our clients, but we understand the importance of addressing any conflicts in a constructive and positive way and looking for ways to resolve them. We also encourage everyone on the team to be proactive in speaking up and saying when something isn’t quite right so that we can resolve things before they escalate.
6. Build trust
Being open and transparent with others helps to build trust and foster a positive work environment. It’s important for us to be open and honest with each other and our clients, especially as we work remotely and so don’t get the benefit of visual cues such as body language. For example, it’s not as easy for us to see if someone is feeling distracted or struggling with a piece of work, so it’s vital that we have open lines of communication so we can all trust one another to get the job done.
7. Invite feedback
Receiving feedback from others can help us improve and grow. It’s important to be open to feedback and to use it as an opportunity to learn and develop. We continually seek feedback from our clients and use it to identify where we’re getting things right and where there are areas for improvement.
8. Embrace diversity
Working with people from different backgrounds and experiences can bring new perspectives and ideas to the table. It’s important to value and embrace diversity in the workplace. One of the many positives about being remote is that we’re able to hire people from all over the UK (and beyond) to bring a whole range of different people into the team, focusing much more on skills and attributes than on location.
9. Set clear boundaries
Setting boundaries with others helps to establish healthy and productive relationships. This includes setting limits on your time and energy and communicating your needs and expectations clearly. All our team works flexible part-time hours, which helps us to ensure good coverage to meet our clients’ needs (including turning around pieces of work in super-tight deadlines) as well as allowing us all to work at the times of the day that suit us best.
10. Be flexible
Working with people requires being open to change and adapting to new situations. We pride ourselves on our flexible approach to our work and we’re always open to new ideas to improve the service we deliver for our clients or the working life of our team.
It’s all common sense really, isn’t it? But we know our flexible, reliable approach has helped us to build strong and productive relationships, which enable us to work effectively both as a team and as an extension of our clients’ teams.
To find out more about our team and how we work, contact us today.