Remote teams come in all shapes and sizes, with a cohort of employees that works outside of the

traditional office environment. Some companies operate in different countries and their teams are scattered around the globe, making online collaboration a must; others offer remote work opportunities to successful employees as incentive, or simply embrace work-life balance and allow working from home. Business needs are plenty and need to be addressed in different ways.

Having a remote team is still uncommon, and usually employees are required to go to office every day. There’s not enough information available to provide a final answer on how to successfully collaborate online.

However, as a member of a large team of more than 500 people working in five different countries, I have finally learned how to seamlessly collaborate using one simple tool — Lark. Here I would like to share my personal experience about some issues that may arise while working with a remote team, and how to solve them using Lark.

1. Set goals with OKR

The biggest concern in having a remote team is whether employees will be actually productive and stay on the same page. Thus, setting shared goals and providing a clear context becomes more important than ever before.

Thanks to Lark’s built-in applications, you can set your OKRs easily and align with your team. Just start by setting your own goals, then ask relevant people to get involved, so that all team members can keep track of decisions. OKRs are public and can be seen by everyone in the team. You can also measure results with a scale of 0 -1.0. A robust goals culture and the appropriate tool can make life easier, so that the team can focus on what really matters. You will find out that your team can achieve much more than you thought by simply solving productivity roadblocks.

2. Make collaboration and communication simple

Another crucial element for a remote team is to have a clear communication. You will need the right tools to make sure everyone stays on the same page and can do their part independently, without having someone physically there to monitor performance. Lark is the best software in terms of convenience.

Conversations on Lark persist over time and remain searchable on the cloud according to the chosen retention policy. New members added to a group chat can see its message history, providing greater context and a precious source of. Message threads and emoji reactions can keep the conversation flowing without adding noise that could distract you. With these features you’ll never miss out an update. Additionally, chats can be set to auto-translate into English, Chinese or Japanese. This enables you to have real time conversations with teammates speaking a different language and still understand each other effortlessly.

With Lark Docs, Sheets, and Mindnotes, you can easily collaborate on documents with multiple people. Feel free to add content or comments, just @mention someone and they will be notified with a link to jump directly to the file. Last but not least, Lark Drive is a cloud-based service that lets you store all your documents online and access them anytime and from anywhere. Files are synced as soon as they are edited and can be accessed from any device. The advanced search with quick view allows you to find what you need with ease. These features make collaboration smooth and reliable, so that your team can work smarter.

3. Reinforce the sense of belonging

After achieving good communication and setting the right goals, you need to develop in your team a sense of belonging. In order to get things done, team members need to be motivated and engaged, being able to propose their ideas and participate to brainstorming sessions.

3.1 Weekly one-on-ones and handouts

One-on-one communication, all-hands meetings, training, and many other hangouts are important for a remote team as they help build trust and strengthen relationships. Video conferencing and shared calendar offer a complete solution for this.

You can create a public calendar for all team members, so people can subscribe to it and instantly know if someone is available, even if they are in different time zones. A default time zone can be set to keep everyone aligned to the same deployment schedule.

Deeply integrated with chat and calendar, Lark’s audio and video conferencing feature supports high-quality calls for the best possible experience. Screensharing provides for easy presentations and displaying of information. Meetings can be recorded for later playback, and this turns out to be very helpful if you can’t participate to an event.

3.2 Watercooler channel

You need to also create a watercooler channel where people can chat with one another or express something that isn’t work-related. This greatly reduces the cultural and physical distance between people, and keeps the team engaged in a consistent and meaningful way.

Lark Moments, just like Facebook posts, are perfect for sharing ideas, photos, videos and any other things that crosses your mind.

4. Automate everything and reduce workloads

After all we talked about, there’s still one thing to do to improve the productivity of the team. Automation is the best way to avoid repeating and boring tasks.

Following on its philosophy of “Don’t be a robot, build a robot”, Lark provides many third-party apps as well as a low code/no code platform to automate your workflows. The idea behind Lark is to provide the best mobile experience, so everything can be easily done on phone and tablets. Mobile devices grew in popularity only recently, and they became an important asset to any team, as you don’t need to carry a computer with you anymore.

Related article:

Best Collaboration Tools for 2020 (Top 10 Reviews)

COVID-19 support resources | Lark for distance teaching and learning

Lark vs. Google Suite comparison: which is better for collaboration?

Lark vs. Slack comparison: which is better for collaboration?