Teleworking with Talkspirit: The Complete Guide

In a few months, telework has become a reality in the overwhelming majority of organizations, both public and private. Yours is probably one of them. 

Now you work in hybrid mode: some days in the office, others teleworking from home or from a third location.

When you started teleworking, you had to rethink your way of working, communicating, managing, and maintaining links with your colleagues. Not without difficulty, sometimes.

To help you re-interview your practices and improve your daily life in telework -within the respect of the right to disconnect-, we propose you a complete guide to "better telework with Talkspirit".

You will find in this guide all our recommendations to increase your efficiency with Talkspirit, while limiting daily stress.

Create a virtual office

However, Talkspirit allows you to create online workspaces that are essential for teleworking: groups.

Talkspirit groups are spaces of exchange and collaboration that allow to discuss a given subject or project. They are accessible from any connected device. You can even access them when you are on the move thanks to themobile application!

Do you want to work with your team members on a joint project? 

Create easily identifiable groups 

When you telework, it is essential to be able to meet in communication spaces dedicated to your exchanges. To ensure that this space is a place for targeted exchanges, it is essential that the topics to be discussed there are clearly identifiable by all users.

The name of the group will help to define the main theme on which the exchanges will be based, but also to specify the people to whom this information is addressed.

• Example of a project group: 

Project - Training

Project - Recruitment

Project - Website redesign

• Example of a group created for a branch/department/position: 

@marketing - market moderation, 

@HR - Trade Union Relations, 

@HR - billing.

• Example of a general information group for all users: 

@all - welcome 🚀

@all - the group

@all - our news. 

Share information from the right channel

The communication channels on Talkspirit are numerous and all meet different communication objectives. 

Through the chat, you will be able to exchange in a fluid way on the points which do not need to be shared in an official way in a publication. 

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We recommend you:

• do not create a chat with more than 20 participants: the information shared would be too numerous and therefore less easily identifiable. Furthermore, the numerous notifications generated could dissuade users from connecting to the platform. Too many notifications kill information!
  

• encourage return trips in videoconferencing if there are too many exchanges on one point of your project. You will gain in productivity and will be able to better measure the opinion of your interlocutors live (a grimace does not deceive).
  

NB: if necessary, you can share the information essential to understanding a project during a webinar which can be replayed by group members using the Live video option.

• Create a group when your exchanges on a topic become too numerous, so that they can be easily found from the chat room. The group allows you to organize the different content shared in the news feed. You can also access a drive view that allows you to work together on common documents.
  

• do not send documents that need to be reviewed from the chat. With the drive, you can access the different versions of a document and share your feedback through the comments!
  

💡 Tip: give visibility to new documents by sharing them in the group news feed. You can then share the document url link to make it easier to access the document in editable form.  

Documents that simply need to be read can be shared as an attachment to a publication!

• disseminate information that concerns all users in a general group to which everyone has access.
  

Organize your content to find it quickly and save time!

When users regularly post content on the platform, it can sometimes be difficult to find specific information. But what happened to the training plan?

To avoid this type of situation, we recommend that you :

• set up the read/unread mode to distinguish at a glance (just one) the new activities on your platform from all the content that is shared there!
  

• create a checklist for an overview of the tasks of each project participant. This feature allows you to follow the different stages of the project and provides visibility on the actions expected from each participant. Each member of the group will be able to indicate whether or not they have carried out the tasks expected of them
  

NB: quickly find the contributions you have been assigned to from a dedicated tab. We recommend that you unassign yourself from this publication once the action has been completed! You will then be able to better see what you still have to do.

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• save important publications in your favourites to find them from a dedicated tab.
  

Create moments of exchange

Exchange with your colleagues

When teleworking, it is important to keep in touch with your colleagues so that you do not feel isolated.

However, it is rare that the professional relationships you have with your colleagues fully meet your need for social interaction. And yes, even if you get on very well with Paul, discussing the structure of the new training plan will not help you relax!

It is therefore important to organize occasional moments of informal exchange, by chat, or video conference.

For the more organized, you can, for example, introduce a "compulsory" coffee break!

In this case, we recommend that you set up a group dedicated to these breaks between colleagues (e.g. Coffee Machine), in which you can create an event, associate a videoconference link with it and invite your colleagues to join you for a team break, from a distance. One word of advice: no exchanges on subjects related to your professional missions!

And thanks to the shared agenda, you can quickly identify the different breaks to come! 

And invite your partners to collaborate

You can invite your colleagues to join you on the platform, but also collaborate with your customers, partners and even suppliers by giving them guest status.

But if you wish to invite your colleagues to join you for an exchange only, it is possible. You can then share your public videoconference link to exchange with platform users or people who do not have a Talkspirit account!

We also recommend that you schedule your daily/weekly/monthly meetings from theTalkspirit calendar. You will then be able to associate to these events a video conferencing link dedicated to your regular meetings.

While it is essential to participate in daily or weekly meetings related to your job or department, it is also sometimes necessary to discuss a particular project or assignment with your colleagues. In this case, use the video conferencing to avoid the back and forth and to be more productive. You will be able to share more information in a shorter period of time. 

You can then share a record of your discussions on the platform so that you have a written record to refer to in case of doubt.

You can join a videoconference when you are on the move thanks to themobile application.

You can also join a videoconference discussion by telephone, by dialling a telephone number and entering a code given to you by the meeting organizer. 

Disconnect

Tell your colleagues your availability

With Talkspirit, you can connect at any time and in any place. However, it is important not to forget to disconnect and to set limits to your working hours. 

We therefore recommend that you :

• Regularly update your status, to let your colleagues know if you are available or not.

• Enter your appointments in your Talkspiritcalendar. This way, your colleagues will not need to ask you for your availability.
  

• Turn off your notifications when you are in an appointment with Do Not Disturb. 

Take breaks for yourself

When teleworking, planning your working hours, breaks and personal activities is crucial. With the Talkspirit calendar, this is possible. You can then set goals and organize your day with breaks to stay focused and motivated.

Taking a 5 minute break every hour or 15 minutes every two hours will help you stay productive and focused over time, but it will also give you an overview of the work you have done and the work you have to do. It's scientific, so don't hesitate!

When teleworking, it is usually more tempting to continue working past the established hours. If there are no restrictive train times or no travel time, it is sometimes less easy to drop out. 

To better disconnect, we therefore recommend that you set the times beyond which you do not wish to receive notifications (for example, evenings and weekends).

For more information on the right to disconnect, please download our white paper Right to disconnect: a telework survival guide.

Conclusion

In the age of digital transformation, teleworking is becoming an increasingly important part of our daily lives and is revolutionising the way we work individually and collectively. 

For more than a year now, many companies have even adopted a hybrid work mode, which combines telework and face-to-face work, in order to offer their employees more flexibility.

Faced with these changes in working methods, Talkspirit is the ideal tool for :

• centralise all your projects, documents and information,
• facilitate remote collaboration,
• communicate in real time with your colleagues, wherever they are.
  

To find out more about the challenges and best practices of hybrid work, download our white paper Future of work, time for hybrid work!