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, and others remotely 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 occasional challenges.

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 teleworking with Talkspirit".

In this guide, you'll find 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're accessible from any connected device. You can even access them when you are on the move thanks to themobile app!

Want to work with your team members on a joint project? 

Create easily identifiable groups 

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

The name of the group will help 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'll be able to exchange in a fluid way on points that don't need to be shared in an official way in a publication. 

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We recommend you:

• Don't create a chat with more than 20 participants: the information shared would be too vast, repetitive, and off-topic. Furthermore, the numerous notifications generated could dissuade users from connecting to the platform. Too many notifications dilute real information!
  

• Encourage videoconferencing if there are too many exchanges on one point of your project. You'll gain in productivity and will be able to better measure the opinion of your interlocutors live (a grimace doesn't deceive).
  

Note: 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.
  

• Don't send documents that need to be reviewed in the chat. With the drive, you can access the different versions of a document and share your feedback right in the comments!
  

💡 Tip: give visibility to new documents by sharing them in the group news feed. You can then share the document URL 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 that everyone has access to.
  

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. What happened to the training plan?

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

• Set up the read/unread mode to distinguish new activities on your platform from all the content that's 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've carried out the tasks expected of them.
  

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

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• Save important publications in your favorites to find them from a dedicated tab.
  

Create moments of exchange

Exchange with your colleagues

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

However, it's rare that the professional relationships you have with your colleagues fully meet your need for social interaction. And yes, even if you get along quite fine with Paul, discussing the structure of the new training plan won't do much to 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 you set up a group dedicated to these breaks between colleagues (like a coffeemaker), in which you can create an event, associate a videoconference link with it, and invite your colleagues to join you for a remote team break. 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 don't have a Talkspirit account!

We also recommend that you schedule your daily/weekly/monthly meetings from theTalkspirit calendar. That way, you'll be able to associate a video conferencing link dedicated to these events and share it at your regular meetings.

While participating in daily or weekly meetings related to your job or department is important, it's also sometimes necessary to discuss a particular project or assignment with your colleagues. In this case, use video conferencing to avoid the back and forth and stay more productive. You'll 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

Inform your colleagues of your availability

With Talkspirit, you can connect at any time, from any place. However, it's 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're available or not.

• Enter your appointments in your Talkspiritcalendar. This way, your colleagues won't need to ask you for your availability.
  

• Turn off notifications with a "do not disturb" status when you're in an appointment. 

Take breaks

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 five-minute break every hour or 15 every two hours will help you stay productive and focused over time, but it'll also give you an overview of the work you have done and the work you have to do. This is simple science—don't put it off!

When teleworking, it's usually more tempting to continue working past established hours. If there are no restrictive train times or no travel time, we feel we should compensate or forget to turn off. 

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:

• centralize 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!