Virtual Scheduling During a Pandemic
Fighting Covid 19 with Virtual Communication and Automated Scheduling
In light of the Covid 19 spread, companies are constantly rethinking their methods and their way of operating. Due to the rapid evolvement of this pandemic, entrepreneurs throughout America are struggling between maintaining business as usual and laying out health precautions for their surroundings. As the crisis progresses, more and more companies are moving towards virtual meetings to provide a reliable source of communication. This article will outline the best practices to hold an efficient and pro-active virtual correspondence during these challenging times.
Preparation
Whether your organization already has the capability to work remotely, common practices need to be established to seek benefits from these new resources. First off, ensuring that all staff members can communicate clearly . This can include a microphone and with headphones in their respective homes is the number one priority. Whether your organization provides equipment or whether everyone is responsible for their own, this indication must be clear to provide everyone with a solid playing field. By adding virtual meetings to your daily calendar, increased foresight is required to minimize distractions.
Online Conferencing
It’s important that all team members have access to an online platform such as a VPN, an online server or other resources designated by your company. While technology is a great tool, it isn’t always reliable. Ensure that your team has a plan B if connection was to fail temporarily. A great tool to consider for online appointments is Zoom. It allows unique meetings and password codes and a lot of security features. Zoom can easily be integrated into your AppointmentCare account.
In addition, it is increasingly important to have a meeting outline and to establish the roles of every contributor. The leaders need to initiate engagement of every member attending the virtual session. Then provide them with the right tools to perform their regular tasks. This may be challenging at first but there’s always room for improvement with every step taken to attain this common goal; keeping employees, subcontractors and your clientele safe. The first few meetings may not be efficient or proactive but keep in mind with a bit of preparation and leadership, the right balance can be reached.
Scheduling
While this pandemic can potentially cause chaos in your enterprise, don’t let scheduling be one of them. Automated scheduling can help maintain the changing availabilities of your employees and relieve this time-consuming stress with a click of a button. With constant new challenges ahead, scheduling software’s keeps track of qualifications, availability, time off and assigns the right employee for the job. This new system is also the rightful tool to keeping employees active and informed of the tasks at hand. This forces the employer to update regularly the tasks requiring immediate attention while maintaining daily reporting from the other party. This is also an opportunity to provide instructions and feedback without a hundred of back and forth emails and endless phone calls. By focusing on these key items, clear instructions and keeping conversations short and direct, efficiency remains stable. During this crisis, keeping productivity high and distractions to a minimum is the key to moving in the right direction.
Stimulation
With this new change of environment, keeping your employees stimulated during virtual meetings may prove to be difficult. The best approach is the enhancement of several senses during a séance. While senses such as smell cannot be applied, the use of sight, touch and hearing are especially important to improve the implication of your audience. Important tools such as videos, podcasts, auditory reminders and written exercises are vital for a pro-active community. With lack of physical contact, videos are a must to personalize the interaction and to keep in touch with colleagues.
Employee Engagement
As a leader, it’s important to review the engagement of every employee. Also to take pauses to take the time to address the ones that are less likely to speak up. Showing interest in their personal lives, hobbies and exchanging a few words prior to a professional meeting can lighten the impact of this crisis. Post-meeting, send a follow-up and include a personal touch. Such as including of your own such as emoji’s, a GIF or a funny video to lighten the mood. During this time, loneliness and isolation can also become overwhelming so make your employees look forward to your interaction. In addition, reward your team with weekly virtual social hours over an online game to enjoy a change of scenery after a long week.
Building a strong virtual presence will come with a set of challenges and may have a few setbacks. Involve all members of your team in this shift and allow their feedback to frame your virtual communications. While this new trend during is revitalizing the way to interact, it also provides a handful of tools that can be combined to facilitate collaboration and adapt to individual needs. Every solution won’t be the right one but thinking outside the box will bring entrepreneurs one step closer to reach their objective.
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About Karsen Lynn
Karsen writes for a variety of blogs on the internet on a lot of topics. We are pleased to have her writing for us as well. We highly recommend you check out her page at Our Shooting Star