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There are ongoing debates concerning the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of various communication channels, as well as whether they are replaceable or vital. Emails and instant messaging, longtime enemies in the sectors of team productivity and communication, are at the centre of the most recent struggle. Throughout this article, internal chat and instant messaging will be used interchangeably.
Benefits of Internal Chat
Team chats have grown in popularity despite the fact that instant messaging is a relative newcomer in the team communication niche. It’s no surprise why: messengers are quick, responsive, and simple to use. They let users get real-time responses, share files, and collaborate on the fly. The truth is that today’s team discussions are far more than simple messaging apps.
However, let us delve a little more into the benefits and drawbacks of instant messaging in terms of team productivity. The following are some of the advantages:
- To begin with, team chats are instantaneous. This means that communications are delivered quickly to the recipient anytime he or she is online.
- Furthermore, instant messaging is more responsive than traditional messaging. Let’s face it: colleagues are more likely to respond quickly through chat.
- Because of the informal and casual discussion structure, instant messaging is concise and to the point. When using team conversations, you can say whatever you want without worrying about saying things like “Yours sincerely” or “Best regards.”
- Some team messaging apps provide a feature called “read status” that indicates whether or not a message has been read. As a result, you’ll always know if your communication was received.
- Notifications ensure that your communication reaches the intended recipient (unless they mute or ignore the notifications ;-)).
- Chats are ideal for team communication and productivity due to their multiple interconnections. Team messengers may be integrated with hundreds of third-party platforms, ranging from CRM to project management software, and can send updates to stakeholders.
- Video meetings and audio calls are available in team chats in addition to text messaging.
- Team chats make file collaboration easier by putting all of the necessary papers at the user’s fingertips.
- Closed systems are team chats. If you connect with your coworkers via external chats, there’s always the risk of being sidetracked by a meme from your best friend or a sticker from your mother.
Disadvantages of Email
- Because they lack several beneficial connectors and automations, emails are inefficient for team engagement and collaboration.
- Communication speed. Because emails are asynchronous, a conversation by email can take hours or even days to complete, simply because people don’t check their inboxes on a regular basis. On a messenger, the identical conversation would take only a few seconds. Furthermore, sending and receiving emails takes significantly longer than doing it in a team chat.
- Email communication may be a nightmare. When everything is in your email, it’s tough to travel between different contexts and threads without becoming lost.
- Spam. According to the data, the average employee receives more than 120 emails every day. Sixty percent of these will be spam. Yes, spam filters are improving all the time, but billions of spam messages can have a significant influence on team productivity. You should also factor in the dozens of transactional emails you receive from the services you’ve subscribed to.
- Emails take an inordinate amount of time. Consider this: according to studies, you check your inbox 15 times each day and spend more than 3 hours per day at work monitoring and writing emails. You can use this tool to see how much time emails take up and get some good suggestions for how to spend your time instead of reading and responding to emails.
- Malware. Emails frequently contain a variety of attachments and links, and these attachments and URLs can sometimes contain malware and viruses.
Tools to Enhance Instant Communication
Today’s instant messaging industry offers a plethora of options, including team chat, video and call conference capabilities, and so on. How do you decide which option is the best? Fortunately, Cynoia offers businesses an all-in-one team communication and collaboration tool. Through an all-in-one collaborative platform, Cynoia facilitates information sharing, promotes interactions, and streamlines work.
Why Choose Cynoia?
For one-on-one or group interactions, desktop and mobile users can use instant messaging and clear video calls. From the boardroom to the field, everyone is connected. Individual and group discussions are made quick and easy using the Cynoia programme. Share stuff from YouTube, GIFs, and social networking. Save time by not having to transmit files or URLs to get your team’s code updated. Simply share clean lines of code and get an instant reaction in a team chat.
Cynoia’s Mission
The purpose of Cynoia has always been to change people’s attitudes toward work and help teams reach their maximum potential.
They are designed to assist people in saving time by boosting the efficiency of their work. They’ve come a long way from the clumsy desktop PC and disk-based business software of the past. Productivity apps have grown as everything has moved to the cloud.
They love productivity apps, but they think productivity as a whole is faulty. There are simply too many tools to keep track of, as well as too many objects that live in separate ecosystems. As a result, you’ll have to switch between apps frequently for communication, task management, and document processing, which will cut your productivity. Furthermore, the majority of communication is still done in real-time, resulting in more detours, conferences, and longer work hours.
Cynoia is on a mission to enable everyone to operate from any location. This gives you greater control over your workday, increases productivity, and allows you to save meetings for the most pressing topics.
Collaborating with your teammates becomes easier and more efficient with the right tools and approach. Everyone is informed, folks may start up where they left off when they’re ready, and work is completed efficiently.
Did you know that 22% of the American workforce will be working remotely by 2025? It’s true that the pandemic caused an uptick in remote work (41.8% currently still work from home), but the fact is, remote work is here to stay!
Because of this, you need better team communication and collaboration tools. That way, you’ll maximize productivity.
If you want to have spontaneous and informal discussions with your team and more, you can do so with Cynoia!
Are you interested in what Cynoia can do for your company? Then read on to find out!
Have Spontaneous and Informal Discussions
Cynoia’s platform is built with a chat function. All you have to do is click on the conversation you wish to join in on, then just get to typing! You can ping the relevant team members so you can get almost instantaneous answers.
This means that whenever you have a spontaneous thought, you and your coworkers can hop right to it within a moment’s notice. You won’t have to bother with switching tabs.
The chat function allows you to share your screens, as well as links, tasks, and files to help one another out. You can even set tasks for one another. It’ll be just like discussing things in real life!
And you won’t have to worry about losing track of your discussions either. You can assign each conversation a topic so you can easily search for it in the future. You can also pin any messages so you can get back to them at the appropriate times.
Another piece of good news is that there’s unlimited message history on our platform. So you won’t have the annoying problem of older messages getting deleted as time goes on.
Get Together for Video Meetings
For more formal meetings, Cynoia can help here as well. Within the chat function, you can either have a one-on-one discussion with an employee or a group meeting.
And considering that 79% of workers think video conferencing is just as productive as in-person meetings (or even more so!), it’s important that the conferences are of high quality. Thankfully, Cynoia ensures that both the visual and audio aspects of your calls are top-notch so you don’t waste time or get frustrated with poor quality or dropped calls.
Voice and screen recordings are also available so you can save important snippets for later!
Schedule Meetings Easily
Within the Cynoia platform, you’ll be able to schedule meetings with a few clicks. You won’t have to deal with the extra step of sending and receiving emails, as with other calendar tools.
The calendar also takes into account each person’s time zones, so there’s no need for do mental gymnastics to figure out who can meet when.
Use a Handy To-Do List
You probably have a busy work schedule and it can be easy to forget a task or two.
Within Cynoia, you’ll be able to neatly add all tasks to a to-do list. You can also prioritize each task and set due dates, which can help immensely in optimizing your workflow.
No matter what device you’re on, and wherever you are, you’ll be able to access this list, so there’s no need to duplicate it across your devices!
Enjoy Integrated Solutions
Does your workforce already use other communication channels, such as LinkedIn, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger? No problem!
Our platform can process messages from all of the above, including your emails as well. So you can find all your communications in one handy place. Without collaborative silos, you’ll be able to communicate effectively with all of your workers, no matter which apps they prefer!
Easy Adoption of the Program
Onboarding new technology can be difficult at times. With a whole new platform, everyone has to spend time getting to learn how to use it. And this can affect productivity.
We at Cynoia understand how important it is for you to adopt technology with as few interruptions to your daily operations as possible. This is why we’ve made our inbox tool look and feel just like Gmail and Outlook!
We’ve also carefully designed this tool to be user-friendly. It’ll be easy for your team members to find the right emails quickly!
Get Great Collaboration Software for Free
You might think: all the above features are great, but what will I have to pay?
The good news is, you can try Cynoia for free, with no credit card required! We have a Discovery plan that’s completely free, so you’ll never have to pay anything. However, there are restrictions, such as a limitation of 20 users, 1 public meeting room, 1 project manager, 50 GB workspace, and 1 integration.
If you’d like more features, then the next plan is the Business plan. It’s $10 per user, per month, and it upgrades you to unlimited users, 10 meeting rooms, 10 project managers, 5 GB per user, and 5 integrations!
There’s also the Enterprise plan, which is still affordable at $16 per user, per month. You’ll get unlimited users, meeting rooms, project managers, and integrations, as well as 20 GB per user.
Sign Up for Cynoia
If your company’s looking to improve its workplace communications and you need a good team collaboration tool that accommodates spontaneous and informal discussions, then why not give Cynoia a try?
Our software can help you immensely with company management. As a result, you can save an average of 20 hours a week! Plus, it can help you connect with all your workers, especially your remote workforce.
And best of all is, you can try out our program for free, without having to give your credit card details!
So sign up now for Cynoia.
By getting on our waitlist, you’ll be one of the first people to try our product!
No matter the size, businesses rise and fall based on their collaboration skills. Nothing gets done without clear communication, prioritization and effective meetings.
With many industries relying on work-from-home policies, collaborating effectively is more important than ever. Here are seven tips that will improve your team’s collaboration and help you get the tough stuff done efficiently.
1. Schedule and prioritize your emails
According to the Harvard Business Review, the average full-time worker in the US spends 2.6 hours reading and responding to up to 120 messages every day. With that volume of workplace communication going on, it’s hard to say how much of it is actually being absorbed and put to use.
Get together with your team leads and make a schedule. Spread out emails so employees aren’t inundated with information all at one time. Instead of sending multiple one-line emails, gather information into one. Increase productivity by not drowning your team in information.
While scheduling, prioritize your information. Your shipping department doesn’t need every note from the design team. To keep everyone updated, have team members report directly to team leads so they can disperse information as needed.
2.Organize your meetings
What’s been said about emails mostly applies to meetings, as well. Keep your meetings brief and informational. Maintain a consistent schedule, but don’t feel forced to have a meeting if you’re not prepared. Vague meetings waste time. If you think about calling a meeting to share information instead of seeking collaboration, consider sending an email instead.
With video calls, always make sure your device and software is working properly. Get confirmation from everyone that they can hear you and each other. To avoid communication problems, invest in business software made specifically for business communication. Some combine multiple communication tools into one app so team members won’t have to look up old emails for reference.
3. Foster honest professional relationships
The best collaboration happens between strongly-bonded teams that communicate honestly. Unfortunately, good and bad performances both go more unnoticed in this age of video meetings.
Always take time to review your team’s performance. For higher-functioning employees, a little recognition goes a long way. Without proper feedback, even stellar employees question if they’re on the right track. You never know if someone’s feeling burnt out if you don’t check in.
For employees that could use some help, privately and honestly reach out to them. Let them do more of the talking to see if they understand where they need to improve. If not, it may be due to a lack of training. Develop them. Let a rock star employee help them, help them yourself or consider where their talents would be better spent. Be an example of fair, constructive criticism.
4. Define objectives clearly
Never assume your team knows exactly what’s going through your or your superiors’ heads. Are you hoping for 30% year-over-year growth but would be happy with 15%? Tell your team. Give them a realistic goal and a reach goal.
Then, break that down into smaller goals. What does a team member need to do every day or every week to make the goal possible? What metrics are you using to define success? Let those questions be the threads that tie every meeting and every piece of workplace communication together.
5. Don’t micromanage
In a study of more than 2,000 employees, 39% said that micromanaging is the worst trait a boss could have. As a team leader or business owner, you’re a director, not a dictator. Even the best employees feel inadequate when micromanaged. It creates resentment. Employees are more likely to tell you what you want to hear instead of coming to you for guidance.
When those conversations don’t happen, collaboration is impossible. Trust professionals to make professional decisions. If you find yourself micromanaging certain employees, especially if it’s not in your nature, communicate that with them and your superiors.
6. Assign duties and roles clearly
Making sure everything gets done is difficult for any size business. Small business and startup business employees often wear a number of hats. Housekeeping and day-to-day responsibilities can fall through the cracks. Maybe customer follow-up is falling through the cracks or orders aren’t being placed on time.
As a leader, you might assume that certain people should naturally take care of those responsibilities. However, your team might assume you or other coworkers are taking care of those tasks. Like objectives, delegate roles clearly. Identify holes in your business organization plan, share it with your team and change your collaboration strategy accordingly.
7. Give your team User-Friendly tools
Seamless teamwork when you rely on remote work has unique challenges. Every home office is a little different — team members might use slightly different software or have different hardware. Streamlining emails, meeting schedules and collaboration is only possible with the right tools.
Search for tools that wrap your needs into one piece of software. Make sure it’s easy to use across different devices and operating systems. Don’t let work from home policies become a hurdle. Let them work for you. With the right software, your team can work from home more efficiently than they do at the office.
Let Cynoia streamline your business’s collaboration
Cynoia can help you enact your collaboration strategy. With file sharing, communication app integration, instant messaging and more in one app, Cynoia puts all of your business collaboration tools in one place. Pin important messages to the top of your team’s page so they don’t waste time looking for information. Flexible pricing plans let you get the right services for your team. Try Cynoia for free today and see how much time and money your business saves with proper information sharing.
According to a survey conducted by FlexJob, 95 percent of their respondents say that their productivity is high when working from home. You can maximize this by making sure your remote team is highly motivated and engaged. In this article, we’ll talk about effective tips to keep your team motivated.
Check-in with your team regularly
If you want to stay connected with all your team members, we encourage managers or team leaders to check in with them constantly. Remember that human beings are social creatures — not having someone to talk to every day can take a toll on your mental health or emotional well-being. You can keep your team engaged by taking advantage of technology. Tools like Cynoia offers communication features such as Chat, Audio and Video Calls. Consider having a group chat or a forum where everyone can ask questions or post anything they want.
Implement a recognition program
Who doesn’t want to be rewarded for a job well done? We all do. If you want to motivate your employees more, then ensure that you implement an employee recognition program. Take time to think about who is eligible to get the rewards, how often they are given, what kind of rewards you intend to give, and have a structure in place. Then make sure that everyone knows about the program and don’t forget to encourage them to participate.
Show that you trust them
Remote work may not be for everyone as some people are just not cut out for it. But if you’re building a team of remote workers, it’s important that you trust them. Otherwise, you would only demotivate them, and they wouldn’t feel valued. If you want your remote team to be always productive at work, ensure that you trust them completely. Of course, you still need to set deadlines and schedules. But make sure that you don’t micromanage them. Just let them do their thing. So long as they are productive and contributing to the growth of your business, then you’re good. To ensure that they do show up during work hours, you can try investing in tools to track their work hours.
Invest in them
Do you want them to improve their skills and become even more productive at work? Consider investing in online courses that can improve their skills. For example, if you have a team of writers, you may want to enroll them in more online writing classes or workshops to develop their writing skills. However, make sure that you don’t make this mandatory as some of your team members may not be interested in the courses that you’re offering. Let them know that it’s optional and that they can take it whenever they want to. LinkedIn Learning or Udemy are good platforms for this.
Always provide feedback
When managing a remote team, it’s a given to always provide feedback on how they are doing. If they’re new employees, consider having monthly, quarterly and annual feedback for them. Ensure that you follow the KKK approach when giving feedback to your team or the Kiss, Kick Kiss approach. First, be very detailed about things they are good at. Appreciate their work and contribution to your company. Then, begin discussing the things that they need to improve on. You may ask them how they can improve themselves or give suggestions. Lastly, always end the feedback with a positive statement.
Share company goals with them
This should be done during the orientation. You can motivate your remote team if they actually know what you are trying to achieve. So make sure that they are aware of what your business goals are. For example, if you’re targeting 100k worth of Conversions for a six-month period, communicate this objective with them. Encourage them to do their best, so you can all reach your business goal. If possible, set up a meeting every week and talk about progress reports or other issues you think are important for your company’s growth.
Plan a Get-Together
This may only be possible to those remote workers in the same location. Once every few months, you may want to set up a real get-together with your remote team so that you can see them face to face. For those working in other parts of the world, consider setting up a virtual meeting for everyone, where you don’t talk about work but just anything under the sun. While you may have to make this optional, encourage everyone to participate. This way, you get to know your team members on a personal level. It can help improve your relationship with your remote team and may even make them more productive.
Communication is always key
Remember that you don’t get to see everyone when you’re working remotely. So it becomes even increasingly important that you always communicate. Cynoia has communication tools available that you can use. Encourage your team to reach out to you or their team members if they have questions or want to clarify something.
Always pay them on Time
Nothing can demotivate employees than late pay. If you want to keep them and motivate them to work harder, ensure that you always pay them on time. If possible, pay them in advance. You may even offer them other benefits such as health insurance if they are within the country. Most remote workers don’t have health insurance included in their benefits — you can go the extra mile and do this for them. It’s one of the most effective ways to keep them motivated.
Make a difference with Cynoia
Our goal is to help business automate their workflow and boost their productivity. We have the exact tool for this.
With Cynoia, you have everything in one app — calendar, chat, video meetings, tasks, and much more!
Get in touch with us today if you have questions or when ready to sign up.
