How to Build a High Performing Team in the Era of Unified Communication

The cumulative cost per worker per year as a result of poor communication or miscommunication in the US and UK has been estimated to be $26,041. Do the math and calculate how much you are losing in a year due to the inability of your staff to communicate effectively. The cost of poor communication in the workplace has been estimated to be $37 billion in the US and UK alone. Imagine what the cost will be in several other companies in other countries too. How many times have you had information get lost in transmission? The difference between a high performing team and failing one rests on how ideas, data, and necessary information are shared among members.

Most organizations now have remote employees who are part of a team. These mobile employees are incorporated into the organization to work together and this has necessitated the need for Unified Communication now more than ever. This is because efficient communication among employees, team members, and customers lessen the impact of distance and diversity in the means of communication.

Unified Communication (UC) integrates the different methods of communication used in business into a central system. You probably communicate through phone calls, SMS, web, and video conferencing, chats, emails, fax et cetera, among your team members. With UC, you can merge all forms of communication, both real-time and non-real time, into one to increase the performance of your team. Whether you are a team leader, a manager or even a team member, incorporating UC into your communication can foster cooperation, coordination, and commitment to the task or project at hand.

Why Unified Communication is a tool for a High Performing Team

1. Bridging the Communication Gap among Professionals

You can bring together a team of professionals for a project. The way each communicates will surely be different and it will impact negatively on the team. Assuming you want to launch a new product in your company, different teams of experts have to collaborate. The research team will surely have to work with the marketing and the sales team.

While everyone will have their expert opinion on the project, choosing the best way of reaching out to them will ensure its success. Unified Communication allows smooth collaboration of different departments in a project and encourages interpersonal relations among different department members in an organization.

2. Instant Response to Queries

Employees spend a significant amount of time switching between different means of communication. Multiple channels of communication cause distractions and reduce productivity in the workplace. Individuals in a team might also favor a certain means of communication than the other. The time spent deciding how best to reach each individual in your team also causes friction in communication.

With UC, a single all-encompassing channel will ensure that members of the team share their inputs. You can easily get the right person to fix a problem through UC. It also shows a certain respect for the preference of the members because each staff can communicate through various platforms available to them. Adopting UC means no team member ever misses a deadline again because he did not get the memo of when to hand it in.

3. Mobility and Flexibility of Team Members

Mobile working is now a thing in the corporate world. Students, work-from-home mothers, and adventurers have found a way to mix pleasure and passion with business flawlessly. People who work remotely are incorporated by various enterprises into their traditional working system. That is, they work hand-in-hand with full-time employees. Providing different communication tools might be expensive and hard to maintain.

With UC, the initial investment might be a little hefty but in the long run, the benefit outweighs the cost. The difference between time and space is not a problem anymore. You can easily hire remote employees who work flexible hours and will collaborate with your conventional employees. You save cost, reduce hiring hassle, and increase the overall productivity of the business.

4. Easier Collaboration and Communication

The major ingredient of a successful team is how well each member is carried along in the project. UC ensures the integration of many means of communication. This invariably means that when a team member is running late she can be constantly updated on the performance of others. The ease in communication enhances coordination among team members as they are well informed of the stage of the project they are working on. You can easily route your phone calls or messages wherever you want, this reduces the stress of waiting in one place for a team member to reach out and the fear of missed messages.

The efficiency in communication increases the reliability of the team members on each other. A team that keeps one another informed relies on one another and goes on to perform exceptionally. Effective communication enhances teamwork which promotes the growth of the entire organization but employees have to be up-to-date and informed to ensure easier communication.

5. Savvy Customer Relations

Regardless of the business type, customer satisfaction remains at the heart of its survival. Unified Communication is not only for the productivity of your team alone but to increase positive customer relations. Business clients are constantly improving technological know-how and have found new ways to “table” their complaints.

A customer-driven organization will remain relevant and competitive by ensuring clients are reached through means that is most convenient and comfortable to them. A customer that prefers Email must not be sent SMS and vice versa. Excellent customer satisfaction means more sales and increased goodwill of a company. Apart from customers, business partners are also important parts of a business. Ensuring that they are carried along will reduce tension and ultimately drive profit.

On a final note

Communication is central to a high performing team. Unified communication, however, is what any successful team needs to close the communication gap among experts on a project, enhance customer satisfaction, ensure fast and reliable response among team members and ease the complexity in communication. You can encourage inputs from team members across global locations through UC or gain insight into a problem by asking a consultant. To ensure that your company remains competitive, UC is the best way to collaborate and put a productive team together.

Originally published at https://nextplane.net on November 18, 2019.