Watch Your Tone: Considering the audience when virtually communicating with remote employees

By: Stephanie Diana Eubank

Tone in emails and other written platforms such as Skype, Slack, or Teams can be a tricky thing.  Where onsite employees may be able to understand or be able to ask in the background with management to see if an aggressive tone was intentional or not.  Remote teams have a harder time identifying if harsh tones in writing if it may be intentional or not from management.

There are concepts for remote workers called social isolation and professional isolation.  To break it down:

• Social Isolation: we often forget business is a social activity and social science.  And socializing at work is a big part of working in business.  Believe it or not water cooler talks and social interaction with coworkers is a draw to onsite work and can be good for mental health.  Also, this sort of social 
• Professional isolation: is where the employee doesn’t get a lot of collaboration time with management or other interactions with management.

There are also concepts that remote workers have as stress causing aspects of working remote.  Such as statistically speaking remote people are often the first people to be laid off during mass layoffs.  This is statistically common because remote people don’t get to interact with management or coworkers due to social and professional isolation.   This isolation also may lead to missed opportunities for remote workers.

Now, now these concepts have been known to be issues for remote teams.  However, since COVID-19 with everyone who can work remote.  With Remote work becoming mainstream this means management must adapt to these pitfalls because it now affects them too.  There is also the fact that with COVID-19 new pitfalls arise.  Such as the dreaded kids interruption if they are not back to in person schooling, the state being on fire and evacuations being needed (like here in California), cats jumping on the desk, dogs barking, or my personal annoyance is cars with too much base shaking the whole neighborhood. 

Although there are added benefits for all when working from home that need to be accounted for and embraced. Such as taking breaks when one is supposed to and using them to go outside or other mental health/ self-care need.  There is also flexibility to manage a work/ life balance.   However, none of this positive move for the economy to healthy business practices until better communication practices are realized and common place.

One big step many managers need to work on to realize the best remote environments and most productive ones is the skills within electronic communication.  

Here are a few tips for management and communicating with teams effectively in this new remote environment:

• First ask each team member what their preferred method of communication is.  I know it seems easy enough, but some people may like the constant teams or skype typed quick notes and others might get an anxiety attack from that.  And then there are those who rather just have a quick phone call. 
• Make both one on one time with team for status and business but also just to ask, “how are you doing”.  Showing a little empathy goes a long way towards building strong trust and employee retention.  It also helps prevent professional isolation making employees feel more like people and less like numbers. 
• Take time to just have a nice virtual lunch together with your whole team and staff.  Bonding regularly with a team helps everyone not only keep work focus but, reminds us all that we are people.
• Managers need to encourage their team to communicate with each other not just about work but just to take 10 minutes to talk about the weather.  Business being a social science needs to be emphasized socially and understood some people like remote for the lack of social interaction. 
• Managers when emailing need to watch for tone in emails so that no one feels provoked.  Firmness can still be conveyed but, there are tricks for making the tone calmer:
  • Use We instead of me or I.  This unifies the team and company as one and comes off less combative.
  • Note in the written communication that all work around options were considered but, don’t note that they can escalate the issue. That comes off as a challenge. 
  • Write clinically.  Not putting too much emotion into the writing.  It shows neutrality so there is no favoritism or anger to be derived from an email.  
  • While writing do open with a friendly salutation and at thank everyone for their help with the info.  Again, show a united front.
  • Before getting to the heart of the issue write something positive. 
  • Clearly define changes showing rather than pointing fingers we are moving forward with lessons learned.  Be sure to also state what the sought results are.  Goals need to be clear. 
  • Close these emails by asking if you can help or clarify or answer any questions.  Make sure that you make sure to note you are available and welcome questions.  Also, that everyone has your contact info. 
• Never send emails when angry!  That’s how you end up in HR because you have made a hostile work environment. 
• Draft your emails in word.  It helps make sure that everything is spelled and grammatically correct showing your professionalism.  It also helps if writing when angry to re-read your work and edit, and edit, and edit till the result works.  Also, this stops the accidental email that wasn’t polished yet. 

These tips should help learn how to communicate with remote teams and help with comfort of though remote can make us far away we are still on the same team.  

If you liked this article remember sharing is caring.