For all the good that’s come from remote work, there are also challenges. Organizations are facing a costly disconnect between communication and successful outcomes. The missing piece? Effective asynchronous communication.
Asynchronous communication runs on written messages and recordings rather than real-time collaboration, giving employees the flexibility to plug in whenever they’re ready. Once companies master it, working in a remote, hybrid, or global team can lead to more confident communication, increase productivity, and cut unnecessary costs. It even helps retain top talent who may be tempted by the Great Resignation.
Want to build happy, healthy, and effective global teams? Here are three reasons why an asynchronous communication model is a must-have.
1 Scale effective communications, from local to global
The larger your team, the more difficult it can be to keep everyone aligned. Our recent State of Business Communication report reveals the potential pitfalls of hybrid work: Companies lose an average of $12,506 per employee each year due to ineffective communication.
That cost comes from bottleneck buildup, communication breakdowns, and unclear expectations between leaders and knowledge workers. Teams are overwhelmed by the volume of collaboration software to address remote work, plus the global weight of hundreds of billions of emails each day (306.4 billion in 2020 alone).
Asynchronous communication is the answer to notification overload. Done right, it provides natural breathing room for your global employees to process messages and respond thoughtfully without disrupting the flow of work.
2 Saving your team precious time on writing, editing, and communication
Today’s knowledge workers spend almost half of a 40-hour workweek writing, including eight hours on email and internal communication alone. Any efficiency you can bring to those writing hours frees up time to create value elsewhere.
Handoffs can be a significant burden for teams working asynchronously, but they don’t need to be. Providing tools to help communication land better with internal stakeholders and external partners can make handoffs smoother and less stressful at all levels of the business.
3 Empower your team: build a culture of flexibility
According to PwC, 65% of employees are currently looking for a new job, and flexibility is a top reason. More flexibility in their day leads to more satisfaction in their work and better employee retention.
Asynchronous communication can be a major boon to flexibility efforts for hybrid, remote, and global teams. Workers want to enjoy life, so keep work async to put them more in sync with life, with policies such as flexibility for family obligations, designated breaks for workouts, and physical activity. You can also encourage employees to take breaks, which often fall by the wayside for remote teams.
Provide clarity with Grammarly Business
Grammarly Business can level the playing field for multilingual employees by keeping writing culturally universal across email, IMs, and deliverables, while decreasing the miscommunication and bottlenecks that lead to costly mistakes. Whether your teams are in-office or global, Grammarly Business delivers clarity to keep everyone on the same page.
Ready to maximize your team’s writing impact and accelerate the flow of work? Start by measuring your team’s ROI using our Communication Effectiveness Calculator. And check out the State of Business Communication results for more on how teams like yours adapt to async and hybrid work.
