Asynchronous Communication - The Art of Working Remotely Effectively

Going back to our above scenario, Samantha could have used an asynchronous communication tool to move the project forward by getting approval from the key stakeholders on their schedule instead of trying to hold a meeting where everyone had to join at the same time. She’d be less frustrated and meet her objectives. For the company, that’s a perfect ending. When employees are happy AND meeting their goals, everyone wins.

In this guide, the team at Spike will describe the ins and outs of asynchronous communication vs. synchronous communication, how to make remote and hybrid work a success, and how to free up your team to do their best work while having fewer distractions during the day.
 

In this guide, we will cover:

• Communication challenges in teams and organizations working remotely
• Understanding the difference between asynchronous communication and synchronous communication
• When you should use synchronous communication and when you should use asynchronous communication
• Solutions for teams working remotely in different time zones
• What tools your team should use to communicate and collaborate while working remotely effectively

Communication Challenges When Working Remotely

Our work environments saw a drastic change in 2020, and we saw new challenges arise with how teams communicate. Now that life is getting back to normal (whatever that new normal is), organizations are finding their groove with remote work, but they’re looking for new solutions to solve their remote work communication problems.

With remote work, teams can be spread across continents. Freelancers and remote workers can be on the other side of the world as quickly as they can be down the street. Unfortunately, the disconnected nature of our locations means that there is always the temptation to answer those midnight emails to add just a bit of information for those team members who are just logging on.

We’re not even safe when we’re at home anymore because work is no longer about the location but what we do. The instant-messaging creep is so pervasive that we can never really shut down at the end of the day. We feel pressure to reply to those small requests and quick emails whenever we have our devices handy—it only takes the ping of a phone.

Different Time Zones

Like we mentioned earlier, remote work has enabled teams to be scattered around the world. Even people working in the same country can be 3 hours apart. Regardless of the time difference between team members, keeping the realities of these differences in mind as you work remotely will be necessary, not only for productivity but also for mental health. When a company relies on synchronous communication as a primary way to work, being in different time zones will be a productivity blocker.

When relying on asynchronous communication, teams that cross time zones can work on their own schedule and know that coworkers will get back to them with responses to requests as soon as possible. In remote work, trust in your team is essential. If someone trusts the other person to respond with a thoughtful answer when they’re able, then they’ll trust the process in the future. Truthfully, asynchronous communication falls apart when people don’t trust each other to respond in a timely manner. If people assume their email will take weeks for a response, they are more likely to use a tool like iMessage or WhatsApp to get your attention immediately.

When dealing with different time zones, there are two things to keep in mind:

1. Try to find a few common hours during the day.
2. Respect boundaries when people are “off work” either early in the morning or in the evening. Just because you’re working doesn’t mean that everyone else should be as well.

Although asynchronous communication is preferred as a primary method of communication, there are times when synchronous communication is needed. When teams are in different time zones, you’ll have to work to find a common free hour when a quick chat is needed. If your team is spread around the world, try to limit the evenings people have to stay on for meetings. Even a 6 AM meeting can often be preferable to a 6 PM meeting when impacting your work-life balance, but each team will need to find ways to occasionally meet together.

When teams are located in the same country, it’ll be difficult enough to respect boundaries. People who start their day earlier will struggle to wait on others to get online or even think they should start their day earlier. On the other hand, people who start their day later might be frustrated that others end their day at 5:00 PM in their time zone when there is still work to be done. It’s vital to set proper boundaries for work hours and respect them.

Losing the Human Touch

A proper infrastructure should be implemented so there are key crossover hours for the occasional video meeting, but otherwise, a reliance on asynchronous communication will keep projects moving forward.

If the COVID-19 pandemic taught us anything about our interpersonal relationships at work it’s that we all miss getting together. Video chats are an okay substitute, but when the majority of our communications have been limited to email and chat apps, there is an empathy component that’s lost as we lose the human touch.

For teams that have the option to meet together a few times a month or even a few times a year, there are benefits to doing so, as it builds trust and rapport. This helps form cohesive and trusting teams for when you go back to working remotely.

For teams that can’t, there are ways to bridge the gap to keeping morale and trust high. One idea to bridge the gap for keeping the human touch is for a weekly “no work talk” call to talk about what’s going on in your life, interesting things that are happening, etc. Having these calls can help humanize each person on the team so everyone else realizes they are more than a face on a video call or the person sending an email. If your time zone allows, you can have a weekly coffee time or weekly happy hour – the company can even supply the beverages as a treat.

For remote teams, trust is paramount. You must trust your team to do their work, but they also must trust you to receive feedback. Therefore, you must continually be asking:

• Can we do this better?
• Are we respecting personal boundaries?
• Do we have the right tools to do our jobs well?
• Do people feel appreciated and their work recognized?

Keeping Communication Flowing

As organizations grow in size and responsibilities, it becomes a challenge to keep everyone on the team involved in what’s going on. In addition, as departments grow, it’s highly likely that information becomes siloed into each department and will often not make it to the knowledge base of the rest of the team.

This situation happens not out of fear of sharing but often from moving quickly in your personal and departmental goals. So often, each department has its own goals for the quarter and year, and they’re moving so quickly to meet them, they don’t consider how their decisions will affect other departments in the future.

When this situation is paired with remote work, it’s even harder to keep communication flowing. People generally work alone all day and chat in small groups without the opportunity to catch up with others. In addition, chance meetings in the breakroom with other departments don’t happen with remote work.

Going back to our example above, Samantha has been tasked with the new product idea by the CEO. Still, the CEO didn’t communicate to the rest of the company about the product, so they have no idea the importance of the project. When significant decisions are made, they should be communicated to everyone in the company because of the way decisions can trickle down and affect others.

From an organizational perspective, having a single place where employees can track and monitor essential decisions related to the company will help significantly reduce information becoming siloed. The information gathered isn’t just for decisions that affect everyone, but also decisions that might not affect everyone. Having a free flow of information will help everyone stay in-the-know of what is happening in the company.

Bridging Different Cultures and Languages

If you’ve only ever worked inside an office in your country, you’re likely unaware of how different cultures might have different routines, appropriate language, and acceptable activities.

As remote teams add people from other countries and regions, it will be important to be aware of these potential differences among your team members. If not addressed, problems can occur. An organization’s people operations team will need to be conscious of how their policies, schedules, and decisions will affect people from all the cultures represented at the company.

Synchronous Communication Model for Remote Teams

When it comes to collaboration for teams, synchronous forms of communication do offer a few benefits. They allow you to share ideas and brainstorm together instantly. The very fact that people from all around the world can instantly talk, text, and collaborate at the same time is a modern miracle.

Although this guide is about asynchronous communication, there are times when synchronous communication is preferable. The goal of asynchronous communication is to make it the default way and only use synchronous communication when necessary. Otherwise, too much time will be spent in meetings, and precious time that could have been spent focusing on projects is wasted.

For remote teams in different time zones, it’s also wise to set expectations on response times. Many organizations use the 24-hour rule during the week for response times. Even if the work is not completely finished, responding to the other person to let them know where you are in the process will keep them informed. Keeping this in mind will limit the need for as much use of synchronous tools.

Discover:

Why Teamwork and Collaboration are so Important

When Should Remote Teams Utilize Synchronous Communication?

When is synchronous communication beneficial for remote teams? We recommend that by default, performance reviews and weekly check-ins should be held using synchronous technology. We will go more in-depth later, but anything that is high on emotions should be done using synchronous.

Other than the high emotion meetings, when you find asynchronous communication taking way too long to resolve the problem, it’s time to move to using synchronous tools in order to speed up the process. One thing to keep in mind is that well-thought-out responses can often answer the question without requiring a move to synchronous tools.

The most common form of synchronous communication is video calls. Using a video call solution will allow for one-on-one team catch-ups, but also allow departments to have their weekly status update meetings.

There are countless video conferencing apps that work across all devices without needing to install any plugins or drivers and these tools will allow entire teams to chat with each other, share their screen, and work through common issues. Many organizations deploy them to use internally as well as externally with clients.

What other times should teams move to synchronous communication tools? Let’s take a look.

Performance Reviews, Weekly Check-ins

Performance reviews are a time for discussion about past performance, plans about upcoming projects, roadblocks in existing ones, and things that need to be addressed. It’s often said to praise in person and criticize in private. When doing reviews and weekly check-ins, they should be done using synchronous technology like phone calls or video chats to keep a strong human touch.

Because performance reviews are so important to understanding where you’re at in meeting your quarterly and annual goals, it’s ideal to do this live and on video. It allows each person to have the full attention of the other person so a dialogue can happen about the progress that’s been made.

If it’s possible, performance reviews are even better suited for in-person meetings as well. Although that’s impossible for some times if the organizations are fully remote across the world. If your company has annual or bi-annual all-hands meetings, it would be preferable to handle all performance reviews during this time.

Weekly Happy Hours

While getting together in person for happy hours is much more fun than a virtual happy hour, a virtual one will provide the opportunity for a remote team to at least take their work “hats” off for an hour to talk about non-work topics. For obvious reasons, these events need to be on video and in a synchronous form. Part of the benefit of having time to talk about non-work topics is stopping work to build rapport with your team. If it’s done in an asynchronous method, it’ll just be another task to do as part of your day.

Profound Discussions

When an organization is making major changes or deep brainstorming and collaboration need to happen, there are times when this will need to be conducted either in person or on video. Even for remote organizations, there will be times when teams should try to assemble together, but if that’s not possible, video chats will be preferred over email or other means of communication for in-depth discussions.

For deep and profound discussions, there is often context that can be lost if not done live either using video or audio technology. Part of the benefit of live discussions and conversations is that they can often spur brainstorming that might otherwise not happen. If possible, deep and profound discussions are helpful to be done in person if your team is able to do that.

Fun Days

Even for the busiest organizations and the highest goals, making time for fun is essential. All work and no play make for a terrible workplace atmosphere. Possible options for video “fun days” are virtual scavenger hunts or online games that are accessible to everyone. Companies that make time for fun will often enjoy the benefits of that team building later on.

The Problem With Real-Time & Synchronous Communication

For organizations that have not figured out how to leverage asynchronous communication, but still rely on 100% synchronous communication – they are likely not aware of the burnout they are seeing. A Harvard Business Review article states some facts that should make managers slightly uncomfortable. At many organizations, employees spend up to 80% of their time in meetings, on the phone, or responding to incoming messages (email, team-chat, etc). This survey was pre-pandemic, so it’s likely to be higher now.

Couple remote work with mobile devices, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster. The option to always be available for real-time chat might seem like a productivity boost, but it does bring a cost. When employees are always working, they’ll become burnt out. This burnout will lead to lower creativity and possibly much higher turnover among your staff.

Here are a few key downsides constant synchronous communication creates:

• Inability to do deep work because of constant interruptions
• Heightened stress as employees feel like their entire job is responding to messages
• Lower quality of work as employees focus on clearing out their inbox instead of working on company goal objectives

Is real-time communication inherently bad? Absolutely not, but overuse of it does lead to significant problems. 

How to Effectively Utilize Synchronous Communication

Throughout this guide, we’ve discussed company culture quite a bit, and ultimately culture is what will make or break a remote company. Companies should strive for the 85/15 rule on time spent using asynchronous communication and synchronous communication. In that 15% time, companies will need to make sure to use that time effectively.

Don’t Over Use It

It goes without saying- don’t overuse synchronous communication. If you find yourself “needing” to get on calls more and more often, then you probably need to revisit how well your team communicates. If synchronous communication seems like it’s needed, then it’s likely that teams aren’t clear on direction and next steps.

Especially for teams that are in different time zones, using synchronous communication tools on the regular will require team members to either get up early or stay late to take part in meetings. In turn, these team members will feel like their personal time is not respected.

Plan Ahead

When a synchronous meeting is required , there should be a clear agenda, start time, and a clear ending time. It’s also important to only invite relevant people so company time is not wasted inviting ten people to a meeting that have no real input to give. An effective meeting requires strategy and focus.

It’s ideal to avoid surprise meetings that can appear urgent on the surface but are actually the result of poor planning. It’s hard to schedule meetings with multiple participants, so it’s best to plan ahead and only have them when absolutely necessary.

Record and Document Every Synchronized  Meeting

When coordinating meetings, it’s important to record the meeting and document everything that happens. In the documentation, it’s important to note the individuals directly responsible for every action item. Keeping good meeting notes and recording every decision will allow people in other time zones to skip the meetings and stay in the loop with what’s going on.

Before recording the meeting, make sure that each participant is aware that the meeting is being recorded. After the meeting, the person who called the meeting should distribute the notes, any action items with due dates, and a copy of the recording.

By keeping good notes, there will be clear documentation of what was discussed, the next steps, and then when they are due. If the objectives are not met in the future, there will be a clear paper trail of where the roadblock occurred.

Asynchronous Communication Model for Remote Teams

The communication structure and habits of remote teams will often be the root cause of failing to meet the goals set by the company. One of the significant benefits of remote work is how many interruptions you get to avoid by not allowing people to “pop in” your office or workspace. Getting to control who gets to interrupt you will enable uninterrupted periods for “deep work” to focus on long-form writing, strategic planning, brainstorming, or any other work that requires long periods of focus.

Asynchronous Communication Bridges All Time Zones

For remote teams, a reliance on asynchronous communication technology will break down the barriers of time zones. As long as messages are followed up with on a timely basis, employees can work in whatever time zone they want and still provide value to the company. Asynchronous communication will allow employees to live wherever they want and wherever gives them the highest quality of life while getting to contribute to worldwide companies. Instead of commuting for hours each week to an office with a different screen, remote teams can use that extra time to have more time to exercise, spend time with family and friends, learn new skills, or even get more work done.

Giving Room and Energy for Deep Work

Technology was supposed to allow us to work less. That, unfortunately, hasn’t happened. The more efficient we become, the more we try to cram into our days. Unfortunately, technology has increased the number of distractions we face in a day. It has made it possible for people to call us using audio or video calls and send messages to our phones, watches, and even some TVs. In fact, it’s hard to go a half-hour without someone wanting your attention.

Wanting your attention and needing it are two vastly different things, though. There are some times when people genuinely need your attention, and those times are acceptable for interruptions. Otherwise, allowing someone to get your attention whenever they want limits your ability to do deep and focused work. Asynchronous communication allows you to focus on work for long periods of time and then turn your attention to incoming messages. You’ll be able to give those messages your undivided attention because you’ve already worked on the other items that were on your agenda for the day.

When Should Remote Teams Utilize Asynchronous Communication?

Asynchronous communication should be the default for all communications when working remotely. In fact, we would argue it’s the key deciding factor for success for remote teams. Without it, employees will be fatigued from being on video calls throughout the day and be less productive overall.

Asynchronous communication will enable your remote teams to do a couple of things:

• Have a more productive day instead of just responding to messages and emails
• Have less stress because they will feel more in control of their time
• Have more thoughtful communication when they’re responding back to messages because they won’t feel like they’re facing a “firehouse” of messages that must constantly be dealt with

So when should remote teams use asynchronous communication? Almost always unless there is a clear reason not to use it.

Asynchronous vs Synchronous Communication – Why is it Important for Teamwork?

Back when everyone was working in the same building, communication was much more of a forgiving process. If you weren’t clear about something in an email, you could easily clarify it in the breakroom. If you weren’t clear about something on a conference call, you had the opportunity to pop into that person’s office or workspace later to get clarification .

For remote teams, the opportunity to clarify things later isn’t always as easy. Asynchronous communication, while it is much more efficient, can lead to items and direction being lost due to lack of clear communication. Care must be taken to make sure everything you want to communicate is clear. When in doubt, type, read over, edit, and then hit send.

Try to avoid quick communication (and back and forth) when communicating about important items. If you aren’t clear in an email about product strategy and have to get on a video call later to clarify, you’ll have wasted all the time and energy you saved by using asynchronous technology.

How To Effectively Utilize Asynchronous Communication

For remote teams to effectively use asynchronous communication, care must be taken to lay out the ground rules, set proper expectations, and build a system of trust. If properly implemented, it can unlock a world of happier employees who produce better work while enjoying less stress.

Set Time Tables

One of the most common problems for teams who try to implement asynchronous communication is that too long goes in between responses to messages. If you send an email on Monday, but don’t get a response until Friday, your ability to do your job might be impacted and force a missed deadline. The next time this happens, you’ll want to jump on a video call.

Organizations that are successful with asynchronous communication set proper expectations on how soon one should expect to get responses to email or other types of messages. Typically, organizations say 24 hours when you’re in the office. If you’re out of the office, be sure to set up an out of the office alert.

Even if your response isn’t giving everything the person asked, you should at least let them know when they should expect the finished work that was requested.

Organization

For the success of remote work, communications and other important information must be organized into a central location that all team members can easily access. In addition, finding the proper information to connect different departments is key to ensuring that important milestones, changes, and updates can easily be made known to team members regardless of where they’re located.

Communication Must Be Clear

A challenge that can often occur with remote teams is that information isn’t communicated clearly. When using asynchronous communication strategies while working remotely, every email, announcement, and message must be clearly shared without the need for continual follow-up or clarification.

Asynchronous Communication Challenges

Evaluating Efficiency

Sometimes, you’ll end up in situations where conversations take more than four messages to find a resolution. When you come across these situations, it’s time to schedule a live meeting. Asynchronous communication isn’t saving you time and energy if it’s taking significantly longer to get projects moving forward. Try to be succinct in your communication, but recognize when a 5-minute phone call or video meeting would solve the problem faster and with more clarity.

Client-facing Roles

If you’re in a client-facing role such as customer service or customer success, you may have to be in the virtual office at certain times in order to meet service level agreements for customers. If you’re in these roles, you won’t always be able to rely on asynchronous communication options, but you should recognize that a client relationship and “face time” are more important than internal meetings. Therefore, internal meetings should default to asynchronous when possible.

Interviewing External Candidates

There’s an old saying that breaking bread together is the best way to learn about someone. Interviewing external candidates is going to be extremely challenging with asynchronous communication. Like client-facing roles, these types of meetings should be in person. If you’re in People Operations/HR, focus your live meeting time on external candidates while leveraging asynchronous options for internal communication.

Spike – Leading The Asynchronous Revolution While Offering Synchronous Options

When looking to move to asynchronous communication, it can be daunting to try to determine which tools will be needed. Thankfully, Spike is a complete digital workspace that makes asynchronous communication a solved problem. As much as technology has changed, email is still the best tool to help remote teams get their work done while having less stress.

Spike offers the best of both technologies. The Spike digital workspace unlocks an asynchronous lifestyle while offering synchronous communication options when needed. Let’s dive into all that Spike can offer for remote teams.

Email Chat

Spike unlocks asynchronous communication by turning your email account into a chat-like tool. Do you need to have a quick chat with someone? Spike works great with that. Do you need to schedule an email to go out tomorrow? Spike can do that as well.

Spike works like a normal email app, simplifying everything into a messenger-like interface by removing headers, footers, and signatures for a streamlined conversation. For your clients who are using regular old email, they’ll see Spike messages as a professional business email.

Online Notes

Spike’s digital workspace includes online notes with built-in collaboration tools. Now, instead of requiring a weekly meeting to check in with your remote teams, everyone can document their updates, provide comments, and avoid another meeting in the process.

Notes include real-time updates, but they’re still perfect for working in an asynchronous environment. When Notes are shared, people can comment and provide feedback on their schedule without requiring others to be available at the same time.

Voice Messages

Sometimes it’s easier to articulate comments, feedback, and questions using your voice. The default option for most businesses is to schedule yet another meeting. Meetings waste time, drain energy, and cost the company money in regards to people’s time. So, to avoid costly meetings, using voice messages is an effective tool.

Spike’s Voice Messages work on all of your devices, so if you want to provide feedback on the latest draft or mock-up, hit the record button and start talking. Once you’re done with your feedback, hit send. It’s that easy, and you’ll avoid another meeting in the process.

Tasks And To-do List

Part of the success of remote teams will hinge on the ability to trust your team to deliver on their accepted responsibilities and tasks. Spike includes a Task function to help monitor deliverables.

By tracking your Tasks in a collaborative format within Spike, you’ll always be able to tell where projects are at, address any roadblocks, and provide feedback. Furthermore, because all of this can be done asynchronously, managers can live in a completely different country from their team and provide proper feedback on the work being provided.

Conclusion

When considering the pros and cons of asynchronous communication, it’s essential to view the entire cost. Just calculating the cost of your tools doesn’t consider the lost labor time spent in meetings, the productivity lost during those meetings, and the cost of stressed and unhappy employees.

Asynchronous communication unlocks the path to happy employees who are more focused on their work. Asynchronous technology might seem foreign at first, but once you learn to trust your team to do their job, everything will become more productive.

Updated 2/26/2022