Our analysis of the 2025 outlook for remote work in Europe confirmed that, while employers and workers alike have mixed sentiments towards remote work, it’s here to stay. Europeans seem to be content somewhere in the middle, with over  40% of European companies offering some form of partial work-from-home arrangement.

People are still debating the best way to work—remote, hybrid, or wholly on-site—but let’s put that discussion aside for now. If your team is working remotely even partly, you’ll appreciate how working remotely requires a different approach to communication. 

🎓 The Caflou series “How to manage a company and a team remotely” is brought to you by CAFLOU® – business management system which is used to manage the performance and economy of your company, team and projects, 100% digitally, even remotely. 

Although you’ve got more tools to facilitate, success relies on how these tools are used (and what for), the standards you set for communication and the culture you build, and the fundamentals of effective communication.

In this guide, we explore:

  • How the “remote” part of work impacts communication, and how to plan your communications strategy with these additional considerations in mind.
  • 4 steps to help your remote or hybrid teams communicate effectively.

How does ‘remote’ impact team communication?

When remote work skyrocketed during the pandemic, “Zoom fatigue” was perhaps the most well-known consequence. Regularly engaging in Zoom calls throughout the day, whether in the form of corporate meetings or academic lessons, causes people to suffer from fatigue and mentally disengage. 

With time, additional complications in remote communications have become apparent. These complications are largely due to how technology is used for communication, IT infrastructure challenges (slow internet networks), and because teams may be unprepared to govern remote communication systems and processes.

A lack of technology governance, process planning, and communication SOPs can fuel challenges such as:

  • Information overload. Moving internal comms primarily to digital infrastructure usually entails sharing knowledge on different platforms. 

    Left unchecked, this can lead to seemingly endless notifications demanding your attention—Slack notifications because you were tagged in a specific channel, emails marked “urgent,” and priority tasks assigned to you in the project management tool. 

    The constant noise, and the stream of tasks demanding your attention, can negatively impact productivity and impede focus. 
     
  • Knowledge siloes. Remote communication can contribute to knowledge siloes for two reasons:
    • Decentralised tech stacks. If different teams use multiple platforms for knowledge sharing—e.g., maybe each department has its own knowledge management system and project management tool—you end up with information siloes and important context gets lost in the mix.
       
    • Communication practices and standards. When people are physically in an office space, they communicate naturally through social norms. If you have a question, you stop by your colleague’s desk. People gathered by the water cooler might share casual updates. Your boss might share an update or request for support on their way from one meeting room to the next.

      People don’t usually put much thought into communicating in this way, it happens naturally in the office. But remote communication is a different story. You can’t stop by someone’s desk or mention something when you’re walking by, and people don’t gather around the water cooler or tea room. So team members need to think consciously about when and how to share knowledge. 

4 steps to ensure successful communication for remote and hybrid teams

Although remote and hybrid set ups can complicate the logistics of workplace communication, remote and hybrid teams aren’t doomed to ineffective communication. Taking the right steps, which include adopting communication standards and taking governance seriously, can these teams share knowledge efficiently and effectively. 

In many ways, digital communications can be an advantage—it makes it easier to measure metrics and productivity. Your comms systems record how long a meeting goes on for, you can use AI to take notes and summarize the agenda points, you’ll get an automated attendees list, etc.

The fundamentals of effective workplace communication remain the same for any work model, so it’s to cover those. Beyond that, here are four steps to facilitate your remote or hybrid team’s communications. 

1. Infrastructure support

Perhaps unsurprisingly, providing your teams with the right core infrastructure is one of the most significant contributors to success in remote communication. 

That means giving them powerful laptops, choosing reliable and scalable team communications tools (video conferencing tools, team collaboration software, etc.), and making sure people have what they need to work from their home set ups—including a stable internet and any equipment they need (like a good mic and webcam).

We recommend including infrastructure support in your budget for employees, which may range from one-off allowances for equipment (workstations, microphones, webcams) to counting high-speed internet services under expense claims. Beyond this, it’s important to invest in communications software and provide teams with any onboarding or support they need. 

Communicate in projects and tasks with colleagues and customers using comments, chat, videoconferencing or email.

2. Establish communication standards

Establishing workplace communication standards is generally important to ensure accountability, knowledge sharing, and to help people prioritize work. In remote and hybrid work environments, communication standards, you also need to account for:

  • The factors that create knowledge siloes. Earlier, we discussed how in-office interactions don’t naturally translate to remote settings. That means you need to consciously need to plan around these gaps by explicitly guiding people on how to communicate and what mode to use. 
     
  • Additional communication channels. Remote and hybrid teams share knowledge across several platforms—like Slack, Microsoft Teams, email, knowledge bases, and project management tools. Without defined standards for where to share and store information, knowledge gets scattered and lost. One report, on how employees manage and access knowledge, found that respondents spent an average of five hours per week searching for information they need inside different apps. 
     
  • Asynchronous and synchronous communication. Distributed teams may gravitate towards asynchronous communication—i.e., interactions that don’t happen in real-time (sending a recorded video, dropping an email, assigning tasks in the project management suite)—to accommodate different time zones and work shifts. 

    But, used right, async comms is beneficial for any team, largely because it facilitates focused work. It also offers secondary benefits, like avoiding scheduling clashes and helping you store knowledge. Many remote teams use software like Loom—which lets you record videos with screen sharing, chaptering, automated captions,  and other capabilities—to reduce the frequency of two-way meetings. 

    When you’re outlining communication standards, it’s a good practice to guide employees on when to use async and synchronous communication, respectively. This doesn’t necessarily mean outlining specific scenarios—e.g., send updates via Loom and hold group meetings for brainstorming—but helping people understand the benefits of each and empowering them to decide for themselves.

3. Don’t overlook technology governance

SaaS sprawl either directly contributes to, or exacerbates, many of the complications that can arise from remote work. SaaS sprawl is when a company builds up a large software stack, usually due to a lack of governance and cohesion between teams. The consequences of SaaS sprawl include information overload from various notifications, knowledge siloes, less focused work, and unchecked costs.

The cure for SaaS sprawl lies in stronger governance and better supporting your teams with the right technology. If teams and individuals don’t have the tools they need for, they’ll pursue adopting technology independently, without aligning with the needs of other teams, departments, and the business as a whole. 

You can reduce SaaS sprawl by:

  • Auditing your existing tool stack. Look for tools that haven’t been adopted properly, ones with overlapping feature sets, and tools that are no longer needed or useful.
     
  • Talking to your team members about their needs and work with them to define a tech stack that suits everyone. It’s also best to agree on a formal process for adopting new tools, including requests and approvals.
     
  • Centralising your tool stack by using platforms that fulfill multiple needs. For example, business management tools may include business economics, customer relationship management, project management, and other functionalities in a single software suite.

💡Read more: Top 17 Small Business Communication Solutions for Every Need 

4. Empower leadership to support teams

Organizational leaders—right from the C-level down to department heads, managers, and team leads—play a pivotal role in improving team communications. This is true for remote and hybrid comms as well.

After you’ve formalised technology governance, established communication standards, and identified the right infrastructure, leaders are responsible for:

  • Reinforcing communication standards by taking the lead. Teams will take their manager/lead’s cue on where and how to store knowledge, the style of language to use in communications, and more nuanced considerations like how to approach conflict or motivate fellow team members.

    Beyond leading by example, leaders should also subtly reinforce communication standards by guiding team members when they struggle to comply. 
     
  • Collecting feedback. Keeping your ear on the ground is important for understanding what’s working, identifying gaps, and making sure your efforts to improve communication are well-received and effective. 

    Collecting feedback extends to understanding each team’s technology needs, too, to help the business adopt the right technology. When leaders show their teams that they’re available to support them with tools, individuals will feel less compelled to informally adopt software.
     
  • Shaping culture. Leaders help shape an organizational culture that encourages transparent, effective communication by encouraging people to share their ideas, making them feel safe about voicing concerns and sharing feedback. 

    When you add remote to the mix, it’s important for leaders to translate these efforts to digital communications. That might include hosting virtual team-building activities, starting off meetings with brainstorming exercises, and using different tools and methods to collect feedback.  

💡 Read more: How to Build and Sustain Culture in Your Remote Team

Manage internal comms with Caflou – a unified business management system

One of the most effective ways to facilitate remote team communication is by choosing the right digital infrastructure. An all-in-one business solution like Caflou lets you replace multiple tools, preventing SaaS sprawl and simplifying internal and external comms.

Caflou gives you all the essential communication capabilities a business could need in one place, including:

  • Video conferencing. Caflou Meet is fully integrated video conferencing tool that works from your browser, just like Google Meet. You can host multiple participants, share your screen, send messages in chat, toggle video and audio settings, and more.
     
  • A Slack-like chat. Just like on Slack, Caflou’s chat feature lets you create channels, message threads, and message people 1:1 privately. 
     
  • A unified email inbox. Our unified inbox brings your emails directly to the Caflou platform via direct APIs. Connect Outlook, Gmail, or any other mailbox that supports IMAP to send and receive emails from Caflou.
     
  • Client relationship management. Manage all your contacts—including customers, vendors, and contractors— in one place with Caflou’s built-in CRM. Assign team members to accounts, view contact information,  
     
  • Project and task management. Track progress, manage timelines, assign tasks and responsibilities, and monitor status updates in your preferred view with Caflou’s integrated project management tool. Managing your projects in an integrated business suite also makes it easy to engage contractors and share updates or approval requests with your customers.

Choose Caflou to manage your projects, clients, contracts, business economics, and communication in a single place. One platform, one set of logins, one subscription—minimal hassle. Get started with our free 14-day trial.

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