The traditional office environment is vastly changing with freelancing and flexible working becoming more prominent in many companies. To ensure the smooth running of a diverse and possibly international team, it is important to use the many communication and technology platforms available to cultivate efficiency in the workplace.

For businesses which have employees and freelancers all over the world, it can be beneficial to adopt a primary communication platform such as Slack, which not only allows colleagues to communicate in an informal conversational manner, it also allows them to submit work/queries seamlessly in one centralised platform.

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Whether employees are in the same location or the other side of the world, there are a plethora of tools available to allow a team to work collaboratively and cohesively without stepping on each other toes or overwriting each other changes.

For coding, Github is an amazing tool for collaboration as it allows the team to communicate while coding in real time, meaning team members can cohesively work together to review code and share their input simultaneously while working on a particular project. Furthermore, the team can also search and reuse previous codes written by colleagues – perfect for when working on a tight schedule.

Project management has also gone digital with many platforms such a Trello offering an online space to keep track of all projects. From employee on-boarding to sales leads, employees across different company departments can easily track the progress of projects within their team through the visual boards.

With a large percentage of communication being non-verbal, conference calls can often lead to missed messages to what colleagues mean due to not being able to spot these non-verbal cues. Google hangout video conference calls allow colleagues to visually communicate with each other allowing for more effective communication, and avoid ‘stepping on each other toes’ by talking over each other.

>See also: Wi-Fi and productivity: redefining the workplace

The overarching benefit for adopting these types of technologies is to provide employees with a centralised platform to communicate and show progress seamlessly which ultimately allows teams to work in a more time efficient manner.

Creating and fostering an efficient workplace is no easy feat, but these technology platforms can lead to phenomenal results making the workplace albeit a virtual one, a much happier place to be.

Sourced by Sam Marley, who is currently taking part in The Watch Hut Campaign

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