In short, because async work is the future, and video is the best medium for remote organizations to stay connected. Boom, nailed it. However, that explanation would make for the shortest blog ever written. So, let’s unpack exactly what async video is, and the top five reasons why your organization needs it.
The future is now, welcome. The pandemic has forced us to collectively hit the fast forward button on our transition to remote work. Its acceptance grew throughout the 2010s, but its prevalence has spread like a hockey-stick shaped graph and shot to the moon through the globally mandated quarantines of 2020.
This is the biggest silver lining to all the days we dealt with isolation. Although a lot of the old guard in traditional office settings were apprehensive about remote work, we now have unequivocal proof that it works. Not only does it work, not only does study after study prove it benefits productivity- we like it more. Everyone values greater flexibility and less stress. These two benefits with remote work are hard to deny. A lot of the magic behind it comes from the natural transition to async platforms brought about through location independence.
Async work is basically any type of work that doesn’t require you to be there. Email, Slack, and WhatsApp are three mediums commonly used today for async work. The pony express or old school snail mail are some of its original forms. Synchronous work takes place as zoom meetings and one-on-one office chats. However, ye ole’ days of dropping into a co-worker’s office for a quick conference are long gone. That leaves us with a larger pile of our work in the async bucket. A lot of that work is fairly lonesome, so a loss of cohesion and bonding amongst remote teams is a concern. Let’s zoom out and take a look at 5 strong reasons your organization should lean into the future-into async Video.
1. To maintain personal connections across remote teams
The primary tool remote organizations use today to maintain intimacy or spark team bonding is Zoom. Zoom and other video call platforms allow you to see your coworkers. Video allows you to be your three-dimensional human self from any wifi network in the world. However, there is already a ubiquitous remote work pitfall spreading from team to team: Zoom Fatigue.
Since video calls feel like the only way to actually see your coworkers from a distance-to chat, laugh, and goof-around together-we’re nearly all overusing it. Navigate to async video and you’ll maintain the human feel of video without causing your team to get zoomed-out. Work platform Voodle allows your team to send and receive short 60-second videos on any number of topics. Voodle helps your team members maintain their unique identity, stay connected, and do it all at the moments they want to contribute.
2. Async is the new norm
In the office setting of the nineties and the aughts, most of our work was done face to face. Big wig businessmen would fly over oceans to have a single face to face meeting with new foreign clients. Coworkers would drop into a neighboring office to organize a project. Meetings we’re commonplace, and between those, you’d hang out in the break room together.
Now, in our remote future, we skip flights and take zoom calls. We send a lot more Slack, Teams, and WhatsApp messages. The break room doesn’t even exist anymore. Basically, we’ve navigated a huge amount of our collaborative workload to async platforms. We enjoy the freedom it gives us to work on our own schedule, with proper energy and renewed focus.
Now that async is the new norm, it’s time to consider your tech stack for 2021. I’m willing to bet around 90% of your async work happens on a combination of email and Slack or Teams. That’s a big percent all based on a single medium of communication- text. What if you dropped that percentage to 60% and began using Voodle, an async video-based platform? This would allow your team to “see each other,” without sacrificing the freedom and ease we love about async work.
If you were serving your team the same two lunches every day-for forever-and someone offered you a third option that you know they would love, of course, you would accept. Let Voodle join the “ways we do async work menu,” and let your team feast on something new and exciting.
3. Everyone should have an opportunity to know the entire company
There are a near-infinite number of use cases for Voodle, but let’s take one of the most obvious. Try, a voodle thread where everyone on your team introduces themselves in a 60-second video. Everyone else across the organization, regardless of role or department, can watch those videos on their own time.
- You can see that Sandra has long grey hair, a southern accent, and there are a few dogs running around behind her.
- Doug is young, has guitars hanging on his walls, and has traveled extensively.
- Rafa was born in Colombia, a mustache you make a mental note to compliment later, and a passion for cooking.
Async video is the best tool to allow a medium to large team to explore and discover who else makes up this big, dispersed, diverse team. Working remotely can often feel isolating, so creating unique and fun ways for your team to feel seen, understood, and a part of something greater is incredibly powerful. Voodle has the power to do just that, and the best part is, it’s async-so everyone can share or learn about the rest of the team whenever they have the time.
4. Async is key to remote management
According to an article by jotform.com founder and blogger Aytekin Tank, “More and more, I’m finding that mastering asynchronous communication is key to managing a remote team. And to be effective, it’s crucial to settle on communication tools to be utilized by your entire team.” Because this transition to working remotely was forced upon most, the vast majority of companies and their leadership didn’t necessarily sit down and consider “how should we structure our async communication tools to be the most effective?”
Rather, they just defaulted to what was already being used. If slack was the norm, slack usage doubled or tripled over night. If things were done by email, the shift to more async work simply meant way more emails. Take stock of how your async platforms are contributing to the productivity, connectivity, and overall happiness of your team. My guess is that most of your work is now done asynchronously, and that all of it takes place on text based platforms. Moving some amount of that communication to voodle will not only fit your new remote set up, it will make you a more effective manager.
5. Your team will thank you
Those organizations that have incorporated Voodle into their workflow are better off for it. Their team members are connecting deeply and learning new things about each other on a weekly basis. When you’ve met someone’s pets, gotten a tour of their home office, and been able to absorb exactly how excited they are about a new idea- you can’t help but feel more connected.
Shane Kovalsky of Mystery asserts “Voodle helps us strengthen our culture in a remote work environment-and allows us to get to know our team as people, not just colleagues. It’s almost like we never left the office.” Sarah Kaplan of the Institute for Gender and the Economy states, “Voodle is keeping our team connected while we all work from home. Everyone misses opportunities for spontaneous conversations and catch ups. Using Voodle to share work and personal updates helps us feel like a team and stay in sync.”
This unprecedented period of history has got so many folks feeling isolated and lonely. With Voodle, you’re able to keep your team connected in a virtual workspace: A platform where they can be their unique human self through the magic of video. Async work and remote work go hand in hand, but that doesn’t mean we need to lose the intimacy we once had with our colleagues at work.
Your company needs async video to fill the wide gaps that were left between co-workers when we were all forced into the home office. The vast majority of our work became async, but that doesn’t mean it has to be less human. Voodle is your bridge to the future of work, and if you lead your team down it, they’ll surely be grateful. They might even start a gratitude voodle thread where they share 60 second videos-of-thanks for their forward thinking organization.
Originally published at https://voodle.com on May 6, 2021.
