Communication Ideas for Creating the Strongest Team Even While Working from Home

Members of the department tell us that sharing these stories are a spark for lively communication!

For details, please be sure to check the Creative Department's note!

■ Create channels for casual conversations on chat tools
We also utilized chat tools in our initiatives.
The Global Operations Department we covered in a recent article, which belongs to the Value Management Center, has created a dedicated channel for casual conversation. The channel doesn't have any particular rules, and members are free to write about anything they want. A thread about baking at home has gotten really popular!

The Value Management Center also took on these projects. The Center uses teleconferencing tools to hold “online lunch meetings” where everyone can enjoy their lunch while chatting. When there's a lot of people they end up talking over each other, so four to five people is best. When there's a lot of participants, they split groups into different rooms.

They also hold “quiet meetings.” In these meetings, participants connect to teleconferencing tools and just go about their work. By creating an environment similar to the office, some participants said that seeing others focused on their work also helped them focus as well.


■ Online welcome parties

In this season, many of you may be welcoming new members into your teams. Two new members joined the Marketing Communication Department (which the LINE Fukuoka Press is a part of) so we held an online welcome party! We used chat tools to ask questions like when someone famous streams online, and had our members answer them. We were able to meet their kids, pets, and other family members, which made it a very fun event!

The Value Management Center utilizes chat tools to inform team members when an employee is starting work, finishing work, or taking their lunch break. By reporting in chat rather than just using a dedicated attendance management system, they were able to create communication similar to actually being in the office together.

Furthermore, the Value Management Center has shifted their work progress management, which were previously done verbally, to daily reports on our company wiki (a project management tool). Everyone reports “their tasks for the day” and “what they actually accomplished.” For anything that needs to be confirmed, they follow up through chat or teleconferencing to have a clear grasp on the work status of all members.

In the other sections of this post we've introduced initiatives at a department level, but communication methods at the company level also present issues.

Our COO, Mr. Yusuke Suzuki, chose “Enjoy the Challenges” (one aspect of the LINE STYLE) as LINE Fukuoka's primary STYLE for 2020 and stated:

The true meaning of a challenge is something that's “difficult but rewarding in the end.” This difficult situation that requires LINE Fukuoka to adopt a working from home policy for the first time since establishment is truly one of those “challenges.” There may be times where you're thrown off by carrying out your work or communicating with people differently from before, but once we've overcome this LINE Fukuoka will surely be a stronger team for it.

The day when we'll all be working together again will definitely come. And until that day comes, let's come together and face these challenges, and create another “WOW” from Fukuoka.

We're sure that many other companies are also going through a similar process of trial and error. We are also searching, and using the knowledge of each of its employees to explore “how to create good teams in our current situation.” It's a process of repeating trial and error, and there's no right answer, but we hope that the projects we introduced in this post give you some helpful hints.

LINE Fukuoka will continue to strive to create the “best team,” and take on the challenge of considering what communication should look like in current times, and how to build strong teams.

Note: We're also waiting for reports from all LINE Fukuoka employees to tell us what they're doing within their teams!