Working from home: etiquette
At the moment, the majority of working time is spent at home. When I'm at home, the entirety of my work-related speech takes place through the phone (on Teams).
I find that the rules of etiquette on phone communication differ between company cultures. However, there are some things that I do for myself so that the transfer of information over the phone is as effective and painless as possible.
Before calling
Text ahead
The biggest benefit these days of workplace comms software like Teams or Slack is that they have text messaging built right in. One could even say that for some people, these media are text-first. A text notification is much less intrusive than a cold phone call. I always text message ahead to check if the other person is free to talk before pressing call. This gives them an opportunity to get ready before we talk.
Get your files ready
Most of the time, when I have to call someone, it's to look over documents. If I already know what files and which parts of those files we need to discuss, I will bring them up first before talking, so that the other person doese not have to wait for me to to dig around before we can discuss properly.
Usually this involves screen sharing. Getting my files ready also entails positioning them on the screen that I'll be sharing, ahead of actually screen sharing.
This applies to whether I have to call, or if I'm expecting someone to call me.
On the call
Be on time
Just because both people are on the computer, it doesn't mean that their time commitment is worth less. I always try my best to be on time for online meetings, or if not, I'll text ahead to inform the other person I'll be late.
Be polite
Even with a combination of a video and audio link, it can be harder to feel the flow of conversation compared to live physical conversation. Depending if you're in a high-interrupt culture or a high-turn-taking culture, you'll need to adjust your threshold for interrupting to achieve the goal of the conversation and also remain polite.
Take notes
Another advantage that computer-based phone calls bring is that you can take notes at the same time. In person this might look odd or rude depending on the context, but when both people have a computer right in front of them, I take notes as much as I can.
I'm not trying to capture everything that's being said, but just writing down anchors that I can review later and flesh out. My memory is untrustworthy, so I like to write things down.
... but not always
Sometimes, circumstances call for breaking some or all of these rules. I'll leave it to the reader to judge when such measures are called for.