The remote working world is changing. Many companies are now embracing a flexible workforce and allowing remote teams to work from home on their own time. Although there are many worries that come with remote working, in recent years it has become more accepted. Small businesses have even found that they can use erc tax credits to support and for managing remote workers longer.
However, remote workers often have more freedom than their office-bound colleagues, but can also feel isolated and disconnected from the company they work for. If you want your remote workforce to stay in place, there are some simple things you can do to keep them happy and engaged with your business.
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All Remote Teams?
Is it feasible for a firm that exclusively is managing remote workers to establish and create a strong culture? It is true that the location of your employees’ workplace does not impact how you manage their attitudes and actions.
You can maintain a company culture just as effectively with all of your employees working remotely as you are with your employees working under the same roof.
1. Offer Employees a Stable Platform
First, you need to make sure that your employees have everything they need to succeed. This means providing a stable platform on which they can work.
In addition, it also means making sure that you are offering them the opportunity to be creative and innovative while working remotely.
An effective way to do this is by allowing your employees access to various platforms such as Slack, Zoom, or Skype so they can stay connected with each other in real time.
This way, everyone will know what is going on in one another’s personal life and allows for more collaboration between teammates who may be located around the world from each other.
2. Trust Your Employees
Trust is the foundation of any relationship. If you don’t trust your employees, it means they are not going to be as productive and they may leave. Trusting your employees will help them feel comfortable in their roles and increase their productivity.
That is important for remote working environments because it allows them to work from anywhere without having to worry about being micromanaged by someone else.
Trust is also important because it helps you retain your workforce. Employees want a sense of permanence and stability at work, which makes trust an essential part of building such an environment.
3. Be Flexible When Leading Your Remote Workers
When you work remotely, it’s easy to feel isolated. However, the truth is that employees who are highly skilled and passionate about their work tend to want to be challenged and stretched—and flexible work options give them that opportunity.
If you have a remote workforce, you know how difficult it can be to keep them engaged. Employees will often get bored if they aren’t given a variety of projects or opportunities for professional development.
Flexible work arrangements are one way to combat this problem. They allow employees to take on new challenges and learn new skills without having to go into the office every day.
By offering flexible hours and locations, you’ll keep your employees happy while increasing productivity.
4. Don’t Let the Silicon Valley Hype Get to You
In a remote working world where people are able to work from anywhere, companies must be careful about how they treat their employees. This is where Silicon Valley seems to fail their employees.
While they can give their employees a better working experience by working from home, they don’t, and their actions show a lack of trust in their employees.
So, don’t let the silicon valley hype get to you. If you want your workers to stay with your company for longer than just a few months, then you need to make sure that everyone feels as though they’re part of something bigger than themselves.
This means creating an atmosphere where people can feel comfortable sharing their ideas and having them heard by management; it means giving employees opportunities for growth within their roles,
It also means using technology in ways that help improve communication between managers and employees without making them feel like they’re being watched or stalked such as using video monitoring software.
5. Encourage the Right Kind of Communication
Encourage the right kind of communication. It’s important to encourage employees to communicate with each other but it’s also important that they feel comfortable communicating with their managers, clients, suppliers, and even the company as a whole.
As a remote managing or leading team, you will need to be sure that you avoid creating silos inside your organization. We have all seen organizations where there are different departments that don’t talk to each other or worse yet they are competing against each other instead of working together for the good of the company as a whole.
If this is happening in your organization then set up opportunities for these groups to meet face-to-face at least quarterly if not more often (maybe every month).
6. Company Culture For Managing Your Remote Workers
Nevertheless, creating a strong business culture in a physically remote location from the rest of the workforce has unique challenges. For instance, calling everyone on the floor and saying that there will be a meeting in the boardroom in five minutes requires less work than organizing an impromptu video conference meeting.
The video conference requires more planning and preparation.
However, tackling the issue of the need for adjustments or changes in worker behavior is not any easier in person than it is over a Zoom session. As you are not eyeballed in close proximity, it is less difficult to communicate the bad news that change is required through the medium of video.
Here, we look at how to manage your company culture when dealing with distributed teams.
Additionally, implementing a comprehensive employee orientation program specifically tailored for remote workers can play a crucial role in fostering a strong company culture.
The good news is that it is very possible to effectively manage a motivated and productive remote team of workers.
7. Demonstrate the Core Values of Your Company Culture
Employers are frequently unaware that the culture of their organization is not what it ought to be.
It is possible that the warning indicators will not become clear until after production has already plummeted.
It is possible that owners and top managers who are eager to bring in long-term workers oversell the atmosphere of their firm and the sense of community that exists there.
When something like this occurs, management has lost touch with the feelings of the workers. Your company’s goals and vision can be reviewed at any moment. Not only that, but changed, and shared with employees at any point in time.
Assume full responsibility for the culture of your firm and make it a habit to periodically restate the rationale for your core principles, which should include diversity and inclusion.
8. Cooperative Effort of Remote Teams
Encourage bottom-up cooperation. It means giving every employee a voice in determining which of the company’s core principles they find most relevant and exceptional.
Even while it is a good thing to end up with a list of values, documentation of the benefits that remote teams receive from the company in addition to their salaries is of the utmost importance.
Due to the limited opportunity for face-to-face interaction, distributed teams typically rely more on textual communication.
Your company’s culture paper has to be lucid, and succinct, and describe the changes that have been made to the business. It should indicate how performance will be measured.
Not only that but define the criteria that will be used to evaluate your team.
Then, clarify the expectations that you have for them. Make frequent references to this material and perform thorough reviews of it.
9. Orientation of Remote Employees
The absence of day-to-day familiarity is a problem for teams that work remotely. There is a decrease in the amount of idle chitchat and banter. Take the onboarding process a step further and customize how new employees are introduced to one another.
An informal sense of humor and a discussion of personal preferences, such as likes, dislikes, and the like, may be included in the welcome email.
In addition, you should hold social video team meetings, and the company should pay for alcoholic beverages and food for every employee. If it is impossible for your team to get together in person, you may accomplish virtually the same thing by doing events online.
The process of welcoming a new person to the team may be a really enjoyable time.
By being conscious of the fact that communication is restricted in remote teams, we may better appreciate the necessity of attending these sessions. Not only will new members of the team feel more at ease as a result of these quick introductions, but they will also develop familiarity and team bonding across the whole firm.
10. Establish Goals and Priorities for Managing Remote Workers
Certain modes of communication, such as email, are designed for business-related exchanges, but others, such as Zoom and Slack, are more frequently used for chats of a more personal nature. You do not need to divide communication channels in this manner, but you will need dedicated space for one or both of them.
Your staff members, as is customary in an office atmosphere, will reminisce about their days and engage in some harmless squabbling among themselves. Your team members will be able to construct their own social culture that motivates collaboration if you establish rules that outline what tools there are for cooperating and talking with one another if you put these rules into place.
The fact that startups already have a lot going for them in the field of employee engagement makes it a less scary task for business owners to establish a strong corporate culture.
11. Geographically Dispersed
At the same time, new businesses face difficulties with being geographically dispersed. That includes difficulties in communicating and maintaining consistency.
If the founders of a startup do not have a document that outlines the core values and guiding principles of their business, it may be difficult for them to maintain employee engagement.
If the owners of a firm can demonstrate that they live by their company’s principles, they will be able to entice more top-tier talent and build trust. With trust, employees voice their complaints, become friends with their coworkers, and take criticism.
Furthermore, employees are eager to receive input with that trust.
Distributing anonymous questionnaires that inquire about an individual’s level of pleasure and motivation is a good way to test whether or not your plan for increasing employee engagement is successful.
More Tips to Manage Your Remote Workers and Maintain Company Culture
12. Outline Your Communication Strategy
When managing your remote workers, one of the first things you would need to do is clearly outline what your communication strategy is. This simply means that you should make your employees aware of what your communication process is.
For example, you should let them know what kind of problems require a video call versus a team meeting versus an email. Doing this allows for clarification on their end.
The best way to execute this is by documenting your communication plan. Then, they can always go back for reference.
13. Take Advantage of Technology When Managing Your Remote Workers
One of the great things about technology is that it makes remote work a lot more manageable. It is vital to leverage technology in order to effectively communicate with your employees.
For example, using VoIP phone solutions for small businesses means you can easily make online phone and video calls between teams.
It only requires an internet connection for you and your team members to access calls, instructions, and updates, just like in an office. This is just one example of modern technology available for businesses working remotely to thrive.
You can do some further research to find out which other platforms will work for your remote workers. The past few years at Inspire To Thrive we have been doing more Zoom calls to go over workloads.
14. Have Regular Team Meetings
The importance of regular team meetings with remote workers cannot be overstated. And that goes for a video call as well.
This is particularly useful because it allows all your team members to connect with each other, and builds a sort of team bond that can foster better working relationships.
More than that, it allows them to communicate openly with each other. This team meeting can possibly clear any miscommunication between each other or regarding the work they have done.
Finally, it allows you to know your employees better, especially their strengths and weaknesses.
15. Create Realistic Work Expectations
It is very easy to place very high expectations on your remote workers as you subconsciously think that just because they are at home, they have all this free time. Nevertheless, try to remember that remote workers still need a good work-life balance.
Remember, they have other responsibilities to fulfill outside of work. Make a conscious effort not to disregard their additional responsibilities by bombarding them with ridiculous amounts of work.
Manage your expectations of them, however, this doesn’t mean that they should get away with not doing their work. Allow for one on one communication.
Sometimes, employees need one on one meetings with you more than you think. It is very easy to brush this off as unimportant, but these conversations are especially effective in managing your team.
Remember that each employee is their own individual, and has their own personal needs.
Holding regular one-on-one meetings with your employees allows them to openly share their questions, struggles, and ideas with you. All without having to worry about distractions from other team members.
Bonus Tip for Managing Your Remote Workers
Once a remote worker has done the job, pay them immediately. I like to pay my freelancers here at Inspire To Thrive quickly. I do not want to make them wait to receive their compensation for the time they have put in.
Oftentimes, freelance workers and other remote workers may quit. Paying them on time ensures they will possibly continue to work for you. If you are late with paying them, they may look elsewhere for work.
Your Turn
How are you managing your remote workers today? If you are a remote worker, which methods do you prefer working under?
I’d love to know more in the comments below.
She has 30+ years of experience in marketing/advertising with 12 years of experience in content marketing, social media, blogging, and SEO.
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Hi Lisa,
Blogging has taught us how to manage remote work. But COVID has taught the world to go online and work from home.
Managing remote workers takes work. But if there are no challenges, then there will be no business.
Building trust, giving importance, and acknowledging excellence are some of the best tools to make it easy to manage remote workers.
Thanks!
Hi Gaurav. I like that “if there are no challenges there would be no business” Great quote! I appreciate your time to come by and comment,have a great day.