How do you maintain a team culture while working remotely?
How to Build a Positive Remote Team Culture
Building a positive team culture is essential for any organization, but it can be especially challenging when working remotely. Remote work can create feelings of isolation and disconnection, which can lead to decreased productivity and morale. However, with the right strategies in place, remote teams can foster a positive work environment that encourages collaboration and creativity. In this article, we'll discuss the importance of building a positive remote team culture and provide tips on how to do so.
How HR can help maintain company culture with remote workers
With the rise of remote work, companies are facing a unique challenge: how to maintain their company culture with remote workers. HR departments are in the best position to help ensure that company culture is maintained when employees are working from different locations.
HR can provide support to remote workers by creating and implementing policies and procedures that will help maintain company culture. This could include developing a code of conduct for all employees, providing online training programmes, or offering virtual team-building activities. Additionally, HR can create an environment where feedback is welcomed and encouraged. By doing this, they can ensure that everyone feels connected and valued, no matter where they work.
Best practices for maintaining company culture remotely
Whether your organization already includes remote workers or is making the transition, company culture is essential to your success. Read on for tips HR can use to foster a positive culture for remote employees.
Share your company's values.
A big part of your company's culture is its values. They are the core pillars guiding your organization and need to be at the forefront of your employees’ minds.
For remote employees, your company values are a concrete understanding of how your organization operates and how you create a positive work environment. Check out these creative ways to share and uphold your values with remote employees:
- Incorporate values from day one: Add your values to the company website and ask value-centric questions during the hiring process.
- Start a weekly round-up: Create a weekly email for employees to share how they integrated the company values into their workflow.
- Establish digital peer-to-peer recognition: Let employees nominate co-workers they feel exude company values and award weekly kudos to those individuals.
Improve communication
One of the biggest obstacles to remote cultures is communication. Because everyone is working from different locations, it’s easy for things to fall through the cracks. Simple fixes require more time and follow-up.
Establish communication norms to ensure clarity, including chat best practises, response time frames, and email etiquette. Setting communication standards will prevent people from getting barraged with messages, reduce interruptions, and make communication easier.
Try these strategies to improve communication to help you build and maintain your remote culture.
- Develop a company-wide newsletter that shares the happenings, goals, and achievements of different departments to bring the entire organization together.
- Send a survey for feedback. Give employees the opportunity to share what they like and don’t like about the current culture and ways to improve it.
- Leverage the right technology. Equip employees with appropriate hardware, project management software, and real-time chat applications to make communication a breeze.
Build camaraderie and avoid isolation.
Part of traditional company cultures is the environment employees work in. Typically, this is the office space, which includes open floor plans, football tables, and maybe even a boulder wall.
Remote employees are often working from a home office, kitchen table, or even a couch. There’s no water cooler for employees to catch up and chat around, making it challenging to not only form but also preserve a sense of camaraderie.
Implement a few of these ideas to build camaraderie among your employees:
- Fun chat channels: Utilize Slack and Microsoft Teams to start channels for employees to bond over mutual interests such as movies, pets, and fitness.
- After-hour virtual socials: Start a video-chat happy hour, game night, paint night, or even do a virtual cooking class.
- Lunch break wellness activities: Take time at lunch (or breakfast, depending on the timezone) and try yoga, meditation, pilates, or Peloton classes together to encourage healthy habits.
Make face-to-face meetings a priority.
There is no replacement for seeing your colleagues face-to-face, even if it’s via a screen. Seeing and hearing others allows you to pick up on subtle cues like voice inflection and body language, helping you identify issues and connect with employees. It establishes trust and helps people feel like they are part of the team.
- Weekly 1:1s: Designate time for managers to meet individually with employees via video to establish trust, build connections, and celebrate individual accomplishments.
- Mandatory video meetings: Promote teamwork and reinforce values when you see your colleagues face-to-face. Give each meeting a theme such as presentation skills, negotiation, or grammar 101 to learn from fellow employees.
Want to improve your remote meetings? Find out how to keep remote employees both engaged and productive with these proven techniques.
Establish company-wide initiatives.
Coordinate company-wide initiatives or even department-specific retreats, offsites, training seminars, etc. to help promote your culture.
Hold these events throughout the year to keep the spirit of your values alive and bring people from different departments and locations together virtually.
- Hold all-hands meetings: Update the entire organization on important events and milestones. Start a Slack channel for employees to use during the meeting to ask questions and add commentary.
- Start company-wide contests: Begin weekly virtual background competitions, host trivia nights, or even start work-from-home bingo that includes fun prizes.
- Company retreats: Bring everyone together in person once or twice a year. Take time to focus on team bonding and the company's values without the pressure of work.
Continue to improve the remote company culture
Developing a strong
remote culture where employees feel empowered and trusted to complete their work is a continuous process that requires time and hard work.Whether you're adding a new remote team or transitioning your organization to go remote, HR needs to be equipped to act as a point of contact for employees to rely on. Make the most of your culture and focus on fostering transparency to create an environment of trust so your organization can keep moving the business forward.
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