Culture does not just state snacks or table soccer games at the office. It requires an encouraging connection between the employees and company, which involves the right intention, attentiveness, and new vision on how the employees should take their part in working together. What are the strategies great distributed teams develop for having an award-winning culture?
Thanks to the modern-day technological advancements. The work environment world-wide has faced a massive change in the last couple of years. With changes occurring at a jet speed, the culture of centralized organizations or cubicle firms is minimizing gradually.
Now, in the present era employees are either working on-site or from any remote location or their homes. Various leading companies do not have an office and work completely remotely.
With the modernized workplace practices, you are being a manager or company representative need to create a positive environment for your employees, which helps in keeping the revenue graph on the tip as before. So, what are the measures you are taking to grow a positive company culture with a remote team?
Have not planned yet? Do not worry, dive down in this blog and know more.
Let us first know,
Why Adopting A Culture Is Important?
Having a company culture is highly important because it affects how your customers and employees perceive you. It generally determines how successful your business will be. If an organization lives up to its core values, its community turns workers into champions, enriches their well-being, and ensures that the company maintains its best talent.
How to Build A Remote Culture?
According to reports, remote work has beneficial effects on the efficiency, satisfaction, and general well-being of the employees. As per various surveys and performance data, it is evident that employees are not the only ones who benefit from working from home; a company can benefit just as greatly from a remote employee. Some of them include –
- Enhances employee satisfaction
- Improves productivity graph
- Saves employers money
- Cuts down on wasted meetings
- Quick and Easy Collaboration
- Expands talent pool
Hence, while adopting the new remote work culture and shifting your teams remotely, you (employers) need to rethink all the processes, including onboarding, recruiting, performance reviews, etc.
Build Trust & Mental Safety
For any company it is an important thing — a great corporate culture offers an environment of mutual respect and trust. What is mental well-being? How does a firm develop a psychological protection atmosphere with remote staff?
Here are some of the keyways:
Behavior: All that starts at the top. The leaders of the company must show up with curiosity, humility, fallibility, interest. Leaders should also set the standard that making mistakes is fine, but work should be constructive. It should also include taking feedback from the employees from one-on-one meetings, through surveys, etc.
Structural Feedback: Tech teams give constructive feedback which avoids blaming and making things personal and ensures the things how you work with each other. Establish sessions and meetings conducted to provide candid feedback or to really criticize work. Make sure you receive feedback via video call so employees can hash it face to face and avoid misunderstandings.
Welcome New Employees in Front of The Entire Team
While being a part of a large open office plan, you won’t dither in spending a couple of minutes for welcoming a new joined in your team. Similarly, you cannot ignore this process for a remote team.
Another to do this in remote teams is to ask them some of the simple questions and share those answers to all the teammates using email along with a welcome letter attached to it.
You must encourage new employers to schedule out one-on-one meetings along with the teammates they are comfortable with, especially with those who have the least interaction with these people or are from different teams (but the same process).
Those meetings help employees learn more about the culture of the company. Organizing meetings is a great way to get to know everyone on a personal level, as well as gaining a deeper understanding among your team of who is responsible for what.
Being mindful that social contact is limited in a dispersed or remote team, you should concentrate on building trust and team-bonding with the new employee for more time.
Enhance the Time to Value Through On-boarding
When you hire new employees, it is your responsibility to be a manager to make sure that the trainee has all the right resources to be successful in accomplishing their roles.
Here are some steps which you can consider for supporting new joiners.
Start with Small Steps: Plan out a clear goal that helps new employees know the things which are on-boarding that includes a 10, 20, 30 days plan out. Assign small tasks or easy to implement projects, so that they will not get pressurized from the initial stage and complete the given task with much more efficiency.
Develop a 3 Week Plan: Remote employees’ aboard take a little longer. It can reduce the tension and anxiety new employees may experience by developing a schedule and setting up all the meetings. It also means that all the right staff, procedures, and programs they need to get introduced right away are added.
Onboard in groups: It is a great way to minimize onboard effort and redundancy, but it also creates a sense of community among new hires. Simply hire in groups and join them as per different seasons (based on projects).
Communicate the Goals & Missions
It is much easier to create a high-performing remote culture if everyone in the team understands the company’s vision. Settle on a clear and concise way of describing that mission, communicate it to your teams, and continue to reinforce it. It reminds people of the importance of what they are accomplishing together.
Building an efficient remote culture within a team is much easier if everybody shares the vision of the business. Plan out a clear and concise way to explain the company’s mission and share it with your teammates and put your step forward to improve the mission.
Be Clear About Work Policies
To various people, “flexible” or “remote” jobs will mean different things — are workers supposed to be online for a certain number of hours per day? Will they be required to travel regularly to the HQ? Add up all the expectations in your job description column, so that the candidates are aware of what they need to do and sign up as for those things.
Focus on Important Work
It is easy for people in a remote team to feel like they need to respond to requests immediately to show they are staying actively engaged. However, it is important to agree that there is space for everyone to carve out time for meaningful work which requires uninterrupted attention. Creating boundaries within remote teams is critical. You should decide on how to do things together: time blocks on the schedule, slack status settings, or a full weekday with no meetings.
Plan Some Face Time
Having one-on-one meetings helps in building strong relationships. You can also leverage offices during on-boarding to bring the teams together. Or, you can arrange regular off-site or conference meetings with teams in person. Here’s a tip if your business works on budgets that are lean and cannot afford to host people in expensive cities like SF: Off-site program of the less costly metro. Only make the whole team meet and reserve a nearby co-working room for meetings.
State How You Work Together
Various people across different organizations have different perspectives about what flexible work culture includes. Have a conversation with your team to discuss needs, desires, and what required (along with stating your work). Additionally, studies have shown that the most emotionally involved and committed teams function together more efficiently. Be sure to establish a consistent collaborative and communicative mechanism.
Find Creative Ways to Keep Employees Engaged
Over time holding remote workers involves a perfect way to promote a healthy community. Host a virtual happy hour or breakfast session where you can discuss your problems with people from the same industry. Sometimes you do not even need a separate meeting to do that you can include any of the team building games in your daily calls or launch a Slack channel to share pictures of your pets.
Take Feedback on Regular Basis
When you are not familiar with running a remote team, within the first time you do not get all these things right. Inquire every teammate and keenly observe the process and tell what success and what does not. It will not only help you in enhancing the overall process but also builds a stronger bond with the team.
Once workers are completely aboard, you do not need to avoid collecting feedback. Set standards for daily feedback. Ask it often, think about your actions, listen to your employees, and make changes when necessary. This culture of positive feedback will benefit you and will make your workers feel free to talk and be heard.
Create Mentorship Programs
Helping people develop and learn from their peers is one of the most critical aspects of building trust and a sense of belonging in a remote team. Incorporate activities that help people to develop individually as well as a group: address the goal of each person at a performance review and set a metric for evaluating progress, host a feedback session, or start weekly lunchtime and learn.
Build A Sense of Shared Leadership
If you, being the employer or tech lead, just assign the tasks and do not provide the team members to work on their own, or else the team will just feel like task monkeys.
Assigning team members as mentors or asking them to perform a virtual team-building activity on board for the new team members. It also takes some pressure off you as a side bonus and helps groom team members rise through the ranks and become managers themselves someday.
But make sure you (employer) should never be biased for your teammates, as disputes in internal teams will break the whole company culture.
One Last Tip…
The company workplace might have some designs which reflect its culture – things including a wall where employees can share their views and confessions. If you think creatively, then can send some of the things, like posters, t-shirts, etc along with company logos or things printed on, instead of giving away useless tchotchkes along with a company name embossed on it.
Summary
So, in this post, we have covered a lot of things to create a positive work environment while working with remote employees.
Well-armed with this new information, along with the tips, tricks that I have provided, I am sure that you will feel more comfortable in your task of developing an efficient, successful and profitable company with a remote staff team.
I wish you all the very best as you grow a great positive organization with the remote work culture.