Keeping remote workers connected is essential for a team's success. Working remotely with remote teams has numerous advantages for an organization and its employees.
Employers can easily handle the rising costs by avoiding the extra expenses that are part of a traditional office and can select the perfect people for their team, despite where they are located.
What are the tricks to make remote employees feel connected to a company? Building long-lasting connections are essential for constructing a strong business. Keep reading to know how you can contribute to making your remote team feel more connected.
Listening to their problems is the best way to make your team feel comfortable. It's important to keep the communication and feedback line open. Particularly the ones with remote employees. Conduct continuous check-in meetings to ensure every team member possesses the required tools and sufficient support for an excellent performance.
Promote a company culture that helps employees rapidly voice doubts or concerns without the fear of ramifications. If the employees can remain honest and their voices are heard, it makes them more connected to the enterprise.
A great way to enhance employee engagement and connectivity is by providing continuous feedback. Feedback is a wonderful way not just to portray your remote workforce that you are giving attention to the contributions made by them. It can also assist you in recognizing and improving all the areas that were lacking.
The remote workers must be easily able to talk to each other. Shooting an email and waiting to get a reply won't be sufficient for today's work environment. It would help if you used remote working tools to make your remote workers feel connected. You have to make use of remote working tools for communication.
You can make use of messaging instant tools. The most famous remote working tool is called Slack. It's considered an instant messaging tool helping arrange conversations into separate channels. It classifies the communications based on team projects and office locations.
Putting up a communication tool like Slack will greatly help remote workers who think they can connect to anyone quicker than you imagine and that too whenever required.
Other than constructing Slack channels based on teams and projects, you need to build a few normal or family channels to help your remote workers discuss topics unrelated to work.
Most remote workers don't get to chat with their co-workers like in a normal office setting. If you give them the chance to pour out everything on their minds, they will feel like an actual member of your work family.
Cloud-dependent storage tools.
The cloud has become essential for most businesses. It helps the users store and shares all information like docs, sheets and presentations. This also helps confirm that the team members can easily access important docs from anywhere. You can always keep your team informed with the help of cloud-based storage options like Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive and Dropbox.
Another amazing way to make your remote team feel more synchronized is through face-to-face interaction. That might be real, but in the case of remote work, technology makes face-to-face interaction easy. As remote workers don't regularly come to the office, you can easily host weekly video meetings using a video communication tool like Zoom or Skype. Regular video meetings make it possible to get the face time they miss. Finally, this assists them in forming better relations with their co-workers.
You must not just talk about work during your weekly video meetings for longer-lasting connections. Before beginning to talk about projects, new web launches or KPIs, you can let your team members share any good news or fun activity they enjoyed over the weekend. You can also indulge in fun team-building games.
It's enjoyable to establish fun company traditions in a unique work environment. Like, if it's your employee's birthday, you can celebrate a pizza and cake party in the office. Each month, you can enjoy a board game day on the last Friday.
To make your remote team feel connected to the vibes of the organization, it's essential to continue these great company traditions online. So, how do you make that happen?
You can post Happy Birthday messages on Slack to celebrate birthdays. This is a great way to remind everyone of each other's birthdays so they can wish together. You can also deliver a pizza to your remote employee's place, design online scavenger hunts, and get everyone together to play team-building games. If you include remote workers in all the fun, you'll build stronger bonds and keep the company culture intact.
Have you ever thought about why it is important to keep a remote team connected?
A Harvard Business Review stated that according to 1,100 employees, remote employees tend to feel left out and think they are being mistreated. Experiencing these feelings brings down their productivity and hurts them. Other than productivity and morale, employee relations can influence how team members view your organization. If they aren't connected, there's a good chance they won't feel connected to you or your company's mission, which can ultimately lead to a massive turnover rate. HikeCommerce is a top freelance website where you can join thousands of remote teams for exciting projects. Register and start applying!
Check out our blog on 7 Useful Tips For Outsourcing A Creative Talent to know more about outsourcing and remote work.