Keeping Your Remote Team Connected

All businesses have had to make changes to continue their work and maintain relevance given the world’s current status. Countries globally have enacted stay-at-home orders, meaning offices have gone to working remotely and others have shut down altogether. Large companies like Facebook, Google, and Microsoft have announced their employees will be allowed to work from home for the rest of the year.

Could this be changing the way companies operate entirely? The digital revolution has been coming for a long time and this pandemic could be the push needed to show that many jobs can be done remotely, without a permanent office space. Twitter’s CEO, Jack Dorsey, has offered their employees the opportunity to work from home forever if they’d prefer.

At Centrus Digital, some of our employees are entirely remote and the majority of us work from home on a regular basis. We know it can be difficult to keep your team connected, especially during this crisis. We understand the importance of making sure that remote team members, spread across various locations and even time zones, stay connected. Below are some tips on keeping your team connected, whether it’s temporary or not:

Check-In with Your Team

Remote work can mean dozens of virtual conference calls. It can feel isolating to remote workers, especially those who are used to going into their office every day. Some examples of checking in could be:

• In each call, make sure to spend the first few minutes checking in with each team member individually.
• Play short icebreakers at the beginning of each call to foster inclusion and connections.
• Let team members share what’s going on in their lives, whether that be a high or a low.

This will allow your team to connect on a personal level and share experiences with each other that can help your team increase communication and collaboration.

When businesses lack in personal communication with remote team members, they can feel isolated, decreasing overall work productivity. Checking in during calls can help remote teams staying connected from miles apart and promote a healthy work environment for all.

Celebrate Your Team

Be sure to recognize the accomplishments and improvements of your remote team. Making team members feel proud of their work and like an important part of the team makes them feel appreciated. Some ways this could be done are:

• Posting on social media websites celebrating their accomplishments and praising them
• Taking the time during team meetings to announce accomplishments that may have taken place virtually
• Encouraging collaborations from your in-office team to your remote workers to make team achievements more palpable

Whether your team is completely remote, temporarily working from home, or you have a mix of in-office and remote workers, making everyone feel included is the key to collaboration. Taking the time to celebrate your remote workers’ accomplishments fosters inclusion and promotes employee satisfaction. Happy, appreciated workers will work harder and stick around longer because they want to stay at a company that treats them well.

Set up a Social Lunch

In the office, interactions with coworkers near the water cooler made the day go by faster and the work a little easier. Coworkers might have left the office together to go out for their lunch hour or teams had social lunches once a month sponsored by the company. These simple interactions encourage socializing and bonding.

• These virtual lunch calls can be as often as once a week or as spread out as once a month.
• Allow time each week for workers to have social time with one another like a digital Happy Hour.
• Continue what would have been a company-sponsored lunch by allowing remote employees to expense lunch once a month from home.

These virtual lunch calls should not be mandatory and should allow employees to leave early if they need to. Meeting with team members in a casual setting encourages them to connect on a personal level and get together to share ideas and work on projects together.

By promoting the sharing of ideas, it will increase communication and collaboration among teams, resulting in a more productive environment. Creating and sharing ideas doesn’t always have to be done in a conference call, social lunches are a great way to make your remote team feel more connected.

At Centrus Digital, our team is mostly remote with employees spread out across the country. We’re able to go into an office in our coworking space but for the most part, our employees work from home. If you’d like to learn more about the Centrus team and receive expert industry advice in your inbox, sign up for our monthly newsletter. You can also find news about us and our amazing clients on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.