Effective communication is a key component of building a strong work culture. Before the remote work revolution, companies invested heavily in tools such as break rooms, unique office spaces, conference rooms and more. These investments were deemed vital, as they united staff and gave them the spaces they needed to bond, collaborate and communicate.
The same is true for remote work culture and the remote work environment. Investing in the best technology for working remotely is crucial to ensuring your employees feel heard, valued and respected. Working remotely is likely to be one of the biggest challenges to employees who have traditionally gone into an office.
Here are some suggestions on how businesses can build a strong remote work environment and remote work culture by using the right tools at the right time.
Building a strong remote work environment
A strong remote work environment includes equipping your workforce with high-speed, secure connections, high-performance computers and devices, bigger and better screens, and quality cameras, microphones and headsets. Tools can make all the difference when it comes to communication, collaboration and brainstorming and include solutions like:
- BlueJeans, One Talk, Cisco Webex, RingCentral with Verizon, and Verizon Calling for Microsoft Teams
Employees want to be heard
Fostering a strong remote work culture starts with building trust. This is especially important when dealing with organizational change. Employees that are kept in the loop and feel that their concerns are being heard are more productive and enthusiastic.
Managers that interact both formally and informally with individual team members are more successful at building rapport. Always ask: What do you need? How can I help? It is vital to build trust through transparency and active listening. Seek out not only facts but ideas, values and feelings. Understand what motivates remote workers and what they need to succeed. A great manager is not only a supervisor but also a coach and mentor. Direct messaging options can allow managers to check in more often with employees without the formality and scheduling challenges of video meetings.
Social interactions between employees from different teams can help to build morale and can even spark innovation. Your communications solutions should have plenty of avenues to engage in unplanned, unstructured, no-agenda communications. Employees enjoy being able to catch up with their colleagues, so create opportunities for informal social interactions in the remote work environment.
Employees want to be valued and respected
All employees should be given the same opportunities to succeed, whether an employee works in the office full time, in a remote work environment, or part-time in each setting. By using remote-friendly tools and management best practices your hybrid workforce will be set up to succeed.
Project management tools can both help communicate work expectations and deadlines as well as allow for effective tracking of who accomplished what. A healthy remote work culture is one that motivates, rewards and acknowledges that job performance is measured upon work delivered—and teamwork– not the perception of productivity. Employees want to know their hard work will be recognized. Share successes and wins. Celebrate the achievement of milestones. Set up a culture that recognizes work-life balance.
Proactively combat meeting fatigue
Ask: Is this meeting necessary? Avoid the trap of habitually scheduling virtual meetings unless there is a formal agenda and defined need. Shorten meeting times, provide ample breaks, and cancel unneeded meetings. Agenda items and important documents can be shared beforehand. Video meetings are a wonderful tool however, mix it up and utilize other collaborative online tools for communication to help head off virtual meeting fatigue.
Employees value their time
Communicate the expectation that staff work during business work hours and, just as important, do not work after business work hours. This helps employees avoid burnout. Employees tend to look to their managers for clues about work culture. Managers should be visible in their commitment to work-life balance, in terms of the hours they work as well as ensuring non-time-sensitive communications are only sent during business hours. Lead by the example that you value your time as much as theirs.
Learn more about building a strong remote work culture and effective collaboration and communication in a flexible workforce.
The author of this content is a paid contributor for Verizon.