Working from home definitely has its benefits, such as no time wasted for commuting to the office or not having to deal with office politics and the high-school-like drama your colleagues seem to entangle themselves in all the time. On the other hand, work from home may be detrimental to your remote teams’ sense of connection to one another, leading them to feel detached from the company.
It is no small challenge to keep the human connection intact in the “home office” mode, but it is necessary to try and maintain it by any means necessary. Modern office solutions experts over at https://www.yeastar.com/ are adamant about the importance of employees getting along with each other in order to have the company operating at the highest capacity.
No fancy gadget or automated solution can replace the creativity and innovation that stems from friendly and unforced human interaction. In this day and age, more and more offices are turning towards remote work in order to practice social distancing more easily and keep their workers healthy and productive. However, not too many of them are aware of the negative effects of such moves and how to counteract them.
Staying connected while working from home is an absolute necessity if you want to make sure that your company culture is upheld and the people who work for you feel like they’re a part of the same team. There are plenty of ways to stay in touch with your remote workers, some of which may have already been implemented at your firm!
Virtual Work Events
If you’re having trouble getting your remote workers to stay interested in what’s going on at the company, you might want to step outside of your mindset for a moment and ponder upon why that might be. Maybe the business isn’t as exciting as it used to be? Are there more things that you, as management, could do to make logging in to work more fun?
One way to significantly increase the amount of interaction and feedback you’re getting from employees who work remotely is to schedule virtual work events, such as AMA sessions with executive staff or other interesting people. It provides a unique opportunity for everybody at the company to ask questions they would normally not have a chance to ask, as well as gives people something to look forward to when opening up their laptops in the morning.
Office Distraction = Remote Salvation
Social media gets a bad rep in offices and classrooms all around the world. They are seen as unnecessary distractions that decrease workers’ productivity and encourage them to slack off and steer off-task way more often than they would without these platforms. Although there is some truth to saying that social networks aren’t exactly helpful with getting things done at the office, they can make for a great tool to keep your workers engaged in conversations with each other outside of work. For example, Facebook groups for various departments could be great spaces for employees to get to know each other in a more casual manner, where they could share memes and experiences in a free and unsupervised manner.
Professional Communicators
If you’re allowing your team to work from home without providing them the right tools to maintain proper communication, then the lack of chemistry and interaction between employees is partially on you. There are various programs that allow every person engaged in remote work to feel connected to office life. Creating a Slack channel for those working remotely will certainly help deal with the detachment. You can also “take them out” on a virtual lunch via Zoom, which will have your employees get a semblance of the care-free, pre-COVID days of going out to eat together during lunch breaks.
One-on-Ones
This is perhaps the most important of all the tips listed in this article. Every single remote worker probably has individual problems and questions that they’d like to take up directly with you or someone else from management. Taking the time to have a video call with each one of your remote team workers could have a huge impact on their mental well-being and how connected they feel to the company they work for. You don’t need to check up on them every day, but it is important to be there for your workers when they need your help.
The Bottom Line
Video calls, communicators, and social networks are only a couple of methods that allow you and your co-workers to stay in touch and connected to each other whenever they’re working from home. Aside from utilizing the tips mentioned above, you should try out ideas that you come across on your own. The internet is full of stories of workers throwing video call parties, gaming sessions, and other ways to maintain healthy relations with their colleagues.
Keeping remote employees in the loop regarding social matters within the firm will also have a direct effect on their productivity — they won’t be as tempted to slack off if the work they’re supposed to be doing is done for people who they care for.
Maciej Grzymkowski – an avid traveler with a particular affinity for Southeast Asia. I love to explore the differences between corporate cultures and ways of doing business in different parts of the world, and I’m always keen on adopting alternative and exotic solutions in my own work.Â
