With increasing number of employees opting to work from home, the need to foster a strong culture at the workplace has also increased. Even if a lot of companies are making it easier for their employees to work from home, there’s one common issue that every manager faces: Engaging remote workers.
Working from homes enables most employees to spend less time commuting to their office and dedicate more time to completing their work. Employees feel that working from homes allows them to create a better work-life balance.
Though many employees are comfortable with remote working, not working in a traditional work environment brings its own set of challenges. One of the major challenges that managers face with remote employees is the challenge of engaging a team that works mostly outside the office.
Here are five of the best tips for engaging remote employees!
Digitize
Digitizing your workplace culture is a very smart and useful change to bring in. It is important for remote workers to feel connected with the traditional workers despite not working in the same office. Using latest tools like Slack, Dropbox, Trello etc., help your employees communicate, collaborate and stay connected with each other.
Apps like GoogleHangouts and Zoom are designed to initiate participation and to make meetings more interactive and inclusive. Using these kinds of tools on a regular basis can help your remote employees feel connected and stay engaged.
Communicate
Communication is very important when working with remote workers. It is a known fact that managers treat their traditional workers differently from their remote employees. Being left out is one of the biggest fears of a remote employee. Sometimes, managers forget to communicate important information with remote employees that they might have shared spontaneously with the traditional employees. This might lead to disengagement in remote employees. To avoid this, make conscious effort to communicate with your remote workers.
Send out a weekly updates email to them so that they do not miss out on important announcements and updates at workplace.
Give Frequent Feedback
Checking-in on employees frequently and giving them feedback on a regular basis is a good practice both for remote as well as traditional employees. When you do not check in on their work, remote employees tend to become disengaged. Checking-in on their work frequently and providing remote workers feedback and suggestions to improve their work, help them understand clearly what is expected of them.
Create this culture of feedback using one of the various awesome feedback tools available in the online market. This helps you stay connected to them and keep track of their work.
Create Bonding Opportunities
Encourage your virtual employees to bond with their team members through online collaboration. Try to get all your team members together in person at least once in an year. Use collaborative platforms to help your remote employees communicate and collaborate with each other. These apps allow you employees to post updates, invite each other for events, share knowledge, ask for help etc. so that the office-bound employees and remote employees get an opportunity to collaborate.
Reward And Recognize
One of the most important actions to take to engage remote employees is to recognize their good work and reward them. When employees aren’t at the office it is easy to forget to recognize their accomplishments. There are various simple and effective ideas to recognize employees. Acknowledging the efforts of remote employees motivates them to stay engaged and productive.
Also Read: The Power Of Employee Appreciation And Recognition Programs