Did you know that being lonely has a damaging effect on your health? Some studies say that its health damage is as severe as smoking almost a pack of cigarettes daily.
If you have been managing a remote team for quite some time now, you have probably adapted to various strategies that will keep your employees engaged at their work. But, if you are still having a hard time keeping your remote team engaged, you have found the right place.
In this blog, we will share our top 7 ideas to engage your remote team.
The Importance of Social Support and Interaction in Remote Teams
As a company owner, you are doing your best to ensure that your remote teams maintain a balanced work-life, adapt to technology changes, and prevent job burnout. But it is difficult for most remote workers to complete their jobs in one place for longer hours.
Many studies show that social support and interactions can protect oneself against different problems, including stress, that could directly impact one’s health. As a business manager, you should find or curate strategies to promote better remote team engagement without compromising their health and productivity.
7 Effective and Practical Strategies To Keep Engaged Remote Teams
1. Promote Work Collaboration
Your team will not enjoy working for your company if you will not give them a chance to collaborate. Remember, social interaction is one of the critical elements of a successful team.
To achieve business goals, you must allow your employees to work with each other by giving them a friendly work environment and the right tools. You can do this through virtual work chat, a standard check-in, or a traditional phone call. Think of ways that will encourage employee collaboration at work.
2. Recognize Your Team’s Success
One of the best cultures of a successful company is recognizing the worker’s success. You can maintain the fire and motivation within your team if you praise their efforts. This culture is especially essential in a remote team environment to maintain a connection between employees.
Keep showing your appreciation to your team by saying a simple ‘thank you.’ You can also show your gratitude in material gifts, such as gift cards or coupons. These are simple ways to keep your remote team engaged and motivated.
3. Listen to their Feedback and Act on It
It is an excellent practice to ask your workers for their thoughts and opinions every time you present business proposals or integrate new technology or tools. This is a critical way to know how they perceive these changes and integrations into your business.
To maintain the engagement between your remote team, you must listen to and act on their feedback. This is a simple way of showing them that they are valued and heard. It is also an ideal practice to share feedback within your organization as a way of professional development.
You can do this by regularly organizing a one-on-one meeting with your remote team managers and members to share constructive feedback and discuss or solve issues within the organization.
4. Regular Check-Ins
If your company switched to adapt to a remote work environment, you know the essence of regular check-ins with your remote workers. This will help keep your employees on the same page regarding their duties. Aside from that, this is also an essential way of giving them a sense of togetherness.
You can do this by adapting an all-hands meeting per month, coordination meeting per week, and check-ins among departments and teams per day. It is also a good idea to ensure that each team leader practices a regular meeting with their team members.
5. Adapt Fun Video Meetings
Being a remote team, you and your employees are more likely to need to engage in various virtual meetings and calls. Video meetings are a great alternative to physical meetings while promoting face-to-face communication. Virtual meetings are the best way to ensure that your remote teams work on the same page.
To promote engagement among your remote teams during virtual meetings, it is best not to schedule them more frequently. Remember, such discussions are only intended to address urgent issues and discuss essential things regarding the company.
You can also add a little spice to your standard video meetings by inviting them to join the meeting with their funny hats or their loving furry friends.
We all work hard to make, market, and sell eQMS software. But around that core work is a bundle of remote activity and cultural work led by our People team.
6. Virtual Knowledge Sharing Sessions
Many scientific studies have concluded that sharing your knowledge with other people in the team can significantly affect their engagement and productivity. Knowledge sharing is a significant step to boosting innovation and productivity while enabling your employees to grow as a group and as an individual.
Knowledge sharing involves sharing your skills, information, and expertise with all your remote team members. This practice has been the norm when employees were still working in a physical environment. But this has been a problem when many teams start working remotely. Therefore, making this engagement is an essential job that business managers should work on.
7. Online Coffee Breaks
Coffee breaks are a spontaneous activity when working in the office. Employees tend to ask their colleagues to join them for a quick coffee break. Allowing at least a 30-minute break between long meetings is an effective and practical step to improving workers’ productivity and engagement.
This is one of the main reasons you should integrate an online coffee break with your team, especially when working remotely. This practice can be done through a 30-minute long video call while your team talks about their experiences and take a sip of their favorite coffee.
Final Thoughts
Remote working has been a new norm among many companies worldwide. But despite being a blessing for many, it has been a struggle for some. Remote employees are more susceptible to stress and other health problems because of prolonged working hours. This can adversely affect their work productivity.
To avoid this, business owners and managers should think of ways to keep a more engaged remote team. You can use the seven tips mentioned earlier to promote better engagement between your remote employees.
