1) Make sure critical technology is in place. When it comes to inter-office collaboration and remote work, there are literally dozens of proven platforms out there that can support your efforts. These include platforms for communication (Slack), project management (Asana), document sharing (Google Docs), and other business functions. All enable real-time collaboration, automate certain mundane tasks so employees can concentrate on meaningful work, and virtually eliminate the need for in-person project management.
2) Establish regular check-ins. Create a once-a-week ritual to regroup as a team or have 1-on-1 meetings with direct reports at intervals that make sense for your business. For remote workers, this is the best way to stay up to date on what’s happening around the company. For managers, it ensures they know how employees are faring, both on deliverables and in general. And don’t just do it over text or instant message. Seeing faces and hearing voices allows you to pick up on the subtleties like voice inflection and body language, so that you can also feel what employees aren’t saying.
The number one continuous performance management software helps you set a regular cadence of communication with your remote employees. Discover 15Five’s Weekly Check-In
3) Coach your remote employees. It can be easy to just assume that a person’s productivity will automatically transfer from the office to the home or café. Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case. To make sure people can execute well on their own, show them how to do it. Train them when it comes to communicating regularly to manage expectations, developing routines that support their work/life balance, and even setting up customized at-home work stations that best suit their styles. Just as important as coaching remote workers is coaching the managers who oversee them. Leadership roles can be challenging enough, and this only increases when your people aren’t sitting within earshot.
Remote work culture
Okay, remote employees can still be productive, but building a work culture under these conditions is impossible.
Not so fast. The larger and more spread out your business becomes geographically, the harder it is to maintain a strong, cohesive, and pervasive culture. But, at the end of the day culture isn’t a place. It’s a mindset.
At the end of the day culture isn’t a place. Culture is a mindset.
CLICK TO TWEET
The company mission, vision, and values, and expectations for positive working relationships aren’t spatially-bound. Yes, the kind of face time that’s always been so critical for building camaraderie and trust may become more limited as remote-employee numbers grow. That doesn’t mean the cultural values you’ve spent so much time instilling all of a sudden go out the window.
Based on Softchoice’s findings, 83% of office workers use technology to collaborate with others outside their office, and 24% often or always have at least one remote participant in every meeting. This same, now-ubiquitous technology was itself once a source of anxiety. Depersonalization, destruction of personal time, the elimination of jobs . . . all fears surrounding recent modernization that proved to be largely unfounded. Companies have adapted to such conveniences, both functionally and culturally.
Remote work is merely another facet of a rapidly-evolving business world. Like any other facet, if you want it to work, you need to work at it. Many managers, supervisors, and executives we’ve spoken with who have embraced this remote work challenge would agree. Nearly 1 in 4 say that employee quality of life has improved, while 1 in 5 have seen progress in productivity. Ironically, 3 in 5 also indicated communication with remote employees was as good or better than with those in-house.
Bottom line, long-distance relationships can be fruitful, they just require a little more effort and TLC along the way. Here are three important considerations when it comes to building, maintaining, and cultivating culture in a remote-work environment:
1) Leverage local offices as much as possible. Unless your business is conducted exclusively over the cloud, odds are you have at least one communal workspace. (We now have three; Raleigh, Manhattan, and San Francisco.) A few mandatory office days at one of these spaces when onboarding employees goes a long way to making a new remote worker feel like part of the team. If you have many offices, make each one a place people want to
2) Establish regular check-ins. Create a once-a-week ritual to regroup as a team or have 1-on-1 meetings with direct reports at intervals that make sense for your business. For remote workers, this is the best way to stay up to date on what’s happening around the company. For managers, it ensures they know how employees are faring, both on deliverables and in general. And don’t just do it over text or instant message. Seeing faces and hearing voices allows you to pick up on the subtleties like voice inflection and body language, so that you can also feel what employees aren’t saying.
The number one continuous performance management software helps you set a regular cadence of communication with your remote employees. Discover 15Five’s Weekly Check-In
3) Coach your remote employees. It can be easy to just assume that a person’s productivity will automatically transfer from the office to the home or café. Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case. To make sure people can execute well on their own, show them how to do it. Train them when it comes to communicating regularly to manage expectations, developing routines that support their work/life balance, and even setting up customized at-home work stations that best suit their styles. Just as important as coaching remote workers is coaching the managers who oversee them. Leadership roles can be challenging enough, and this only increases when your people aren’t sitting within earshot.
Remote work culture
Okay, remote employees can still be productive, but building a work culture under these conditions is impossible.
Not so fast. The larger and more spread out your business becomes geographically, the harder it is to maintain a strong, cohesive, and pervasive culture. But, at the end of the day culture isn’t a place. It’s a mindset.
At the end of the day culture isn’t a place. Culture is a mindset.
CLICK TO TWEET
The company mission, vision, and values, and expectations for positive working relationships aren’t spatially-bound. Yes, the kind of face time that’s always been so critical for building camaraderie and trust may become more limited as remote-employee numbers grow. That doesn’t mean the cultural values you’ve spent so much time instilling all of a sudden go out the window.
Based on Softchoice’s findings, 83% of office workers use technology to collaborate with others outside their office, and 24% often or always have at least one remote participant in every meeting. This same, now-ubiquitous technology was itself once a source of anxiety. Depersonalization, destruction of personal time, the elimination of jobs . . . all fears surrounding recent modernization that proved to be largely unfounded. Companies have adapted to such conveniences, both functionally and culturally.
Remote work is merely another facet of a rapidly-evolving business world. Like any other facet, if you want it to work, you need to work at it. Many managers, supervisors, and executives we’ve spoken with who have embraced this remote work challenge would agree. Nearly 1 in 4 say that employee quality of life has improved, while 1 in 5 have seen progress in productivity. Ironically, 3 in 5 also indicated communication with remote employees was as good or better than with those in-house.
Bottom line, long-distance relationships can be fruitful, they just require a little more effort and TLC along the way. Here are three important considerations when it comes to building, maintaining, and cultivating culture in a remote-work environment:
1) Leverage local offices as much as possible. Unless your business is conducted exclusively over the cloud, odds are you have at least one communal workspace. (We now have three; Raleigh, Manhattan, and San Francisco.) A few mandatory office days at one of these spaces when onboarding employees goes a long way to making a new remote worker feel like part of the team. If you have many offices, make each one a place people want to
