Has your business transitioned to working remotely because of COVID-19? If your team is so used to being together in the physical office, you might be struggling with how different remote work is.
To counteract your team’s remote difficulties, create a positive company culture. This is important for any organisation, but when your people are working remotely, creating a vibrant culture becomes absolutely essential.
Here are strategies you can use to build a positive company culture with your remote team.
Define or refine your company values
Does your company have values? If not, now’s the time to establish them. Company values are the beliefs and principles that your company is based on. These values define your vision. They also serve as guidelines that outline how your company engages in business.
Company values are important because they help shape your company culture and identity.
Having a list of company values to follow will help your employees feel like they belong. Your team will feel more engaged and motivated. Perhaps more importantly, they’ll be able to do their work and represent your business more effectively as well.
If you don’t have company values, ask yourself what’s important to you and your company. Maybe you care about integrity, accountability, and having fun. Those could be your primary company values.
If you already have company values but haven’t thought about them recently, it may be time to revisit those values and update them as your company evolves.
Communicate your culture
Your company’s culture can be described as your company’s personality. Company culture determines the type of work environment that your company has.
For example, one company’s culture might be goal-oriented, highly structure, and focused around maximum efficiency. Another organisation might choose to have a culture that’s more light-hearted and laid-back with playing time for fun.
How can you communicate your culture to your employees?
Set expectations for communication
Make it clear how you want your employees to communicate with each other and how you will communicate with them.
Make sure your employees understand and live your values
Share your company values with your employees to help them envision them, and encourage employees to live out those values in the workplace and beyond. It goes without saying that you should lead by example and live out those values yourself.
Encourage an environment that involves open communication and feedback
This type of company culture will make employees feel much more comfortable, and when they feel secure in communicating with you and receiving feedback, they’ll be able to get their work done to the best of their ability.
Use tools to manage your remote team
Online applications provide many benefits to remote teams. Such tools can help your team:
- Stay connected and on track.
- Save time, enabling everyone to work more efficiently.
- Inject some much-needed levity to the workday.
So what tools should your team invest in? Consider:
- Slack for easy messaging about projects.
- Asana for assigning tasks.
- Worksnaps for time tracking.
- Zoom for video calls.
These are just a few suggestions. A simple internet search will turn up dozens of other online apps that can be used for a range of functions.
Establish practices
Your team might be 100% remote, but that doesn’t mean you can’t spend quality time together. Start new practices such as:
- A morning huddle – a short daily meeting that sets priorities for the day.
- Eating lunch together over FaceTime.
- A Zoom happy hour once a week.
Traditions like these will allow your employees to bond. Rituals and traditions create a sense of belonging for your employees. The closer your employees are, the better they’re able to work together.
Building a sense of unity among your team will result in work getting done efficiently as well.
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