These days, remote work encompasses everything from the office worker telecommuting from home two days a week, to fully remote teams operating with members around the world. But regardless of their specific organization, remote teams are growing in size and scope.
According to Gallup's 2017 State of the American Workplace Initiative, "43 percent of Americans said they spent at least some time working remotely last year, up from 39 percent in 2012." The American Community Survey, as reported by Alina Tugend of the New York Times, confirms this finding, suggesting that "telecommuting has risen 79 percent between 2005 and 2012 and now makes up 2.6 percent of the American work force, or 3.2 million workers."
Certainly, this increase is unsurprising, given the number of established benefits remote work arrangements provide. Not only do they decrease operating costs, improve efficiency, and produce a positive environmental impact, remote work programs are increasingly seen as an HR benefit companies can use to attract and retain top talent.
That said, remote work arrangements aren't without their downsides, chief among them the ability for remote teams to engage with one another and form positive working relationships. Want to know how to keep your remote workers from feeling disengaged? Consider the following suggestions.
Cultivate Culture
Culture isn't having a ping-pong table in the break room. It's about the atmosphere you create and the values you share - and it extends to both office-based workers and remote employees.
Marcela De Vivo, writing for Forbes, suggests that lessons on cultivating culture among remote workers can be drawn from the way we think about engagement with in-person employees:
"The fundamentals of building remote teams are not that much different than the fundamentals of building teams in a traditional workplace. Encourage intellectual equality by making sure some team members aren't given more time to share their views than others. Create an environment where people can be themselves - Google achieved this by rethinking everything from the dress code to the traditional schedule."
"The fundamentals of building remote teams are not that much different than the fundamentals of building teams in a traditional workplace. Encourage intellectual equality by making sure some team members aren't given more time to share their views than others. Create an environment where people can be themselves - Google achieved this by rethinking everything from the dress code to the traditional schedule.Some specific practices for implementing this perspective could include:
- Hosting activities that help remote workers get to know each other better. It's just as important when you're remote as it is in-person.
- Regularly communicating your company's values and mission statement (and make sure your actions align with this vision).
- Assigning tasks and mentorships shared by remote and in-office employees (or by remote workers alone, if your company has no office presence).
- Rewarding wins that are achieved by teams of employees working remotely to foster teamwork.
- Running company-wide challenges that remote workers can take part in. Buffer, for example, uses Jawbone wearables to track daily steps across all employees.
- Encouraging the sharing of funny articles, jokes, GIFs and memes over the team's remote communication tools.
The signs of disengagement among remote workers are the same as they are in traditional office workers - they're just harder to spot when your team is spread out. Any signs of remote workers checking out are an indication that you haven't built a strong, sustaining company culture.
Get Together Periodically
This isn't the cheapest suggestion, but it is effective. Hubworks offers all-company retreats as an engagement strategy, saying, "Once a year, take your entire team off-site for a company retreat that's equal parts enjoyment, entertainment and focused work on key company objectives."
Zapier, an online productivity app, puts this practice to work, hosting regular get-togethers for its workers. Zapier's Wade Foster notes:
"We get the whole gang together twice per year for a company retreat. During the retreat we do things that help foster our culture. Things like pairing up to cook team dinners and hiking as a group have helped us learn more about each other and our families-it's the knowledge we wouldn't have gained in a normal week."
Keep your costs down and make annual retreats a viable option by choosing locations off the beaten path (conference space in Cleveland, for instance, will run you much less than a location in NYC) and by packing your schedule with low-cost activities. Zapier does this by cooking meals together, rather than catering in, but you could also:
- Watch curated TED Talks as a team, rather than bringing in a speaker.
- Hit a local park together, versus hiring out a ropes course.
- Look into alternative meeting spaces - such as churches or community centers - rather than renting hotel spaces or conference centers.
Leverage Tech Tools
The importance of technology in managing remote teams is obvious. What's less often addressed, however, is the fact that what works for one company might fall flat on its face with another. Even the tools you initially select may not work for your long-term needs, making it critical that you continually reevaluate your company's tech tools usage as you go.
David Mizne of 15five shares how being open to new tools has made his company's remote teams more effective:
"Our remote team is free to discover and adopt the tools that work best for us - the ones that allow us to express our creativity and be most productive. We are drawn to use technology that allows us to collaborate effectively and connect more deeply, no matter what continents we are working from."
"Our remote team is free to discover and adopt the tools that work best for us - the ones that allow us to express our creativity and be most productive. We are drawn to use technology that allows us to collaborate effectively and connect more deeply, no matter what continents we are working from."While there are an extensive number of tech tools available for remote work, a few popular products to start with include:
Choosing the best tools to start with comes down to understanding your team's biggest needs (and, of course, your budget). Is video conferencing a priority? Are your remote workers getting frustrated because they don't know the status of certain tasks and projects? Let these kinds of questions guide your search, but don't overthink your decision.
Pick the options that appeal to you most, but don't be afraid to branch out and try new tools if your first selections aren't ultimately the right fit.
