The workplace environment continues to drastically change, as social distancing and safety concerns are still a reality. A lot of companies are realizing that remote work can work. For example, take a look at REI, who recently completed an 8-acre corporate campus outside of Seattle. Despite this lofty investment, they have decided that the status quo work environment is no longer the best fit for our new reality. They are now looking to sell their headquarters and will instead have satellite campuses throughout the metro.
Although your business may not be an REI, the reality still may hold true that a remote working culture needs to be seriously considered as potentially the new norm. For this new reality, how do you keep a team attitude and engagement with your employees? Thankfully there are many ways but you may need to start “thinking out of the box.”
At SmartBase, we have largely been a remote work environment, however when Covid-19 hit in March, we have been exclusively working from home. It was always at the top of our list to make sure we did our part to support our employee’s engagement, mental health and ease in communication.
We have included some key areas to assess to make sure your company and employees stay healthy in this work-from-home world.
- One key for employees to feel engaged and included is to make sure company values and goals are clear across the company. If goals are updated quarterly, have a meeting over Teams or Zoom with everyone and follow up with a written copy for everyone to have on hand.
- Make sure your employees’ goals for working remotely have been clearly outlined.
- Have regular check-ins with your employees whenever possible. If weekly isn’t possible, consider biweekly 1-on-1s.
- Complete weekly team check-ins.
- Embrace tools such as Teams or Zoom for company and group meetings.
- Continue to embrace education opportunities for your teams. Have a monthly lunch-n-learn with your team over lunch.
- Thinking outside of just work–how can you as a team have fun in a remote world?
- If you have a monthly company meeting or lunch, have a game ready for everyone to participate in (e.g. simple trivia or a guessing game).
- Schedule an after work Happy Hour where everyone can join via Teams, Zoom, etc… from home and socialize over subjects that don’t need to be work related.
There are many ways to keep your team involved and feel embraced by the company. Whatever you decide works best for your company, the key thing is to have clear and open communication, as well as incorporate some fun into the remote atmosphere.
