Expert Tips To Make Your Organization An Amazing Place To Work
“Being a great place to work is the difference between being a good company and a great company.” — Brian Kristofek, President and CEO, Upshot
Every entrepreneur wants his employees to feel positive, engaged and motivated while they are working in a regular office space or even at home-office. After all, they’re the ones whom you have picked to propel your business forward.
However, maintaining or improving the ‘company culture’ is not just restricted to regular or traditional office spaces. Thanks to modern technology and a massive shift in the global work environment, more and more companies have some (or most) of their employees working remotely from shared co-working spaces or homes.
And ever since the global pandemic of COVID-19 spread at a maddening pace, the new challenge for the business leaders of companies is to ensure that their remote employees do not feel isolated, demotivated, or left out from the rest of the pack. This is the reason that building an inclusive work culture has become the need of the hour.
Negative or inconsistent culture can create all sorts of problems for the organization, especially in these times of sheer uncertainty when clouds of doubt loom large over most (if not all) businesses.
At ProofHub, we have a team-based culture where employee participation is encouraged at all levels, and this has continued ever since we transitioned to working remotely.
So the million-dollar question for many founders or managers at this point of time is — How to grow and maintain a positive company culture in a remote working environment? Based on extensive research and personal experience, I have penned down a few useful tips. Read on to know more about it.
- Lead By Example
Great leaders create a strong company vision and then drive their team to follow them. Successful leaders can identify the best talents in the industry, empower them, hone their skills, and build a strong workforce that works with a clear purpose.
Leading by example is accepting the responsibility and taking the challenge head-on when required, and also delegating when necessary to encourage a well-balanced work culture.
You are the leader of the entire workforce; all your employees look upon you for inspiration. When you act and work as a role model, your team puts in the best efforts to replicate you by taking responsibility for their actions and show intentions to do things the right way.
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2. Repeat The Constant Elements Of Your Winning Culture
Think of your business and it should not take long for you to figure out what are the appreciable features that make people enjoy working with you and feel proud to represent your brand. Why does your business have a high employee retention rate? Why do people love to work there?
You need to identify your company’s ‘strengths’ and build upon them in the remote environment. If your team likes a flexible schedule, for example, keep it as an option in remote work. If your team used to have pizza parties on Fridays, you can host virtual pizza parties. Find a balance between leisure and focus on high performance in a way that both don’t overlap each other.
3. Use The Best Collaboration Tools
Keeping widely dispersed team members on the same page is crucial to promote easy planning and organization while avoiding communication gaps, misinformation, and misunderstandings. And, it’s no secret that behind successful businesses are hardworking people who collaborate effectively to achieve organizational goals.
Using feature-rich project management software like ProofHub, Asana, Trello, or Basecamp can help team leaders to ensure every member of the team is on the same page. People can have quick chat, share feedback, schedule events, and visualize the project’s progress from a common single platform.
4. Communicate Effectively
Communication is always a two-way street. Communication involves conveying your thoughts and objectives to employees as well as taking employees’ feedback to make improvements. The times are long gone when traditional ‘up-down’ communication flow reigned supreme in almost every organization.
So, you need to take time to listen attentively to your employees. Encourage and facilitate open communication through the right channels to receive timely feedback.
It is important to follow through on what you communicate and act on their feedback to keep your team’s trust. Using “ help me to understand the situation” in place of “why did you do that” can change a lot of things (for good) at the workplace.
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5. Take Time To Know Everyone In Your Team
For entrepreneurs and team managers, it’s relatively easy to learn a lot about employees when you interact with them daily in a traditional office environment. There are team meetings, fun activities, lunch and coffee breaks, watercooler conversations, etc, which give you a sense of who they are as a person, what personality traits they have, etc.
When it comes to remote work, you should make efforts to know your colleagues or employees differently. Setting aside a specific time every week to schedule video calls for informal discussions can be a great way to know more about each of your employees.
6. Measure Your Remote Employees Engagement
It’s important to measure sentiments among your remote teams from time to time; just to check if there are employees who are battling isolation, work-related stress, or lack of motivation due to other reasons. Formal monthly surveys or email status updates can help you achieve this objective.
Do not keep conversations limited to work only. Encourage employees to share their general mood and happiness, how their personal life is going on, or if they are facing some personal challenges outside of work. This may help to lessen any feelings of isolation and lack of communication.
It’s All About Trust
Whether it’s an in-office team or remote workforce, you can’t have a united team working efficiently unless they trust each other. As a team leader, you should exhibit the feelings of total confidence in your teammates, and most people genuinely care about doing a good job for their employers.
Remote teams do enjoy a certain degree of flexibility and you should accept that. At the end of the day, you should measure their performance not by the number of hours they spent on the seat but how much they delivered. Trust your team to get the work done at the right time.
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