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Curated sources for managers to improve the engagement and productivity of remote employees
A sense of connection and belonging are sentiments that are helpful for building “affective trust” – a form of trust based on emotional bond and interpersonal relatedness.
It varies from the “cognitive trust” – which springs from reliability and competence. Both are influential to performance, but affective trust tends to be more salient for a team at the beginning of a relationship, according to studies.
If your icebreaker questions are intriguing, cheeky, humorous – the answers you receive will be, too.
Many remote teams will kick off their weekly meeting with an icebreaker question or insert it during their morning stand-up meeting. Even more popular is asking a series of icebreaker questions during the onboarding process when hiring someone.
The pandemic normalised remote working, and despite the fears of most organisations, there was no demonstrable loss of productivity.
Now, the global workforce wants to retain increased flexibility as societies open up again. Yet, many organisations are resisting this more flexible future. They argue that employees' wellbeing is compromised by remote working, for example, Zoom fatigue.
The problem is that although most office workers are currently working from home, they still work in an office-centric manner.
Most of our work practices are based around location: when we work, where we work, how we work. Worse is that these practises were designed decades ago. The pandemic has given us the unique opportunity to question these structures.
... that's capable of executing in a remote setup:
In a remote team, you'll need the right tools to make sure everyone stays on the same page and can continue to execute without a physical person standing next to them.
You likely will need a tool in certain categories like group chat and video conferencing to make remote successful.
Good processes let you get work done in the absence of all else. They provide structure and direction for getting things done.
A few examples from Zapier:
Most companies embracing remote work also have dedicated headquarters. But remote-ish teams have even more communication and collaboration challenges than fully remote teams.
For example, in hybrid teams, remote employees are often left in the dark. Office workers are often heard, recognized, and promoted, while remote workers are forgotten.
The single biggest mistake companies can make is to opt to be remote-friendly instead of remote-first. Companies often accept the idea that remote is the future of work without creating an inclusive culture to ensure it works for everyone.
Hybrid companies function best when the entire company is optimized for remote work. Successful hybrid teams set up processes to help their remote workers thrive alongside their office teammates.
Leadership must acknowledge the various challenges remote workers face and create solutions. Create a remote work policy that keeps remote workers and contractors from feeling like second class team members. Remote workers should feel fully connected and not missing a thing.
There are mainly two ways to communicate within a company: synchronous and asynchronous communication. While the second type has always been widely practiced, as face-to-face meetings or any other in-person communication, the second type is just slowly being discovered.
In fact, asynchronous communication enables team members to respond to their colleagues whenever they can, without putting pressure on them that the answer should be provided immediately.
While real-time communication inside of a team might lead to solving faster some issues, it also has various disadvantages.
For instance, having your colleagues come to ask you questions to which you feel pressured to answer on the spot leads to you being continuously interrupted, which results in being less productive and feeling stressed or even getting a burnout, as you try to do everything in proper time.
When the employees are provided with control as to when they are willing to communicate with their co-workers, there are many advantages that emerge.
For instance, having the freedom to decide exactly how your working day should look like leads to more satisfied employees as well as to better communication within the team. Further benefits vary from feeling less stressed due to better planning to greater transparency and more efficient work.
There are many benefits to working remotely, such as setting your own schedule or working with teams across the globe. However, remote workers may also feel less engaged in a company's team and overarching culture when there is little in-person interaction.
Without some external validation, it's easy to feel disconnected from your work. That's why it's important to ensure you celebrate your work accomplishments.
Every year, try to do something special to celebrate another year of successful remote work.
Keep the following in mind:
Celebrating doesn't have to be extravagant.
Many people worry that creativity and collaboration suffer when teams are working remotely or in hybrid flexible configurations, and sure, there's a challenge of having a lack of in-person vitality but if you're creative enough about the formats that you're using for these interactions, there would be more engagement from the team members.
There are some managers who love having video meetings with a document open but there are many who hate it.
If you are the one leading the meeting, you should have someone else to monitor the chat who'll be able to respond because it's quite dificult to focus on projecting, sharing, and facilitating while also monitoring the chat box.
To mitigate this, deputize people with different roles. In hybrid meetings, make sure that there is someone who can run the online experience because they can empathize and identify with attendees.
With a hybrid team, interactions and relationships across cultures -- even at a significant distance -- is important because it can spur your own creativity, and in order to do so team members must have a meaningful relationship with each other.
They can try the exercise of 'wordless conversation'. You pair up with somebody from the team that you don't know very well and for a whole day you take pictures or short videos as you go through your day. The goal is to send photos where they can relate to what you sent them.
Remote work can be costly or cost-saving, depending on how well-equipped you are to really support it.
Businesses can categorize employees:
Far more job functions can be done remotely if company leadership will accept it. But, remote work is not for everyone. Some jobs are tied to physical locations or equipment. Some people also do not want to work from home.
In-office employees that transition to remote work need to be equipped. Spending recommendations are:
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