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.

Personal Connection

With affective trust being so important to foster at the beginning of a relationship, onboarding new hires well becomes even more critical for virtual team building.You can partner newcomers with experienced employees and have a formal onboarding process at the company, or at least a partially in-person one, with expenses covered by the company.

Over-Emphasize Onboarding

<ul><li>Loneliness was reported as the biggest downside for 21% of remote employees, and one of the reasons that makes them more likely to quit. </li><li>Most remote managers say they’d be more inclined to stay if they had more friends at work.</li><li>Individuals who have 15 minutes to socialize with colleagues have a 20% increase in performance over their peers who don't. </li><li>Positive social relationships are correlated with better life expectancy.</li></ul>

Statistics On Remote Workers

Many remote companies offer buddy systems for onboarding. This is also a way for people to have fun and get closer, as well as to increase job satisfaction and commitment.This can take the form of assigning an official “mentor” or a random employee, with whom they have periodic one-on-one meetings to get acclimated to the company.

Build a Buddy System

<ul><li>Try regularly scheduling chats over video. Those work particularly well when paired with activities like coffee breaks, online gaming or topical discussion. </li><li>Create a dedicated non-work chat channel. This re-creates the “watercooler chat” you would have in an in-person office and it often becomes the primary mode of communication for online workers.</li><li>Invest in company retreats and make space for people to socialize on them.</li></ul>

Foster Connection

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.

Dynamic Icebreakers

Curated sources for managers to improve the engagement and productivity of remote employees

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Managing Remotely

Virtual team building is tough. Here are 7 ways you can build social connection in a remote team, even from afar. I'll be shocked if you're shocked: Building social connection in a remote team is the hardest part of managing a remote team.