Intentionally design for the same interactions that would otherwise happen if people were in the office.
Culture is what naturally happens when a group of people gets together for any period.
A great culture happens with intentional design and influence. It's the reason you should make your company's mission, vision, values, operating principles, standards, and agreements visible.
Culture is experienced through emotions, including how your employees feel about the company, you, other leaders, and peers. That feeling is developed through human interaction at the water cooler, kitchen, or hallway conversations.
Working remotely becomes second nature when you do it all the time. But if you need to suddenly transition to remote work, you won't necessarily have effective systems in place. I consistently get emails from folks looking for advice on how to make remote work actually work. While we've written...
For many of us, the office becomes a fun place due to a sense of community, purpose and fun interactions that make up an office day. To try and mimic your office culture virtually:
Set up Slack channels for water cooler conversation
Schedule virtual movie days, when the same movie is streamed with the chat option on.
Try to recreate virtual versions of what employees miss the most in office, like a coffee break, for instance.
Being social at office lubricates official conversations and the work itself. The more we spend time with colleagues having non-essential chatter, the easier our work becomes with them.
It helps to be creative and infuse fun into a virtual interaction. Any official conversation, like a manager meeting his subordinates in a one-on-one meeting, can start by asking about the person’s life (something unrelated to work), so that a connection is built.
It's not easy being a manager. Not only are you accountable for your team's performance, you are also in charge of hiring new candidates, and you have to work hard to earn their trust and respect. Now, imagine doing these things when your closest direct report is 800 miles away, and your team members live in five different time zones.
Remote workers won’t have the opportunity to be involved in spontaneous conversations or team lunches, but there are other things you can do to help them settle:
provide info with new job critical stuff: team member introductions (personal bios, photos, advice for new employees), HR training links, task checklists, long-term goals, and more.
assign mentors to new hires, who schedule regular video check-ins, make themselves available on Slack and make new employees feel welcome.
Executive Summary With the Covid-19 epidemic, many employees - and their managers - are finding themselves working out of the office and separated from each other for the first time. Fortunately, there are specific, research-based steps that managers can take without great effort to improve the engagement and productivity of remote employees, even when there is little time to prepare.
There is ongoing turbulence in the workplace due to the uncertainties provided by the new virus, resulting in a whole lot of people working from home. Normally the work-from-home policies are esta...
Even high-performing employees can face a decline in job performance and engagement when working remotely. This can be due to:
Lack of face-to-face supervision, which leads to a two-way communication gap and even mistrust.
There is a delay in the procurement of information as remote workers aren’t able to sense the atmosphere and real-time events at the workplace, leading to a lack of ‘mutual knowledge’.
A sense of isolation among remote workers, leading to a feeling of less belongingness within the organization.
Distractions at home due to unplanned work-from-home transition, with employees balancing childcare and many other responsibilities along with work.
A few specific, research-backed steps that can be taken to improve the engagement and productivity of remote employees:
Establishing Structured Daily check-ins, by establishing a daily call or touchpoint.
Providing several different communication technology options, using virtual communication tools like Slack, Zoom, Microsoft Teams etc., and making use of video conferencing.
Establishing clear rules of engagement for communicating with the coworkers or the managers, according to the levels of urgency.
Providing opportunities for remote social interaction by talking about non-work activities, thereby reducing the feeling of isolation among remote workers.
Offering encouragement and emotional support by listening to the workers, acknowledging their stress, and keeping their needs and issues in focus.
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