How to Build a Positive Culture with Remote Teams

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of remote teams is on the rise. As the numbers increase, odds are you are or will be managing a remote team. One of the issues you’ll have to tackle is creating and maintaining a strong culture. This defines the experience your employees have working for your company or on your team. Having an established culture and positive employee experience increases engagement, productivity, and retention. These are a few reasons why you need an effective approach to building the culture you need for your team to be successful.

Consider these tips to create a strong culture with your remote team.

Match Communication Tools with Culture

Use communication tools that promote company culture. For instance, Slack can be used as a virtual water cooler. Employees can share random work discussions, talk about the news, tell jokes, and discuss pop culture. The company intranet or programs such as WordPress theme P2 can be used to post internal updates. Threaded comments make it easy to share posts welcoming new team members, discuss work issues, and share other topics your team needs to be informed about. Google Hangouts or Zoom can be used for team meetings. Even a simple, emailed newsletter updates employees and keeps them engaged.

Send Company Swag

Ship each employee company-branded materials. They can wear the clothing, display company items on their desk, and decorate their home office with posters to create the same design aesthetic and cultural life elements as the office.

Promote Team Building

Develop communication and trust through team-building activities. Randomly set up two members of your team every week to have a casual conversation. This gets the emphasis away from business and promotes camaraderie. Or, put employees in groups based on common interests. Let each group set up some time to chat.

Create Shared Leadership

Provide opportunities for employees to take on leadership tasks. Rather than simply assigning a list of things to do, let your team take initiative on certain projects or parts of a project. This may include mentoring new team members as part of the onboarding process or leading a virtual team-building exercise. This helps your team members experience managerial functions, learn other areas of the business and potentially move up within the organization.

Establish Traditions

Encourage your team to create traditions. Repeating these activities, processes, or events creates cohesion. Teammates feel they can trust each other and openly communicate because of these shared experiences. They’ll be more open to expressing their ideas and opinions, knowing they’ll be listened to and respected.

Promote Culture Among Your Remote Team

Remote work isn’t going away anytime soon. As it continues to grow, you must promote a strong culture among your team members to maintain a cohesive company.

To find qualified professionals for your accounting and finance team, reach out to Casey Accounting & Finance Resources. Our candidates understand the importance of promoting company culture while working remotely. Partner with us today.

Why Remote Options Can Boost Your Employee Morale

Remote work options may be one key to boosting your employee morale. Having more control over one’s work schedule and location increases work satisfaction, engagement and productivity. Engaged, productive employees are happy employees, which leads to greater morale.

Increased Job Satisfaction

Because employees avoid the commute, they experience lower stress levels and less work exhaustion. This results in a higher positive attitude, lower absenteeism and greater employee retention. Also, as baby boomers head into retirement, they want remote work options to complement their desired preretirement lifestyle. Generation X may be done raising their kids and want to be in the workforce but still want to spend time with their families. Millennials may be looking for life experiences that broaden their horizons and expand their networks. Plus, Generation Z may desire remote work options to refine their career growth.

Stronger Manager and Employee Relationships

Because management is even more critical when working remotely, managers need to be proactive leaders who are intentional in their style. They need to create standards and expectations for remote collaboration and model successful behaviors for remote work to be successful. With increased methods of communication and virtual connections, managers and employees can virtually connect face-to-face, through email or instant messaging, or over the phone when needed, resulting in greater connections.

Better Health

Since stress and burnout are lower, employees feel physically and emotionally healthy. Also, work flexibility stimulates the brain, leading to happier, more creative employees. It also builds relationships among different generations of workers, which increases feelings of happiness and well-being, improves communication and reduces conflicts. Additionally, remote work options allow for more sleep, so employees feel refreshed and productive the next day. Plus, employees who are ill may be able to complete their work without infecting co-workers.

Greater Work-Life Balance

Working from home allows employees to take care of personal responsibilities while still completing their tasks. They can tend to family needs, run errands, exercise and engage in other interests while fulfilling their professional responsibilities. Employees can also attend meetings through video conferencing and ask questions through instant messaging tools, ensuring they fulfill their duties while working remotely.

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