1. Hold Regular Meetings
When employees aren’t working together, it’s critically important to hold regular conferences with remote employees. Encourage employees to have brief discussions to discuss shared projects, even if the meeting lasts only 5-10 minutes.
Meetings provide a way for employees to bring up challenges, talk through obstacles, and share best practices. Many employees may not feel that a particular challenge is worth an email, or worse, have gotten no response. A meeting allows employees to bring up issues and discuss them in a group setting.
Team meetings also allow for more excellent communication on team members’ progress and the chance to re-emphasize goals and priorities. Team meetings don’t have to belong. Even a 20-minute meeting held regularly can do wonders for reinforcing the cohesion among your team.
- It gives employees a chance to talk over challenges, share tips, and catch up with each other.
- Provides a way to reinforce deadlines, priorities, and goals for the team.
- Gives an avenue for brainstorming. Use Ideas for teams brainstorming in between team meetings.
- Creates a sense of team and cohesion for employees working remotely.
2. Getting-To-Know-You Games
While working in an office tends to afford a chance to get to know colleagues, working from home limits those natural chances. Employees can chat about a bad day across the aisle in the office, mention an upcoming personal activity while grabbing coffee, or share photos of their recent vacation after a team meeting.
But remote employees miss out on those opportunities. More often than not, remote employees feel tremendous pressure to work without ceasing. They often feel like they shouldn’t take time for conversation that’s not explicitly task-related.
Use a few minutes of your meetings for getting-to-know-you activities. There are a few ways to use getting-to-know-you questions. (link to article). Ask a question and give each team member 2 minutes to answer it. If your time is limited, ask a question for one team member to respond. Each meeting, rotate employees so that everyone continues to get a chance to answer it.
Or, use surveys to ask your team a couple of questions and share the answers in the team meeting. This allows your staff to see where they fit in with team preferences, favorite superheroes, or favorite beverages.
3. Encourage Team Conversations
Conversation boosts creativity, and when employees work remotely, they often miss out on those little non-work-related conversations. A recent study found that just 10 minutes of conversation boost performance as much as doing mental exercises. Set up a specific channel or chat for employees to have irrelevant conversations. Then, encourage them to converse.
Get employees involved by setting the example and sharing some funny memes, jokes, or inspirational stories. Recognize employees who jump into the conversation. Hold a contest for who shares the funniest jokes and have employees vote through surveys.
4. Plan Team Events
The kind of team-bonding event that you plan for your remote employees will look different. Decide first if your team can do a team activity together or needs to do a remote event. Teams in other cities or during COVID-19 may opt for a virtual team event or party.
If your team is separated by distance or current events, consider virtual games, signing up for a virtual escape room, or watching a movie together with the chat on. If your team can meet in person, plan one of these team activities. Bowling, hiking, rock climbing, or even scavenger hunts can be great activities for bonding teams.
5. Treat Your Team as A-Team
Remote employees often feel like they work in a silo environment. Finding answers to simple problems usually take more time than they anticipate, and loneliness can creep in. Treating your team as a team can boost individual performance even while workers focus on silo tasks. Stanford found that individuals working solo on tasks perform better and persist longer when they believe they are part of a team and receive tips they think are from their teammates.
As a manager, you can recreate this environment by encouraging employees to share hints and tips with each other and keeping the conversation going. Give assignments to your team even as individuals work at home in silos.
Another way to treat your team as a team is to encourage peer recognition (link to this article). When employees get recognition from colleagues, it boosts morale and productivity. Remote team members may need to be reminded of the importance of stopping to recognize each other. You can do this by raising the available points in the SPOT awards or increasing your budget to allow employees to recognize unilaterally.
Conclusion
As you intentionally work to create a sense of team among remote employees, new employees will feel more like they belong, and long-term remote workers may find they feel a new sense of team they haven’t felt before.
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About Thanks
Thanks is a leading provider of a recognition-based platform that increases communication, builds teamwork, and makes recognition a part of company culture. Fast, easy and straightforward Thanks makes it easy to bring data-driven employee recognition to your entire organization. O.C. Tanner purchased the Thanks platform in 2019 to fulfill the recognition needs of smaller businesses.
Thanks customers benefit from the same decades of research in employee motivation and company culture that O.C. Tanner enterprise clients enjoy, but in a product that is geared for fast, easy and simple deployment. Whether you’re starting a recognition program or improving and expanding on what you already have, Thanks has everything you need to engage your people with effective, scalable recognition.