Many companies have been using remote work for so long that there are growing concerns for how this will influence company culture moving forward. Let’s discuss how you can avoid having remote work directly impact your company culture so that your team can maintain a productive working relationship.
Company Culture is Key to Your Continued Productivity
A healthy company culture means that your employees are engaged and that their goals are aligned with those established by the company. A healthy company culture also goes a long way toward attracting talent for your business. With all of this interconnectivity developing, your team is more likely to communicate, providing more transparency and visibility into the inner workings of the team itself.
Remote work has made accomplishing this much more difficult, however. A global survey indicates that 51 percent of respondents had experienced a loss of connection to their company culture after the COVID-19 pandemic forced them into remote work. These respondents indicated that, out of interactions with their coworkers, in-person collaboration, and having a definite line between work and home, they miss spending time with their coworkers the most.
To make things more difficult, company culture is also high on the average prospect’s list of considerations. Another study found that 57 percent of job seekers consider it equally as important as pay, while 75 percent of recruiters rank how well an applicant fits into the culture a company has established more highly than the prospect’s experience.
On top of this, 73 percent of this survey’s respondents closely associated a company’s culture with its reputation as a whole.
iCIMS chief people officer Jewell Parkinson credits a company’s culture for spurring on a list of common business priorities:
- Engagement
- Productivity
- Profitability
- Customer Satisfaction
- Customer Retention
All of the above would suffer if there is any impact on the culture of your company, meaning that there must be activities to remedy these challenges with your remote workers. Here are some ways you can keep them engaged.
How to Keep a Remote Team Engaged
See to Your Remote Workers’ Needs
If you have remote workers, you should do everything you can to make sure they have access to all the tools they need to be successful out of the office, be it helping them procure the appropriate technology or subsidizing their Internet costs. Your workers should also know what your expectations are for them. Here are some of the considerations you might have for them:
- If remote workers are expected to stick to regular office hours, or if their work schedule can be more flexible.
- Which tools remote team members should use to collaborate with the rest of their team.
- Whether remote employees are able to work remotely while traveling, and how remote time-off requests are to be handled.
Establish Company Culture and Create Reasons to Socialize
The less time your employees spend around each other, the fewer opportunities they have to create bonds and establish rapport with each other. You must create a positive company culture which motivates your employees to stay connected to each other, despite working remotely. One way you can do this is to hold events that bring your in-house and remote teams together. This kind of event gives employees the chance to get to know each other, which should theoretically make working together easier, too.
Acknowledge Remote Work from the Beginning
If you implement remote work into your business right from the start, like with onboarding information, you can build an acceptance around it right away.
Remote Work Doesn’t Have to Cost You Your Company Culture
You can make remote work much more manageable by working with a service provider like ClearView IT. From procurement to access, we can help with any stage of the process. To learn more, reach out to us at 866-326-7214.
