Remote working became a necessity during the pandemic, but was a forced situation for most businesses who had precious little time to transition into this new way of working. Post-pandemic, the majority of job applicants are now expecting to work partially or fully remotely. We are unlikely to go back to the old world of work centred around being on-site for the traditional 9-5. Moving forward businesses have needed to offer more flexible and remote working options to better attract candidates and retain staff. Even though many businesses have been working either partly or fully remotely since 2020, many have not considered how to tackle common issues associated with managing and engaging a remote working / hybrid workforce including:
- A lack of team spirit and community/company culture
- Decreased social connection and relationships between employees
- Reduced participation during virtual meetings from some individuals
- Lower team and individual engagement levels
- New starters being unable to get a feel of a company’s culture and needing longer settling in periods
Working in a virtual environment can be a challenge. Considering that most in person interactions will use all our senses and social cues (sight, sound, taste, touch, smell). A virtual environment can only provide two sense and cues for us to act upon (sound and sight). Therefore working in a virtual-only environment can lead to difficulties for those who:
- Struggle with social cues
- Rely on the ability to read wider body language and signals
- Need to tap into the ‘energy’ in a room
- Are introverted and may find participating challenging in an environment where only one person can speak at a time
So how can businesses tackle these common virtual working issues and move towards building a positive and engaging culture in a remote workforce? Here are our top tips:
- Facilitate virtual meetings with more engaging tools – there are a number of tools on virtual meeting platforms which can be used to facilitate more participation in meetings. This might be useful when wanting to increase participation from wider team members who might be ‘quiet attendees’. For example, you can use polls so people can vote for ideas or for a decision. Use breakout rooms to separate a large group into smaller groups and encourage these smaller groups to develop ideas or feedback. Share your screen and use a presentation to increase visual stimuli in the meeting.
- Consider team and community focused ‘huddles’ – don’t just use your virtual meeting platform for standard and formal meetings. Utilise the platform to set up informal ‘huddles’ or chats with certain teams or groups of staff to build their connections and relationships. Make sure that team / individual successes and news are shared and celebrated to build a more person centred focus in remote team.
- Train managers to look out for ‘red flags’ – this might look like someone withdrawing from meeting participating or attendance, a change in their usual behaviour, or someone who might always have their camera switched off. Develop an action plan and train your managers in this on how to approach, support and manage employees they are concerned about. Listening, empathy and tonality in online meetings are critical here.
- Maintain in person events – if your workforce is working entirely remotely, ensure that you are still encouraging opportunities for meeting in-person. In-person interactions are incredibly valuable for building upon remote working connections. This could look like on-site monthly team meetings, after work social events held quarterly, or planned in-person ‘together days’ where all employees are asked to work from the office/workplace on a set monthly date.
- Instil company expectations for employee commitment and engagement when working remotely – this might look like managers actively encouraging participation in virtual meetings from all attendees, creating a copmany expectation that cameras will be turned on for certain meetings, employees could take it in turns to hold a team meetings agenda. Look to develop a culture of a collective responsibility for teams and individuals to develop business processes, make changes, and implement ideas.
- Wellbeing checks ins – build a person-centred culture by having either line managers or mental health advocates have informal check-ins with all staff once a quarter. An informal check-in could have a wellbeing focus, look at stress, workload and resource, as well as discuss any issues faced in the virtual workplace. This will identify any issues early on and will reflect the company’s supportive, caring culture, that focuses on building trust.
- Encourage cross-team collaboration opportunities – business shouldn’t underestimate cross-team collaboration that can occur in person when employees bump into each other in the corridor or whilst they are grabbing a coffee in the office kitchen. This can also be encouraged in a virtual environment by either setting social objectives for virtual staff to meet certain individuals in other teams, by arranging information sharing sessions in cross-departmental meetings or even socially through ‘coffee with a colleague’ set ups where employees are paired up to have a virtual catch up with a colleague from another department to learn about them and what they do
- Implement pulse wellbeing surveys and engagement surveys – which is helpful for your business to understand live employee feedback on engagement levels and wellbeing status across the business / certain departments.
Kimberley Wallace is a Senior HR Consultant for Nockolds HR. To discuss remote working issues or staff engagement matters, please contact kim@nockoldshr.co.uk or 07584 575 212.