With the transition to an online work environment for the majority of companies in the year 2020, remote working environments have become increasingly common, and may even be viable solutions! That being said, today’s blog will focus on the steps you can take to improve your company’s cultural practices within your online team and network! Creating a sense of culture between team mates, and remotely bonding with one another are great assets to hold as a team. Research shows that incentivizing and engaging with your team members can reduce employee turnover by as much as 70%! Below are some steps to creating a healthy and efficient culture within your online team!
1. Be consistent
Teams need to know that their leader is reliable and someone they can trust. If you’re in a fairly stable job, where day to day work is often predictable, consistency in a team and consistency in a leader is key to ensuring productivity. So you may be asking, well what does this look like? Some examples include: keeping your word, being consistent with meeting times, emails, company policies and with routine decision making.
2. Remain organized
With everything online, remaining up to date on new technology, and with new technology, is critical. This means making sure to sync up calendars in advance, releasing agendas and memos prior to meetings, and ensuring records are kept of meeting minutes. This also means keeping track of emails, and appointments with your team members as well. Physically, remaining organized in your own workspace can help you remain organized in other attributes of your career - “a clean desk makes for a clean mind!” Communicating regularly with your team is a must, especially if anything comes up and is symbiotic with organization!
3. Communicate regularly
Speaking with your team members regularly helps to ensure that they know there’s a real person behind your screen. It can help to increase confidentiality, reliability, and your credibility as a leader, if your team knows that they can come to you when they need advice or guidance on a project. With a remote environment, online communication is essential to establishing company culture. Whether this means having mentors (older employees) leading breakout rooms with newer employees, to update them on company life, debrief them on policies and memos, or simply have a chat to further create relationships; or if this means delegating work as a leader to your newer members, say extroverts be assigned to answer questions during the meeting, (while encouraging) or pairing extroverts and introverts up.
4. Establish traditions
Holding parties, social mixers, employee of the month programs, raffles, charity events, etc. will help increase your employee value proposition, and help keep your team members engaged in an online setting! Although it may be difficult, many online games and activities can be taken on through a remote setting, and establishing these traditions is necessary to foster a strong sense of company culture. This also means setting boundaries and expectations, and establishing what the online atmosphere will look like early on. Do you want your team to work silently for set times, and then hold break times together and engage? Do you want your team to remain on call at all times? Using testimonials is also possible to help improve your company’s culture, and this could look like having an older member of your team present on a previous project they took on, or holding a session where they can speak on their experiences at the company, to help teach newer members about what to expect!
Tips for engagement!
1. Brainstorming sessions
Hold brainstorming sessions on a bi-weekly basis to make sure you and your team are staying creative and on the same page!
2. Allow for family friendly events to get to know your team better
Meshing together personal and professional life helps to eliminate the stress that work-life balance can bring. The trick is to help your employees feel welcomed in the workplace, enough so that they enjoy coming to work and look forward to the family friendly events offered!
3. Connect on social media - but keep it professional
Connecting with one another on Linkedin and other approved workplace social media sites can help improve your online team’s environment, but keeping your team members up to date on the activities going on within one another’s lives, in a passive way! Make sure you do keep it professional however, and don’t expect a reply if “work hours” have been strictly established to certain set times. Many teams use Slack as a database to check in with one another, as it keeps track of status, without featuring the stress of read-receipts.
4. Encourage HR policies
Make sure your employees know their rights, and are using safe online practices, promote open door policies, and make sure to review the ethical codes of conduct, and terms of workplace harassment in an online setting as well, to ensure a safe working environment for all.
More resources
For more information on how YOU can improve the online environment of your company, check out our other blogs, instagram or main homepage! Contact us at info@lightninghr.ca for further inquiries, or to set up an appointment to meet with one of our HR representatives today!
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