10 Ways To Preserve Your Company Culture in a Remote Work Environment

Retaining your organisation’s internal uniqueness & cohesion when team members work in different locations.
10 Ways To Preserve Your Company Culture in a Remote Work Environment
By
Wanda Lafond

Many businesses had to force their employees to work remotely due to the pandemic. Entrepreneurs go to great lengths to support employees who are isolated due to remote work and to make them feel like they are still part of a larger team.

The problem is that it is difficult to retain the organisation’s internal uniqueness, a cohesive team, and a team spirit when all team members are in different locations.

Is it possible to maintain company culture in such circumstances?

When your team works in a central shared location, it’s often easier to maintain a steady pace of productivity (an example would be Writing Judge). However, once work is switched to a remote format, you might observe decreased motivation and an increased risk of burnout and depression — especially for co-workers who are externally motivated.

So, it’s critical to take timely measures to boost the team spirit and cohesion of your remote-working team.

How Do You Preserve Company Culture When Working Remotely?

The primary goal of any company culture is to build towards a good company with efficient employees. This looks and feels different in every work environment.

Company culture is what integrates the team, uniting co-workers around the company’s mission, brand identity, image, products, services, and customers.

To make the group more cohesive, business leaders create specific means that reflect the company’s values:

  • The company’s history or founding story;
  • Customised work setting;
  • Traditions and ceremonies;
  • Thematic celebrations, etc.

These can all be covered in visualisations like office design and decor, badges/uniforms (if you’re that kind of company), videos and ads, your website, etc. and this can help the employees feel part of a bigger picture, which should encourage more focused, joy-filled work.

10 Ways To Foster Your Company Culture Remotely

Previously, corporate culture was focused on visual symbols that represented the group’s togetherness and uniformity. Companies had to consider how to translate these features into the speech field so that they would work as efficiently for employees who were not in the office as they did for those who were.

Let’s discover how company head management can solve this task effectively!

#1 Encourage Your Team

Your main goal as a leader is to demonstrate self-assurance and strength in solving a specific task.

The team has formed a social contract with you and look to you as a leader.

Therefore, don’t be reactive if a co-worker shows excessive emotion or gets discouraged easily. Instead, respond by showing that you understand their worries and are always open to dialogue.

#2 Stay In Touch With Your Team

When the team works in a remote environment, it’s important to have specific tools to connect to team members. There is special software that can help you remotely monitor workflows and employees’ moods.

Try using online tools that collect and analyse the following metrics:

  • Working time — the number of hours spent in chat rooms, instant messengers, rallies, etc.;
  • Connectedness and engagement — communication across departments and team members. If employees fail to communicate on business subjects, it will be shown in a diagram, and you will be able to quickly react before it disrupts the job;
  • Communication tone — measuring sentiment shows whether the tone of the conversations in your company is positive or negative.

Learning about the time spent in communication and its tone allows you to respond to situations effectively and increase team effectiveness. Slack, GitHub, Jira, and Google Workspace can all be integrated with many online productivity and communication metrics tools.

#3 Use Video Chat to Communicate

Although many employees are accustomed to writing communication, video communication can be far more successful. Leave the writing to the pros at Best Writers Online and let your teammates see you rather than “read you.”

Communication via messengers frequently makes it difficult to accurately interpret the mood and feelings of the other person. Employees who work outside the workplace are particularly affected by this. Exclamation points and sentences highlighted with All Caps can affect the message’s content and the author’s main message.

Video chats allow team members to view one other’s emotions in real-time, as well as capture timbre, voice inflection, and other nonverbal indications that text cannot convey. As a result, team members who are working remotely will feel like they are expressing themselves more accurately, which is very empowering.

#4 Set The Schedule

Establish the criteria for remote work and organise this information into a single framework during a strategic video chat meeting. Include the following points:

  • When can people expect you to be available online?
  • What communication methods should be used in each scenario? (email, messengers, etc.)
  • Which meetings must everyone attend? Which meetings can be done away with?

#5 Healthy Mind in a Healthy Body

Constant eating at the workplace is uncomfortable and impolite. Nonetheless, when it comes to a remote environment, the situation is quite the opposite as no one sees you except your family and pets.

Frequent snacking, stress, and a sedentary lifestyle all have an impact on your physical and mental well-being. Anti-Virus Charging was one of the most exciting and unforgettable quarantine activities recently applied to remote employees — it entails conducting an online broadcast of exercises with the entire team.

Doing morning exercises together with your teammates can be turned into a tradition by incorporating special gestures or slogans into it.

#6 Emotional Intelligence Training

The key to the company’s success is well-established communication among the team.

Corporate culture begins with employees’ understanding of how to correctly evaluate their own emotions and the emotions of other people and adjust their behaviour accordingly.

Set up emotional intelligence training for your staff so that they may better understand how to communicate with coworkers, read their words correctly, and respond in stressful situations to ensure flawless work.

#7 Organise Master Classes

Access to theatres, museums, and parks has been restricted as a result of the pandemic.

A lack of variety is very demotivating for many employees, resulting in lower productivity and even a loss of enthusiasm for their jobs.

If your daily routine is monotonous and uninspiring, everything around you becomes pretty meaningless. To address this problem, you can create opportunities for employees to attend value-adding workshops and webinars.

For example, you may hire an expert to teach the team to practice pilates, dance, or you could try to introduce a drawing or painting challenge. Not only will your employees gain fun, memorable experiences that help them feel strongly connected to the team, they will also be enriched on a personal level.

#8 Appreciate Your Employees’ Work

The fact that team members enjoy their work contributes to the organisation’s success. Praise your employees in posts on the company’s social network or on Hi5 to demonstrate how much you value each and every individual’s participation and contribution.

Employees will be delighted to find that their contributions matter, and are appreciated.

This is quite important! Try to always openly praise team members on a shared recognition platform to inform others about their achievements. Sending a personal thank-you note is also important to show your sincerity.

Where does social media fit in? An appreciation post is the Internet’s version of the “Employee of the Month” poster. When you make the effort to highlight a particular employee on the company’s social media page, team members will also be able to share the appreciation they received on their profiles and be motivated to do even more in the future.

#9 Arrange Off-Work Meetings If Possible

Outside-of-the-office get-togethers bring the team closer like nothing else. Colleagues can gather together to eat out, run marathons, play mafia, or participate in various sports.

Lenovo, for example, hosts Counter-Strike: Global Offensive events for both corporate teams and individuals. These events are a great way to boost team spirit and show that the organisation shares common values, interests, and hobbies. You can also opt for online, asynchronous games that help remote employees feel more connected — check out the new Hi5 Games!

#10 Identify Employee Challenges

One of the most efficient approaches to developing company culture in a remote environment is identifying the challenges that employees experience while completing their tasks. I probably don’t need to tell you how important it is to get acquainted with each person in your team!

Determine what issues your co-worker experiences while performing her work, and work together to try and come up with viable actions to solve them.

As a result, you will not only improve your employee’s working environment and productivity but also keep their trust and support.

Conclusion

The primary purpose of the company is to grow towards its mission.

Despite the hurdles in achieving your company’s vision and mission, preserving a corporate culture is one of the most important factors in accomplishing it.

You might not want to go ‘offline’ again if you enter remote mode correctly and understand how to streamline your corporate culture!

About the author

Wanda Lafond is a professional content writer, copywriter, content strategist, and communications consultant. She started young with her writing career from being a high school writer to a university editor, and now she is a writer in professional writing platforms Best Writers Online and Writing Judge — her years of expertise have honed her skills to create compelling and results-driven content every single time.

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