Over the past few years, there have been significant changes made to people’s working practices. Many people have decided to move to a “working from home” situation rather than head to an office. This suited a lot of people as reduced time on transportation and other factors. However, for a lot of people, they felt disengaged and demotivated.
The remote working element has become a new norm and is fast becoming accepted across a wide variety of different businesses and industries. As a result of this workplaces have had to adapt how they now deal with remote working and team motivation. Here are 3 things that some companies have adopted to help with this crucial area.
Team Building Activities
Participating in a team-building activity does not have to be completed face to face. This can be completed remotely. Different companies now specialize in this, and the industry has rocketed due to the demand. This then allows for a lot of innovative, creative activities to be completed and helps motivate the staff. A company called Team Tactics is just one of many that has taken the time to develop team building activities for remote teams and have a large amount of different engaging opportunities at different rates and intensity.
Even a simple activity will show your employees that you care as an employer and are looking to embrace their remote working. It can be even more difficult for remote workers if there are members of the team working at home and members working in the office, but this is one way to ensure that everyone comes together.
Virtual Meetings
Keeping regular team meetings with remote workers is really important. Within an office environment, it is really easy for an employee to personally grab their line manager for a cup of tea or catch up if they need help or just someone to chat to. Doing this with a remote working team is slightly more challenging and could be impersonal but there are simple things you can do to help. You could turn on your cameras which would then allow you to see each other. Sounds very simple but this sort of connection makes a whole lot of difference.
You could also make sure that as well as regular team meetings in the diary, you have regular 1-2-1’s with your employees where no one else is involved. Getting the frequency of these correct is sometimes hard and depends on the individual. Some employees may want this daily or weekly but others less often. Not one cap fits all therefore take this into consideration.
Recognition
Most people feel a lot better when they have a level of appreciation and because remote workers are not in the office every day, they shouldn’t be any different. It may be more difficult to show them personal recognition but there are many different things you could do. You could decide to award or recognize someone at one of the remote meetings that you set up. Give them some kudos and comments during the session. You could even decide to send them a nice bunch of vouchers from their favorite store.
One thing, that could probably go above and beyond all of this would be to actually turn up at their home where they are working to give them some personal thanks. This would show that you not only appreciate them but value the work they are completing from a remote location.
Even if your team is scattered across the country, find some way to bring them all together. There will always be some way that you can help everyone feel more connected, no matter how far apart the team is.
