With more companies than ever adopting remote operations, there are fewer face-to-face meetings at work, so it can be challenging to know how to improve team culture. Through building team culture activities, you can recreate the same strategies you would use in person, but through collaboration tools for remote teams. Whether your team is fully in person or located all over the country, it’s important to keep a consistent and positive company culture.
In a global study, 16% of companies reported having fully remote teams. It also found that nearly 62% of employees from age 22 to 65 claimed that they worked remotely at least some of the time. These numbers are only expected to increase as more companies adopt remote workplace capabilities.
Are you looking for remote employee engagement ideas to incorporate with your team? We’ll cover key ways to integrate remote company culture ideas into your day-to-day operations. But first, let’s get into the basics of company culture.
What Is Company Culture?
Company culture combines the values, goals, attitudes, and practices that define an organization. As businesses responded to changes caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, remote working increased out of necessity in many companies that could implement it.
A common goal now is to build a strong team remotely through a culture that establishes happier and more engaged employees. Many businesses will choose to keep a significant part of their remote work intact in the coming years.
Whether your employees are working from home temporarily or permanently, business leaders can help set a direction and tone for collaborating with the team. What keeps the momentum going is the company culture that’s built around the whole operation.
Now that you know what company culture is, the question of how to improve team culture remains. Keep reading for our remote employee engagement ideas to boost your company’s remote team experience ahead!
How to Improve Team Culture Remotely
Using collaboration tools for remote teams is crucial if you have an entire team of remote employees or only a handful. Get creative with fun ways to engage remote employees and make everyone feel part of the company culture.
Use these remote company culture ideas to build your team strategies:
Highlight Individual Efforts
It’s essential to ensure that each team member feels recognized and appreciated for what they do. It only takes a few seconds to send your employee a quick message or email letting them know what a great job they did on their most recent task or project. Having that confidence boost is reassuring and makes the effort worth it.
Outline Job Expectations Clearly
How will your team work together efficiently without clearly understanding their daily tasks? Create standard operating procedures that outline each team member’s role in the business’s day-to-day workings. When everyone knows exactly what needs to get done and how to do it, you’ll have a much more cohesive remote team.
Personally Offer Support
When managing a team of remote workers, it’s important to let them know you’re there when they need you. Be available to communicate with them when they have questions and need support with their daily tasks. Since they can’t just pop into your office when they have questions, being available via chat or email makes a difference.
Share Wins with the Team
Whether your company has a chat feature or a newsletter that goes out to all employees, let it be known when your team members are thriving! Create a team chat with all remote employees to drop small (or big!) wins and give a shout-out to those going above and beyond. Celebrating these wins company-wide helps to build and maintain a positive company culture.
Schedule Meetings to Stay on Track
Plan regular meetings with your remote team to keep everyone on the same page and updated. They can be individual video call sessions or group meetings—whichever works best for your team. Use these meetings to discuss projects or clients and check in with everyone to empower them while ensuring they stay accountable.
Make Communication a Priority
Communication is very important no matter the type of business you run, but definitely with a remote team. This goes for communication between team members, managers, and clients. Using collaboration tools for remote teams like Slack or Microsoft Teams helps everyone stay in touch throughout the work week.
Schedule Fun Team-Building Activities
Your team needs to feel connected through something other than work. Working remotely can cause you to lose the sense of social interaction you usually get at an office daily. Plan fun ways to engage remote employees through virtual activities. This could be a trivia night, virtual book club, or DIY cooking activity—get creative!
Provide Value Beyond Praise
It’s great to hear how well you’re doing at work and get compliments, but taking it a step further is essential. This could be done by sending an e-gift card to their favorite coffee shop or lunch spot. Managers can also provide pathways for these team members to be on track for opportunities to grow their careers with promotions, raises, or bonuses.
Beyond these remote company culture ideas lies an opportunity to take things to the next level through video content.
Building Team Culture Activities with Video
Incorporating video in the workplace is a key strategy to foster a strong team environment when navigating how to improve team culture. Video allows remote employees to feel more connected to the company through visuals that make a lasting impact. Let’s take a closer look at how video can be incorporated into remote employee engagement ideas.
Employee Onboarding Videos
Don’t rely on pages and pages of workbooks and employee manuals to onboard your remote team members. Engaging video content will keep your employees interested and help them better absorb key details through fun and informative clips. The possibilities are endless when introducing your company and welcoming a new employee to the team.
Motivational Recognition Videos
Implement an employee recognition program with videos highlighting employee wins or successes. These can be quick clips for company social media posts or even within employee-only communication channels. These videos help motivate team members to feel like an integral part of the business and connect with other employees and customers.
Using video can transform how your company creates a strong culture that fosters growth and achievements with your remote team.
Strong Teams through Company Culture Initiatives
Figuring out how to improve team culture starts by creating a productive work environment with remote employee engagement ideas. This allows employees to communicate effectively and feel appreciated for the hard work they do in their position. Setting clear expectations while providing access to resources via technology like video tools is essential.
Ready to grow a remote team through these remote company culture ideas? Reimagined Experiences will help you get there! Our specialty is elevating employee engagement among remote workers through our expert video-first strategies. Learn more by booking a free discovery call with us today.
