The Ultimate Guide to Foster a Thriving Culture for Your Remote Team

Remote work offers many benefits for both employees and employers, but these benefits don’t come without sacrifice. A remote team lacks valuable face-to-face interaction, meaning that leaders of remote teams need to intentionally curate their remote team’s culture.

‍

Without further ado, let’s review some of the best practices for fostering a thriving remote work culture.

How Remote Workplace Culture Is Unique and Why It’s Important for Companies to Invest In

A remote work culture is different from other work environments because organizations rely on technology to stay connected.

‍

So, instead of requiring a physical presence in an office to build team cohesion, remote work emphasizes flexibility, autonomy, and trust. Leaders must trust their team members to work independently without direct supervision.

‍

They must also be able to set clear expectations and offer guidance remotely.

‍

That means it takes a special type of company and the right tools to support a distributed workforce.

‍

With that being said, investing in a remote workplace culture can be well worth it. Let’s look at some of the benefits, according to data:

‍

• Better work-life balance (59%)
• Save time on commuting to work (55%)
• More comfortable working space (54%)
• Reduced spending on travel or eating out (43%)
• Less stress and burnout (40%)
• Improved sleep (36%)
• Fewer distractions (31%)
• Freedom to travel or relocate (29%)

13 Best Practices to Enhance Workplace Culture for Remote Employees

‍

Successfully managing a remote team can be quite rewarding. But it’s easy to get things wrong. 

‍

Your workers might have trouble connecting with others. And they might feel isolated, especially if they’re used to an office environment.

‍

So, how do you make employees feel comfortable working from home? What are some ways to ensure top-notch performance in a distributed workforce?

‍

Below, we list actionable tips to help you keep your employees engaged, motivated, and connected in an environment that doesn’t rely on face-to-face interactions. 

1. Get Strategic with Communication

Ensure that your team has the optimal communication infrastructure to curate a healthy remote work culture. 

‍

How you set up your communication channels depends on the nature of your team, but it’s wise to use a mix of tools for instant communication, video conferencing, and email. Slack and Microsoft Teams are two popular options for instant communication, and Zoom and Google Meets are great for video conferencing. 

‍

No matter what tools you use, it’s vital that your team members know what communication is appropriate for different types of conversations and collaborations.

2. Optimize Your Tech Stack

Optimizing your tech stack for other essential company processes, in addition to communication tools, is crucial. This includes your CMS, CRM, and any tools for specialized tasks related to your business. 

‍

When choosing the tech to power your business, ensure it’s user-friendly and helpful to your team. Invest in the tools your team needs, but don’t go overboard.

3. Leverage HR Software

Leaders of fully remote teams often view HR differently than those with an in-person workforce. Many turn to HR software to streamline essential HR processes.

‍

AI-driven HR software like peopleHum can help create a cohesive and engaged workforce. It streamlines the process by automating recruitment, payroll, and performance management.

‍

With peopleHum, you can effectively cultivate a positive work environment, even in virtual settings, by providing employees access to essential resources such as company policies, benefits information, and training materials. 

‍

Top features include:

‍

• Recruitment Management System: Automate your entire recruitment process and keep applicants connected and engaged throughout the onboarding process.
• Employee Engagement Software: Get access to a suite of employee engagement tools to collect, collaborate, measure, and optimize engagement. Create a stir with announcements, celebrate wins on the Recognition Wall, and crowdsource ideas from your employees.
• Performance Management System: Track employee performance with peer feedback, 360-degree feedback, one-on-one meetings, OKRs, and more.
• Human Resource Information System (HRIS): Effortlessly manage employee information, leave, shifts, and attendance, all in one place.
• HR Analytics Software: Keep your finger on the pulse on employee performance, engagement, and productivity to make data-driven decisions that drive success. Analyze your hiring funnel, pulse surveys, performance dashboards, and more.
• Electronic Signature Software: Make your people processes paperless with a fast, organized signature platform.
• Learning Management System (LMS): peopleHum’s LMS delivers personalized, skills-based learning. You can also integrate learning into performance reviews, which gives employees an actionable roadmap to build their skills.
• HR Chatbot: Provide 24/7 real-time assistance with Phia, an AI-powered chatbot. This intelligent assistant is equipped with an HR help desk, document search, and conversational interface to help your people easily find the information they need.
• Internal Communication Tool: Break down internal communication barriers with ChatHum. Host all kinds of chats—group, team, hiring, survey, and ideation chats—to boost engagement and transparency.

4. Create Opportunities for Feedback and Communication

Another essential part of curating a strong culture is ensuring open communication channels between your leaders and the rest of the team. This is important because it allows employees to express their thoughts on what is and isn’t working.

5. Encourage Connections Among Team Members

Casual workplace encounters are rare among remote teams. To create virtual workplace camaraderie, you may have to orchestrate the connections between team members.

‍

One way to forge connections is to encourage team members to meet for virtual coffee chats, where they can meet over video and discuss non-work-related things. A great way to do this is to use a randomizer to pair up team members to chat.

6. Host Remote Holiday Celebrations

Even if your team is remote, it’s important to celebrate the holidays and other special events with the team. Virtual office parties might initially feel awkward, but they offer an excellent way for your team to connect beyond work.

‍

Some fun ways to get people involved are to do icebreakers or play games. You can also use breakout rooms for team members who want to mingle during remote holiday parties.

7. Prioritize Security

Creating a thriving remote workplace culture is about more than just open communication and flexibility. It’s also about creating a secure digital environment where everyone can work without fear of compromise. Just as we trust our team members to fulfill their responsibilities, we must also trust in the security of our digital workspace.

‍

One way to foster this trust is to implement multi-factor authentication (MFA). MFA adds an extra layer of security, ensuring team members are who they claim to be when accessing shared resources. This protects sensitive company information and reinforces the culture of trust within the team. 

‍

Furthermore, container security is all about safeguarding the software containers that package and run your apps, preventing unauthorized access and threats. 

‍

By implementing robust container security measures, you protect our technological infrastructure and foster trust within your remote teams, ensuring everyone can focus on innovation and collaboration without fear of cyber threats.

8. Regularly Reiterate Your Core Values and Goals

Part of maintaining a thriving company culture with your remote team is ensuring that everybody is working toward the same goals. You can do that by regularly reminding your team of your goals and the core values you follow when pursuing these goals.

‍

A good time to reiterate these values is during a monthly all-hands meeting that includes the whole team. Dedicate a portion of these meetings to reviewing progress made on past goals and presenting goals you’re working on in the coming month, quarter, and year. 

‍

It’s also fun to wrap up these meetings by having team members share an example of someone recently demonstrating a selected core value. For example, if one of your core values is innovation, invite your team to shout out someone who’s made an innovative contribution to the company in the past month.

9. Get Clear on Work Hours

One of the benefits of remote work is flexible work schedules. However, sometimes, it’s easy for lunch breaks to get cut short and workdays to run long, especially when people are working across different time zones.

‍

If you want to maintain a thriving remote work culture, it’s important to empower your team to set boundaries on their work hours. Of course, you’ll likely have required office hours, but don’t pressure them to work late or through their breaks. Morale can take a hit when extra hours creep up on salaried employees.

10. Get Smart with Remote Onboarding

Onboarding is the perfect time to set the tone for your ideal remote culture. It sets expectations and provides important cultural context from the beginning, so it’s essential to get savvy with your remote training and onboarding practices.

‍

During onboarding, your remote employees should be familiar with all the relevant processes and procedures related to their roles and departments. They should also be informed of company policies related to their benefits, such as PTO and healthcare.

‍

Furthermore, it’s essential to make the proper introductions to other members of the team during onboarding. Obviously, those who work together daily or weekly will require an introduction. However, it’s also valuable to connect with prominent people in other departments so there’s some rapport in situations where cross-department collaborations are necessary.

11. Be Intentional with Meetings

When it comes to remote work, it’s easy to add people to virtual meeting invites with the click of a button. While this is convenient, it often leads to extra people in meetings when they don’t have to be. In a remote work culture, there’s also a tendency to schedule meetings over tasks that could be handled asynchronously.

‍

Be mindful of people’s time and be intentional about scheduling meetings. Consider who actually needs to be there and what topics or tasks require synchronous work sessions. Introduce this level of thoughtfulness to the broader team so it’s implemented across the board.

‍

Your employees will appreciate being valued for their time. They’ll also appreciate having more flexibility in their schedules to focus on their higher-priority tasks. 

12. Host Meet-Ups

As a remote company, your team may be scattered across the country or worldwide. However, situations may occur when team members’ paths may cross for work engagements or even just vacations. In these situations, getting together for dinner or a team-building activity is fun.

‍

If your company doesn’t have many occurrences where people’s paths cross organically, consider hosting a company-wide retreat to get everybody together. Of course, events of this nature cost money since you’d likely comp everybody’s travel. However, this investment may be worth it for the team-building that could come out of it. 

13. Hire People Who Will Excel with Remote Work

Curating a positive remote work culture starts with hiring the right employees. It’s important to hire people who have the skills and personalities to excel in a remote workplace.

‍

For example, remote work requires leveraging various technologies, such as communication and collaboration tools. To excel on a remote team, a prospective hire needs to be tech-savvy enough to use these tools efficiently.

‍

The ideal remote work candidate is also disciplined and capable of managing their time with asynchronous communication. The flexibility of working from home can become a slippery slope to procrastination and slacking for someone who struggles to create a structure for their days.

Final Thoughts

You can create a thriving remote work culture by equipping your team for success, fostering connections among team members, and setting the tone for the atmosphere you envision. 

‍

All it takes is a bit of planning, implementing, and maintaining strong systems.

Are you ready to set up your remote workers for success and boost employee engagement? Start your free trial with peopleHum today and see what a difference streamlining your HR processes can make for your remote team. 

‍

‍