Ahead of the Trends: Remote working Culture
The rate of remote workers is increasing, especially due to the recent spike of the COVID-19 outbreak. Whether mandatory or not, working remotely is definitely a trend that appears to be here to stay. Read on to learn more about this as a long term trend and how to best manage your remote workers.
A Stanford University study concluded that organizations with a successful remote culture have an impressive increase in work productivity and a 50% decrease in attrition among non-collocated workers. A growing trend in the work force is the increase of remote workers, but how do businesses effectively manage their teams from afar?
As I’ve been working with executive teams around the world, I’ve noticed almost every team has at least one critical team member not co-located with the rest of the team. The one remote team member used to be in sales or business development, but now there are often 2-3 team members who work remotely.
The increase in remote workers is due to a few trends:
1. Improved technology. Organizations can execute more activities over phone, Skype, or Zoom.
2. Less movement of workers in the last 50 years in US workforce.
3. A willingness by organizations to hire top talent and let them stay where they are living.
Remote workers will stay a trend for the next 10-20 years, so my question to you is: How do you best manage this trend so that you can have a strong leadership team that engages and leads the rest of the organization?
One of the challenges is making sure that you do not have an in-group/out-group team. In many companies that I’ve worked with, that is the situation right now. Some employees are better connected than others. Organizations should consider ways to stay connected, what the communication cadence will be for all, and provide tips for team members on lost communication practices.
One of the best practices that I have seen are teams who assume that everyone is remote. So they notice who’s not there live and make sure that if anything happens outside of the meeting, they communicate to each team member. In addition, all meeting materials are sent ahead of time to everybody. The big watch out is, the meeting after the meeting. This is where employees leave the meeting only to chat at the Keurig and exchange ideas. It’s important to note these conversations, and any conversation that happens outside of the meeting, and communicate the ideas discussed with an email to the group or a follow up in the next meeting.
Another key best practice is creating an established communication cadence -- so communicating more often. Not one team meeting a week, but rather a 15-min phone call each day to check in, a weekly staff meeting, and a LIVE monthly get together when schedule and costs allow.
Good organizations need a quarterly live meeting to have a business review, and as important as the business discussions are, it’s also as important to plan time for dinner and relationship building to grow and improve team strength.
Finally, team members need to understand that they’re working on a remote team. They have to be proactive in identifying challenges that they are having, and work hard at keeping remote members front of mind, reaching out to them regularly.
Some best practices to form an esprit de corps for the team include:
1. Calling a teammate once per week to just have discussion.
A lot of the discussion is relationship building. Lead with relationship, finish with work. This means checking on kids, social events, and finish with work. Rotate with whole team and start over. This is an example of a modern version of a water cooler chat.
2. Since we can’t all be together, pick activities and update each other on progress. Examples include, choosing a month to train for a 5k walk or run. Every employee trains towards this goal while sharing pictures and stories on a specified channel during the training month so that everyone can celebrate together.
3. Community building. If you’re bringing everyone together, participate in a half day of giving back to the community, as part of a business meeting, to connect outside of work setting OR just take on community building in your home town but sharing that on the monthly call together.
Finally, for pure fun, some organizations will have a 4pm cocktail hour, 1 Friday a month. Employees will stop their work, to join in person or via zoom to share a drink, share stories and reflect on the week. What went well; what’s exciting? This is a great chance to connect on a human level.
Remote workers and teams are here to stay. As this trend grows, leaders will need to think about their own leadership style and adjust leadership tools to meet the changing workplace. We’ve tried to offer some best practices, so please share with us your biggest challenges and your best tips so that we can share with others.
