10 Ways To Build Remote Work Cultures

Every organization has its own work culture that defines the working procedures of employees. It also defines organizations’ functions that need to be done to achieve business success. 

Organizational culture helps get a better working environment and boost employees’ productivity. It also helps to establish healthy relationships among employees and employers. 

Organizational culture describes an organization through its values and goals. The success of organizations also depends upon their culture. 

While working remotely, employees can feel isolated, and their work productivity can reduce. When there is a culture of frequent communication with employees, this helps to reduce employees’ loneliness. 

Creating remote work culture helps to establish relationships with employees and maintain better communication. 

With a set of organizational cultures, employees can understand the organization’s mission and values. Here I have mentioned ten ways to build remote work culture:

Prioritize Work

Organizations should complete many projects; some projects might have a short time while others have enough time.

First of all, organizations should prioritize projects based on time and the importance of the project. 

Organizations can use to-do lists apps to organize their projects, tasks, and deadlines. They can also assign tasks to employees and allow them to edit their task schedules.

Organizations should encourage employees to use to-do list apps to manage employees’ tasks. There are many to-do list apps that employees can choose for their work. 

A To-do list app helps to organize tasks and reminds employees about their tasks.

When employees work from the office, they are constantly reminded about essential tasks and projects. Offices usually write crucial tasks on the whiteboard, which employees quickly notice.

But employees are working remotely; things are different to keep employees on track. And to complete work on priority based organizations should encourage employees to use to-do list apps.  

Apart from to-do list apps, you can also remind employees about tasks using messaging apps like Microsoft Teams, Slacks, Ryver, etc. 

Schedule Meetings

Most organizations have daily standups to discuss daily plans, feedback of works, project progress, deadlines, etc. Daily standup helps employees to explain the problem they are facing while working. 

Remote employees might not organize daily standups in person, but they can organize virtual meetings. Employees can use communication tools like Skype, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, GoToMeeting, etc.

To make a virtual standup effective, you can schedule your meetings and send employees a reminder about the standups.

It will ensure that every team member is in a discussion session and everyone can express their viewpoint. 

Employees should be comfortable expressing their point of view using communication tools. If employees are not comfortable communicating via communication tools, it might not be sufficient. 

Apart from group standups and meetings, you can also organize one-to-one meetings from time to time.

It helps you know individual work problems, feedback, and understand employees’ expectations. Project managers or department managers can organize one-to-one meetings. 

Another great idea is implementing tools like productivity monitoring solution, which will help you manage your remote team and keep them on track. Also, this will not only contribute to your employees’ wellbeing but it will also help your business flourish and reach new levels of success, which is very important.

Maintain a good relationship with colleagues

When you work from the office, you will communicate with your colleagues in person and get to know them better. You can quickly establish a friendly relation with your colleagues.

However, as remote employees, you may only be acquainted with your colleagues as you cannot communicate with them in person.

And most of the time, you communicate with your colleagues only regarding work matters.

In the worst scenario, employees may not recognize their colleagues or know their team’s total number.

To minimize this, you can organize a friendly meet-up session virtually as an employer. Or some fun game helps employees open about themselves and allows colleagues to know one other better.

You should encourage employees to communicate with one another time and again. 

Communicate About the Company’s Mission and Value

Every organization is established with some mission and goals to achieve. Every employee in the organization should understand an organization’s mission and value to accomplish it on time.

Even employees have their mission and goals for joining an organization.

You should understand the mission of both organization and employees to achieve both simultaneously. 

Onsite employees might have more knowledge about its mission, value, and the reasons for the organization’s existence.

But remote employees might not have more experience with the organization’s mission or value.

When you frequently communicate about companies’ mission, employees will be more precise about the mission and goals. It is also a better way to build internal relationships with employees and employers.  

You can organize meetings and conferences to remind employees about the organizations’ mission and values.

It helps employees keep motivated and do their work better to achieve the mission faster. 

While communicating about mission and value, you should communicate in a small group. When you communicate in a small group, employees can ask whenever they have any questions. 

Create an Environment of Trust

Another essential work culture that employers should build is creating an environment of trust. For the successful operation of a business, you need trust among yourself and your remote team. 

You should ensure an environment of trust among employers and employees for better workflow.

Organizations with high confidence among employers and employees ensure more employee engagement.

It also energizes employees to work better, less work burnout, and more employee satisfaction.

To build trust among employees, you will need positive leadership, and leaders should be accountable for the smooth operation flow. 

If you want to develop a trustworthy environment in your organization, you should make sure that you can depend on your employees.

You should be able to trust employees’ work and trust them about their work commitment. 

Likewise, to build trust among employees and the organization, you should treat all your employees equally. And you should be able to provide “we feeling” to employees. 

One of the essential aspects of ensuring trust among employees is providing work transparency. You should make work progress and work schedules visible to employees. 

Apart from trust between employer and employees, there should be trust among employees. You should ensure that employees have frequent communication and good social relations.

For this, you can organize virtual meetings and friendly interaction sessions. You can create a group chat to share the music you are listening to right now, pictures of your lunch, and more. 

Provide Virtual Training And Development Program

Organizations should frequently organize training and development programs for the betterment of employees. Technology often changes to cope with the change; you should train your employees well. 

For this, you have to organize a training and development program frequently. The organizing training program is easy for onsite employees, but you might have to exercise for remote employees.

For virtual employees, you can organize a virtual training and development program. You should schedule a training program for two weeks in advance so that every employee can create their schedule. 

If employees are new to the job, you can provide them with a virtual orientation program to welcome employees.

And you can even communicate about the organization’s missions, values, and rules. And most importantly, in such programs, you can train employees for the role they will perform. 

One of the benefits of organizing a virtual development program is that it is less costly. Likewise, you can record such programs so that employees can view them anywhere and anytime. 

Training employees physically may not be helpful as managing many people at once is difficult. But in virtual training, you can train many employees at once with minor disturbances.

Organize Fun Virtual Events

When employees work remotely, they might feel monotonous with their work. There will be no one around to communicate.

Onsite employees will always have their colleagues around with whom they can share. 

But remote employees usually work alone and can feel bored and isolated while working. While working remotely, employees only communicate regarding their work and may not have any friendly contact with their colleagues. 

To have a friendly equation with employees, you can organize some fun events frequently. Time and again, you can arrange fun online board games, create a book club group, host a happy hour, etc.

You can also create food, fitness, pets, and music channel in organization communication tools like Slack. You can share your pets’ pictures, food recipes or pictures, and more on such a channel.

You can also organize virtual holiday parties, custom parties in Zoom and use themes to make the call more fun.

You can even schedule some fun games at the parties. Whoever wins the game, you can provide gift cards or some perks like one day’s leave and more.

Create Psychological Safety

When employees work remotely, they are working alone, and most of the time, they can feel isolated. Remote employees can doubt their personal growth in the organization.

Employees should be able to express their thoughts and views without any hesitation. They should keep their expectations from the organization in front of their supervisors or team leaders. 

For this, you can frequently communicate with your team members. You should also create a trustworthy environment so that employees can communicate without any fear.

You should motivate your employees from time to time and provide them with moral support to do a better job.

Daily standups or having one-to-one communication with employees helps you to know them better. You should encourage employees to express their views and ideas. 

Besides knowing team members’ expectations, team members should also know what you expect from them.

This helps ensure that employees are giving their total efficiency to achieve organization goals. 

You should organize daily standups, make employees feel secure, and will not feel left out. 

Avoid Work Overload and Burnout

Remote working has flexible work hours that enable employees to work anytime.

Employees can create their work schedules by themselves. And it is believed that employees are more efficient when they work from home. 

When employees work from home, they tend to finish more work than when they work from the office. 

However, balancing work and personal life can be challenging if the proper schedule is not made. Employees should not only make their schedule but also follow it.   

Sometimes employees might keep thinking about their work even if their work hour completes. And sometimes, employees might work more than their work hours and can have work burnout. 

When employees feel work burnout, it reduces their work productivity, job dissatisfaction, increases stress, etc.

To avoid employees’ work overload and burnout, you should not assign too many tasks at once. This might put employees under pressure regarding when to complete those tasks. 

You should encourage employees to take a frequent short break, stay away from their devices during the break.

You can set regular meetings, keep in touch with colleagues, etc. It is better to communicate one-to-one with employees to identify employees’ feelings towards their work. 

Tips For Remote Employees 

Create Schedule

Remote working allows you to work anytime you want and create and manage your schedule.

You can create a schedule as per the number of hours required and can select the time when you’re most productive.

While creating a schedule, you should choose hours where you are most creative and energized.

Onsite employees do not have the flexibility to create their schedules and work as per the management team’s schedule.

You should not just make their schedule and forget about it but have to follow the schedule strictly.

And the employer should encourage employees to add short breaks to their schedule and avoid overworking.

Create Your WorkSpace

When they talk about remote working, one thing that comes to mind is a flexible workspace.

You can work from anywhere you want, and sometimes you work from the couch in the living room or from the bed.

You might get distracted when you work from the living room or anywhere with many distracting elements. 

For example, when employees work from their living room, they might watch TV or play the stereo. 

Therefore it is always better for remote employees to create their workspace. You should select a peaceful environment with fewer distracting elements. 

And employers should encourage employees to choose a workspace with good lighting and ventilation to better their health. 

Make To-Do List

When employees work from the office, employers can assign them one task daily. Employers can write to each employee’s task on a whiteboard to better organize employees’ schedules and tasks.

This clears the task assignment of each employee and reduces confusion regarding work that employees need to do. 

But when you are working remotely, you might get assigned tasks of one week at once. And most of the time, you might get confused regarding which task to complete first. 

Therefore to reduce confusion, you need to create a to-do list to plan for a day or week. When you make a to-do list, you can complete their task sequentially. 

They can prioritize their task, complete the most important task first, and then move to the least important task.

Communicate

Communication can be challenging for remote employees if the right communication tool is not used.

You should encourage remote employees to communicate frequently and solve any confusion while working.

Onsite employees can communicate with their colleagues and seniors whenever they have confusion. They can visit their colleagues and supervisor’s work desk when they have some problems. 

You should use organizational communication tools like Slack, Chanty, Zoom, Skype, etc.  

Employers can schedule virtual standups daily to keep every employee in the loop. In the daily standup, you can update your employers about your work progress and problems while performing work. 

You can also keep in touch with your colleagues by having a group chat or a direct chat. 

Minimize Distraction

There might be rules like no talking while working, restricting using distracting websites and apps while working. 

When you work remotely, you might get distracted by your family duties, family or roommates gossip, or your pet.

Likewise, you can use their phone anytime they want, and you might start online shopping. 

Therefore, when you work remotely, you should follow your rules strictly and, as far as possible, stay away from distracting elements.

Take Break

While working from the office, you have to follow the schedule, including a frequent break.

You should take a regular break that reduces work burnout and helps increase employees’ productivity.

But while working remotely, most of the time, employees continuously work without taking a break. This can keep employees focused on their work, but they can feel monotonous with their work. 

You should include a short break in your work schedule, which boosts your productivity. You can also use a Pomodoro timer that reminds you to break after working for a specific time.

Conclusion

In conclusion, organizational culture is essential for better work performance and creating trustworthy environments. Also, it helps to achieve organizational goals in a better way. 

There are many ways to create remote work culture. Here I have mentioned some of the ways to build remote work culture.

I would love to know the work culture you follow for your remote employees. Please feel free to mention them in the comment section below.