Thanks to modern technology, the last few years have seen a massive shift in the global work environment than ever before. Gone are the days of centralized organisations and 9 to 5 working hours. To be more specific, remote working is being the new trend that is carried outside a usual brick and mortar office and employees work out of the head office. The concept of working at a fixed place is fading constantly and the chances of it coming back is minimal.
In fact, there are very successful companies that have no office at all, and where their entire workforce work remotely. Right now you might be sitting there in your cubicle and daydreaming of working remotely from your favorite corner or from your home. This is good in a sense that you will be able to take a break whenever you want, work where you want to and avoid commuting.
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Why company culture is important?
Company culture is the way in which your employees interact with one another during work and how the team interacts with your partners and suppliers and clients. It is something that motivates employees and inspires the team. The only way to retain great talent and attract them is developing a healthy company culture and create fun, happy and exciting work environment. Big success is the result of great company culture.
Benefits of a strong culture
There are many benefits of having a positive culture within your company. These include:
- A better way of communication that brings employees to work and collaborate better together towards common goals.
- Employees get a shared vision and clear mission across the entire organization.
- Efficient decision-making processes, less conflicts and fewer disagreements.
- Easier achievement of business goals with less complexity
- Shared understanding and strong sense of recognition
- A strong corporate culture of respect among employees
- Enhanced mutual trust and cooperation across the business.
The culture of a workplace goes a long way in promoting healthy working conditions in any kind of teams. It is the culture of a workplace that promotes a team to perform. When the employees are working remotely or having a distributed workforce, it is important to have a work culture that promotes efficient meeting and discussions. There are many advantages of employees working from home but there are some difficulties to overcome. Let’s see what are the advantages of remote working.
Pros of remote working
Flexibility is love
It is no surprise that employees today are looking for flexible working hours. And the best part about remote working is that is offer flexible working hours to work from anywhere. The main attraction is not checking into same desk everyday and being able to work from any neighbourhood cafe, backyard, while traveling and so on. This is like an ideal work environment for today’s employees as they can work from wherever they want and also have the option of traveling to various meetings on schedule.
Exploring new skills is the bright side
As the many new companies are following the trend of remote working and this is always exciting for everyone. It is growing exponentially due to the vast flexibility to newer remote workers. And it is bringing out so brilliant outcomes as the grab the opportunity to show their success be being independent of direct supervision. Usually, remote workers look for information they need by learning new skills in order to find success as remote workers. They willingly learn the new techniques and develop a capacity for self-management.
Productivity is at its heights
According to a 2016 survey of American remote workers, about 91 percent of people who work from home feel that they’re more productive than when they’re in an office. Some certain reasons being less distractions, your own favorite work environment and they are measured based upon their performance.
There is a wealth of information about the advantages of remote working. But it is even worthwhile to consider both the pros and cons of remote working. Consequently, it is not much surprising to have a good working culture for remote workers.
It is not impossible to have a good culture with remote employees but it much harder than physical office. It is obvious for team members to be more involved with each other when they meet on daily basis and this builds a culture. With collaboration tools like ProofHub remote workers can keep everyone connected but it definitely takes a lot of commitment.
Understanding culture
It can be a bit difficult to define culture and the best way to define is as the experience that employees have working in a team or a company.
Have a virtual water cooler chat
Water cooler breaks are good to help growing business and employee engagement. And for remote workers, virtual water cooler chat is a good option. Create a virtual space for remote workers from different time zones to chat with one another and discuss non-work related topics. Random chat in ProofHub makes it easy for workers to know each other and learn all sorts of fascinating things about each other. A dedicated virtual space is a key for company’s culture that will encourage chatter about anything among teams.
Do not miss out the tools
For remote employees, to ensure business can run effectively remote workers should have the right tools in the right place. The team should be always in loop and collaborate and work efficiently. Here is a list of some must have tools.
- Skype the global audio and video platform.
- Google chat by the search giant, Google.
- Time Zone, a visual browser-based viewer.
- ProofHub, a collaboration tool.
Do a team challenge
Conduct a challenge for your remote teams and push everyone to join it. Throughout the team, try doing a month challenge. For example, you could do a 3 kilometer challenge and run 3 kilometers every weekday for that month. At the end of the month, tell them all to calculate the total number of kms they ran and how many days they took to complete the challenge. This will the team members to talk about something always and feel closer on a common goal.
Build team building as a part of culture
Often the remote teams lack the office social life. To help teams build trust and foster communication, there is a need of creating pair buddies on regular basis. Just talking business will not build trust among teams, but there is a need of giving some chit-chat time on weekly basis to teams on topics that are common to all.
Welcome new employees
When a new employee joins a office, the manager never hesitates to welcome them in the whole team or to the whole office in case of small companies. A remote team should follow the trend to welcome a new employee in front of the team. Or just shot an email to everyone asking them five questions and along with a welcome. Example;
Hello everyone,
We have a new person in our Marketing team. Jennifer in San Francisco. Previously, she worked at XYZ Inc for five years.
Please everyone, if you get a break from your work, please welcome Sally to our team and communicate with her!
Regards
Also, encourage the new joinee to take initiative to talk to team members with as many of the team as they feel comfortable with and learn new methods and strategies.
Recognition and appreciation
Most remote teams do not consider it important to reward their employees with “Employee of the Month”. But there should be frequent use of a simple shout outs. Share with everyone about a job well done as public recognition is one of the most effective ways to motivate and manage a remote team. It sets an example for team members to strive for. When mentioned in a team chat, a shout out allows other team members to post their congratulations in the form of replies or emojis. If company executives also happen to be in that chat, it is an even more powerful motivator, ensuring that credit is given where credit is due.
The above tips will help you to shape the culture of your company. Depending on the size of your remote team, develop a communication channel that is open and transparent. Realize the efficiency gains that your teams deliver and understand that working remotely will soon become the best thing for your business. Whether you have employees scattered throughout your city or the world, establish a quality work experience to reflect the true values of your organization.
