7 Ways to Build a Positive Company Culture with a Remote Team

Company culture may not contribute directly to a company’s success, but you only have to ignore it to acknowledge its importance. Developing a strong and positive company culture is essential for today’s workplace.

Your culture will affect how potential employees view your business. It will impact how your staff treat your clients/customers and how your customers feel about it. It will decide how your workers relate to each other. The effect of a good culture runs the gamut of your business operations.

Building a culture is easier with physical office spaces where you see your employees daily. However, the current global health crisis has forced companies to switch almost exclusively to remote working.

It is more challenging to build your company culture when team members are miles apart, but it is possible.

Donald Fomby is the Marketing Pro at Best Writers Online, an essay writing service review outfit. He believes that “culture is the most important factor in employee onboarding, retention, and productivity.” This makes building a culture not only possible but necessary too.

We have outlined a few sure-fire ways to build a positive company culture for your remote workers. These tips will ensure a positive remote team, and consequently, the growth of your company.

1. Foster a community, not a team of acquaintances.

Are your employees passionate about your company and rooting for each other? Or are they just a bunch of people who happen to work together?

If the latter is the case in your company, imagine how much worse it would be if these people had to work remotely. It is extremely important to foster a virtual work environment that allows for building a community.

You want a work situation where all your employees know each other beyond their names and like each other. Ensure that everyone’s role is clearly identified and understood, including yours. Get the older workers in on the onboarding process; allow them to connect organically with the new team members.

Many remote workers feel lonely even while working for huge corporations (in fact, there are some alarming remote working statistics available). The solution here is to foster a company culture that prioritizes a sense of community through active and healthy communication and collaboration.

2. Be all about your company’s mission and values.

Your mission statement is the fuel for your company’s operation. It is the reason why your company exists in the first place. And yes, it is also a subset of your company culture. Your company values are the governing principles that tie into your company’s operational philosophy, vision, and culture.

To ensure a positive remote team, each remote worker has to be on board with both the company mission and values. Remind them of these regularly. Find a way to work it into every operational element of your business, from how they treat each other to the way they handle clients.

Whatever role a remote worker is fulfilling, it has to come from a place of responsibility as well as a place of passion and belief. The benefits of a one-minded remote team are most evident in crises like the current COVID-19 pandemic. When your remote employees have faith in your company and its mission, you don’t have to keep an eagle eye on them because you can trust that they’re making the right moves even from their remote locations.

3. Create your digital watercooler room.

Call it a kitchen, a coffee room, a watercooler, or any other name, the purpose of such an environment remains the same: to allow employees to connect more.

This is common with traditional office spaces, but you will need a digital version of the watercooler for your remote team. Employees need a way to unwind from work. This opportunity ultimately creates more productive workers.

Evan Fred, Head of Verification Department at paper writing recommendation company, Online Writers Rating, advocates creating a separate message board for remote workers. This message board will be strictly for non-work related discussions. It could be anything: the weather, sports, politics, or the news. It could also be more personal discussions about family, individual wins and losses, best holiday spots, ideals, principles.

Besides giving them a much-needed brain break, the watercooler's ultimate idea is to make sure your workers are not strangers to each other. This will naturally open them up to communicating and collaborating more effectively on the work front.

4. Recognize your employees publicly and privately.

Don’t be one of those employees that only talk when things are going wrong. Be vocal in the good times. Praise your employees for their efforts and celebrate the company’s wins with them.

This includes recognizing and rewarding them publicly (for remote workers; this will happen digitally via video meetings, company page, or other forms of team correspondence). This practice boosts their sense of belonging, confidence, and loyalty. And it buoys them on to be more productive.

Also, recognize them in private. Send them a personal email, a text, or better still, put across a voice or video call. This tells the worker that you are happy to have him/her, not just for the company’s sake.

5. Do life with them.

Beyond what they do for the company, connect with them outside company-related matters. Life happens to everyone, and you have to be with your employees through all the good and bad times.

If a remote team member is celebrating a birthday, a child’s birthday, a work or wedding anniversary, be part of it. You and every other employee can send emails, messages via the watercooler message board, video messages, handmade birthday cards, and more.

If you can make it happen, you can also organize a virtual celebration for them. This helps every employee feel included in something bigger than just work—a family.

6. Host regular all-inclusive meetings.

All-inclusive meetings feel like an open forum, which is good for team morale. These regular team meetings are the best way to make sure your remote team members are feeling and working at their best.

The”open forum” format allows every team member to table their complaints, concerns, and suggestions, and receive real-time feedback.

Whatever digital tool you use for these meetings, make sure that it allows you enough flexibility for these transparent team communications. This is also an excellent place to celebrate company and employee wins, and to brainstorm ways to move forward.

7. Encourage professional development and skills training.

Many employees measure your company’s impact by how much they’ve grown in the time they’ve been with your business. You want such personal reflections always to yield positive results.

Create avenues for your remote workers to improve on their professional skills continually and to acquire new ones. This may mean developing a work schedule that allows them to devote time to learning. It can also mean you subsidizing these learning opportunities for them.

These opportunities could happen via a professional online degree or learning platforms like Udemy and Coursera. Either way, an employee with a growing skillset means allows you to devote fewer resources to management as your employees become more self-sufficient. Such a scenario is ideal for a company with remote workers.

Final Words.

A positive company culture always results in a much more positive remote team. As the world expedites its move to a more remote-focused workplace, these tips will form an effective culture that will put you ahead of the pack.