How and Why to Keep Remote Workers Engaged Virtually?
When Covid-19 hit, businesses struggled to maintain their daily operations. Remote work became a common practice and continues to be. More companies than ever before allowed their employees to work from home to help in the efforts to flatten the curve and protect the most vulnerable. But what does this mean for organizations and their teams?
What is Employee Engagement?
Employee engagement is a necessary component for organizations and their teams to be efficient and productive. With remote work becoming more common than ever before, engaging employees and maintaining their efficiency is crucial. However, as we all try to adjust to this new work environment, employee engagement varies from team to team.
Working remotely brings with it many challenges as there are distractions that employees must tackle which they don’t encounter in office. For example, children learning from home, social media and TV are few of the most common distractions. The best way to gauge how engaged your teams are online is to keep asking them questions about their work, their passion for it and to confront them if any concerns arise about their performance.
Challenges of Employee Engagement
While working remotely has benefits, such as saving time and money on commuting and encouraging better work-life balance, it also has some downsides.
The biggest challenge that leaders face is to maintain the engagement of their teams in a virtual environment where one is connected virtually but not physically at all times. Because they're not in the office with their team, remote workers often feel lessengaged and connected to their company, which can hurt productivity and performance. When you don’t have the option to get out of your cubicle to engage with coworkers, it leads to feelings of isolation and disengagement. This can cause a lack of passion in employees toward the company's vision or goals, and feelings of unhappiness and being unappreciated. It has now become more important for leadership to show their appreciation and to encourage their employees, Regular check-ins in with employees, engaging with them outside of work hours for casual conversations and staying up to date with their lives are some of the ways to make employees feel part of the team.
Three ways to Keeping Remote Workers Engaged
1. Encourage health and wellness
Healthy workers are productive workers. The health of employees should be a priority for organizations. If an employee gets sick, they can not perform at their best. Promoting healthy activities like 100 days of yoga, daily walks during lunch hour or even encouraging employees to cook and eat healthy is crucial. Promoting healthy activities and incentivizing employees who engage in health and wellness could lead to increased productivity of employees.
2. Host casual hangouts or integrate fun into your meetings
Remote teams maintain regular communication through video calls, instant messaging, email and web conferencing platforms. When teams are working on projects, a video call can go a long way in encouraging collaboration. Planning a virtual get together for chats not related to work keeps employees engaged with their teams. As Ellie Braham suggested at January’s Chapter Meeting, utilizing tools like Padlet and Kahoot among many are amazing for making hangouts and business meetings fun and interactive.
3. Keep an open communication; make sure employees feel heard and valued
Even when working from home, employees deserve to feel appreciated so small ways to celebrate them are important. Sending a virtual gift card for birthdays and work anniversaries is an easy act that teams can engage in. More importantly, the virtual door of communication must be open always. Miscommunications are common for remote workers so ensuring they feel heard is significant.
In conclusion, managers and company leaders must prioritize employee engagement and teamwork, regardless of an employee's location (remote or in office) for the whole organization to thrive.
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Join us for our Chapter Meeting on Tuesday, February 16, 2021 as David Barett teaches us the concept of the strategic mindset to succeed in our organization, career and life.
For comments or inquiries, do not hesitate to reach me at [email protected].
—Ammara Mahmood, MBA
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