Positive Business Culture Creation with a Remote Workforce
Modern technology has transformed businesses operations in many ways over the recent years. A remote workforce is becoming more popular, and many companies are beginning to adopt it. With a distributed workforce, creating a unified business culture can be particularly challenging task. Luckily, there are successful businesses where the entire workforce is remote. They function more efficiently than others with actual physical office space and college face-to-face interactions.
Many surveys over the years have shown working remotely has valuable effects on workforce productivity and overall well-being. Employees are not only the ones who benefit from this; an organization can have many other benefits from a remote workforce. The remote-work method offers benefits such as increased employee satisfaction rates, less unscheduled absences throughout the year, improved productivity, enhanced collaboration, and so much more.
So, how can you develop a positive business culture with a remote workforce for your organization? Below, we present a few tips to help make this process far more comfortable.
Communicate the Business Culture
Having a remote workforce means understanding your business culture enough to share it with your employees. It can be difficult for new employees when there is minimal direct interaction with their team members. Hence document sharing, and interactions become even more essential. The shared document should clearly articulate the overall business culture to everyone in the company – about expectations, how performance is measured, how you assess staff for a cultural fit, and more.
The document should also be constantly reassessed as you grow and change as well as when the industry makes significant changes. In order to develop a positive business culture with a remote workforce, you need to continuously monitor your culture and values.
While it is great to have a list of words or values, it is also crucial, especially with a remote workforce, to document what you wish your business culture becomes. The document should be inspiring, clear, and professionally written.
United Communities Using New Technologies
A sense of community is crucial when creating a remote workforce. Use applications such as Skype, WhatsApp, or other like platforms to celebrate special days, milestones, and recognize employee contributions and effort. Taking calculated steps to create a united community for your business will help develop an internal culture that encourages inter-connectivity, which will enhance overall productivity.
Set High Standards on Communication Methods
Setting standards on which communication channels are going to be used and for which topics, really helps set the tone for the organization and encourages employee communication. You can be specific about what information to share on which platform by having specific guidelines posted for all to review and ensuring everyone is following those each time. If you have a particular set of tools for communication, allow your remote employees to access your guidelines straight away, so they no longer will contact the HR team to learn which tools are required for what circumstances.
Measure Your Remote Workforce’ Engagement
Setting time for a proper quarterly surveys, monthly status updates from each team member, and staff members really helps you measure the productivity amongst your workforce at all times.
You should not always focus on only work-related topics; ask about general happiness and personal well-being, it may help decrease any feelings of isolation or lack of communications. These surveys will open doors for employees who feel the need to discuss their issues with management or simply another person.
Provide Great Tools
Generally, when it comes to establishing a remote workforce, remote employees are more responsible for creating a productive and ergonomically optimized work environment. Companies can find ways to make this simpler. Providing the right technology to your employees can be the best choice. If possible, provide your remote employees with a tablet or smartphone to stay connected. If your employees are working remotely due to a business trip, the right GPS and management systems can also help keep your staff secure while on the road, as well as, giving full visibility for their managers.
Offer Professional Training & Development
It’s easier than ever to learn a new skill online and in the comfort of one’s own home. Several online platforms allow employees to learn at their own pace and discover topics that are useful to them in their careers. Adopting online training platforms that could help your team grow professionally is a simple but necessary step forward for any growing company.
Prioritize Health & Wellness
When working alongside a remote workforce, you can easily assume employees have a better time finding a work-life balance. However, working from their own home has a darker side than most had thought. Most employees now find their work tends to bleed into their personal lives more easily, and they have a tougher time making balancing choices while at home with family.
Discuss and understand those employees’ challenges to ensure your company’s benefits plan reflects its personal culture. Show them that this organization has also invested in their mental health and want to support them in their efforts for a healthy work-life-balance.
Bottom Line
A remote workforce has its own unique concerns. Developing a positive business culture requires recognizing those challenges early on and making any and all possible changes to your HR management processes. You can now easily keep your employees organized with advanced tools within a unified cloud-based HRM platform.
