40 Fresh and Practical Ways to Build Engagement With A Remote Workforce
10. Broadcast and Publicize On-boarding Announcements
As a best practice, always announce the hiring (or departure, or retirement) of employees in a company / team-wide memo. In the case of hiring, have the new employee write up a 1-page summary about themselves, including their academic achievements, their professional background and a fun fact.
Be sure to include a photo of the person, not only so people in the office will recognize them, but so that the remote employees feel a connection and can put a face with a name.
11. Select the Right Format for Communication
Yes, email is an essential tool of any work place. Yes, it is good for communicating information. But by no means should it be your only resource. Email is a delayed form of communication – people get to it when they get to it. Need proof? When’s the last time you heard someone say, “I have not gotten a response, yet?”
Don’t rely solely on your employee’s inbox as your means of communication! Virtual employees get enough of that and its effectiveness is truly limited.
Email, while it has its place, should be used for broadcasting information, general communication and outlining details.
If a webcam is also out, use the phone regularly. (I actually have a policy with my team – if an email goes back and forth more than three times, they must pick up the phone.) And when that doesn’t work, go with instant or text messages – something that’s at least conversational and instantaneous in nature.
12. Do They Have the Right Resources?
Think about the conveniences of working in the office. Local IT support, a fully-stocked office supplies cabinet, reams of printer paper, and maybe even a shipping department to send important documents to clients.
Now, think of it from the remote employee’s perspective. No local IT support, no office supplies cabinet, no shipping department. Still, they have a job to do.
In our first point, we discussed collaboration tools and resources to help a remote employee do their job. But their needs often go beyond server access and a web meeting tool.
Set a monthly budget for each virtual employee to spend on office supplies. Provide them with a wireless hotspot to make internet connections easier during IT maintenance. Provide them with external hard drives to facilitate file transfers. Provide them with a company account number for shipping packages and paperwork rather than wasting time in line at the local shipping store.
Not sure what the employee needs? Just ask and you’ll get an answer.
13. Send Swag
Andy often joked about how on those rare occasions he did see his team face to face, that they always had fancy company shirts, pens and similar branded items. Andy rarely received anything.
Most companies and organizations give freebies to employees. T-shirts, mugs, backpacks, jackets, and the like, all featuring the company logo or something similar. But… how often are you sending those items to your remote workers?
Even sending something as simple as a mug with the company slogan printed on it can create an inclusive sense of pride and identity when you employee drinks their coffee each day.
14. Host a Monthly Lunch and Learn
Employees always enjoy – and want – career development opportunities.
So, under the umbrella of employee development, schedule a monthly lunch session with all employees including both in-office personnel as well as your remote team. A collaborative environment such as this provides great opportunities for employees and guests to share knowledge and information.
Here are some examples of ways in which you can setup a lunch and learn:
- Invite a guest speaker from another department to present a relevant topic of interest
- Bring in an outside organization to provide training
- Ask an employee to provide a detailed update on a new project
- Ask a product development leader to introduce new products the organization is working on
- Discuss a recent public news article and how it relates to business ethics
- Invite people from outside the organization to present to your team (e.g. a local university)
- Ask HR to introduce some of the new career development tools the company recently invested in
- Ask the CEO or group president to share insight into recent company news.
15. Publish Your Org Charts… for Real
Remote employees can’t see who’s sitting in the corner office, but you can.
Andy could never keep up with the organizational changes. Mostly because org charts were rarely updated at our company, and even more rarely distributed.
Keeping organizational charts updated, published and easy to find is good management practice in any workplace. Employees should always know their management hierarchy, as well as the decision-makers of other departments.
Further, for remote staff, the ability to put a face with a name is a powerful employee engagement tool. Their paths may never cross but knowing one’s organizational structure can go a long way towards creating an identity for employees who have little structure working at a remote outpost.
16. Include Remote Workers in Office Celebrations With…
In an earlier point we mentioned sending remote employees company goodies. But how about those in-office celebrations? Our company, for example, held a monthly birthday celebration for employees with a cake and refreshments in the breakroom.
Andy was on the company distribution email list and would often joke that he was celebrating the monthly office birthday party from afar, with a cookie from his pantry. The same would hold true for things like the holiday office party.
While you can’t send remote employees a slice of cake, you can send them a gift card to their local restaurant or coffee shop. But make no mistake about it – this has nothing to do with money and has everything to do with inclusion and making remote employees feel like they’re actually part of a team.
17. Create a Map of Locations for All
Create a visual reminder of the virtual team in the office by posting a map with a pin representing their locations. Of course, this is not so much going to help your remote employees directly, but it will remind and visualize to the on-site staff that remote employees are out there.
They may be out of sight, but a map reminding employees at your headquarters that they have teammates out there can strengthen relationships and encourage on-site staff to engage the remote employees on a more regular basis.
18. Be Their Advocate
Because Andy was dangling out there on the org chart, I often found myself sitting meetings at HQ and speaking up on his behalf. Other department leaders and colleagues didn’t know Andy and since they rarely interacted with him, I had to be an advocate for him.
Here are some of the ways you can become an advocate for your remote employees:
- Remind the team that Andy should be included in the next discussion
- Ask an employee to get Andy’s input before making their final decision
- Add Andy’s name to the list of employees to be assigned the new program
- Have an action assigned to Andy so that the team must engage him as part of the process
19. Provide an Admin Password to Remote Staff
Each month, Andy would lose at least a half day just going to the nearest office to get his computer fixed because non-IT staff were not permitted to have an administrator password. Remote installations of patches and software updates when he was at home would inevitably get hung up and the only way to fix his laptop was for him to make the hour drive to the nearby sales office to get a hard connection into the company network. The timing of these instances, of course, was never convenient.
Yes, giving out an administrator password or admin rights to a laptop may bend your IT policy rules. However, the disruption that IT issues cause remote workers whose laptop is their sole lifeline is significant and should not be overlooked.
Regardless of how you do it, find ways for remote employees to manage their own computer to minimize disruption and lost time.