How to Build a Remote Work Culture Guide for Strong Teams

By using a structured response of either yes, no, I will try, or whatever, you can have an effective, meaningful conversation and move things forward with transparency from both sides. Start by asking the team to reflect on times in the last six months where how to build a successful team they felt more and less aligned and more or less autonomous. After reflecting, challenge your group to consider what would help them be more aligned but also, how they might be empowered to be autonomous and work better both individually and as a team.

When team members turn in good work, be sure to recognize achievements. Rewarding excellence encourages employees to go above and beyond and prevents team members from feeling unappreciated. Introducing psychological safety uplifts your team and gives everyone an equal chance at success, while your organization benefits from increased productivity and innovation. Also, as a leader managing a team is an important soft skill you need.

• With an international work-from-anywhere culture, Betts Recruiting chose tools that were designed to help their staff recruit on the go.
• As the team begins to take shape, pay close attention to the ways in which team members work together and take steps to improve communication, cooperation, trust, and respect in those relationships.
• Without a shared purpose, it’s hard for a group to feel like they are pulling in the right direction and might not even understand why they are doing what they are doing.
• Team culture impacts your company’s ability to collaborate, innovate, and even generate revenue.
• This relieves some of the pressure of the workday and can provide a welcome break for your team.

Without it, virtual team members make assumptions and best guess more often because they can’t ‘pick up’ information when remote. Be intentional about providing context, answering questions, verifying understanding and clarifying meaning. The more clearly an employee understands the direct impact of their work, the more likely they are to be positively motivated, and to experience more fulfillment. Research has found that when employees realize their work matters to another individual, they lift their game. Discussing customers overall doesn’t create the same emotional response. Most WFH staff have reported stable or even increased productivity levels after they started working from home, despite complexities in functioning remotely.

Encourage employee contribution

This also helps in bringing growth and improvement in individuals as well as in your company. However, we also need to be alert about the challenges that come with blending individual talents and personalities. There may be conflict due to differences in ideology but be smart enough to negotiate and settle the issue. Once you have established clarity on why you started the business, you can start to ritualize certain practices. Let’s say you want to promote the practice of “taking initiative.” How can you make sure that everyone on the team knows about it? One way is to ritualize the behavior with a public celebration of taking initiative, e.g., an annual “best initiative” day or “make a mistake” day.

It will also allow them to learn new skills which will add value to the team and workplace as a whole. The best way to teach leadership is through example, so take care to teach your team members clearly and patiently and remember that everyone has something to offer. Communicate clearly with team members so everyone is on the same page. Develop schedules that are designed to offer flexibility so everyone can do their work in the way that is most effective for them, but not so flexible that they become unmanageable.

A good unified communications platform

It’s done in an intuitive and rapid way to encourage participants to follow their intuitive feeling rather than over-thinking and finding the “correct” values. It is a good exercise to use to initiate reflection and dialogue around personal values. Whatever personality type tool you use, be sure to take the time for groups to reflect on https://globalcloudteam.com/ the different aspects of their results and discuss as a team. The resulting discussions and celebrations of one another through such a tool can often be as helpful as the initial result. Try using some of these activities to help a group appreciate one another and build an appreciative team culture where everyone is seen and valued.

The tight structure supports team members to be open and honest in their assessment. After reflecting as individuals, the team builds a collective map which can serve as the basis for further discussions and actions. Each one encouraging the team to reflect and analyse a different and crucial element of their behaviour. This tool guides your team through the process of writing a remote working charter, defining the guidelines and behaviour expected of people working at a distance. Team members reflect on their own remote working experiences and use that insight to create a shared charter for the group / organisation.

A workshop to support teams to reflect on and ultimately increase their alignment with purpose/goals and team member autonomy. Use this workshop to strengthen a culture of personal responsibility and build your team’s ability to adapt quickly and navigate change. Without a shared purpose, it’s hard for a group to feel like they are pulling in the right direction and might not even understand why they are doing what they are doing.

What are the benefits of team culture?

Next, invite the group to decide whether these items fall in under the circle of influence or the circle of concern. Debrief and discuss in order to help everyone understand and align on what items they should or should not focus energy on in the future. Team, and encourages focus on actions that can charge the depleted trust batteries. It affects performance, informal and formal relations, atmosphere of the workplace etc.

If everybody thinks about their work in the same way, what are the consequences of introducing a new way of thinking and behaving? Research even suggests it may produce a contagion effect on attendees in which their mood mirrors yours. Start the meeting with energy, appreciation and gratitude, especially during this stressful time.

For instance, employees will hardly oversleep because they get enough time for themselves and their families. At the same time, there is nothing about waiting for endless hours in traffic or queuing at the coffee machine for breakfast — everyone in the team simply rolls out of bed and works together. It’s common to be wrapped up in other hiring issues, such as logistics, if the team is going to embrace a partly remote company culture. Many people think that it is enough to copy the values of another successful company. If you follow the values of Google, it is unlikely that it will bring the desired success.

How to Build Culture in a Remote Team

Your answers set teamwork standards for everything from job performance to customer service. Develop it as a written statement that defines and communicates your company’s purpose. A successful business thrives best when it aims for an established goal.

Team culture can also be affected by company values, mission and other organizational parameters. Employee productivity is the heart and soul of a business, that is why promoting inclusion and a sense of belonging in an organization is the most important thing a leader should do. One of the main reasons I get so many questions about how to build a strong team culture is that most people haven’t been taught how to collaborate well in any setting, including at work. Our companies and organizations are overwhelmingly unhealthy, hyper-competitive, stressed-out places where individualism matters more than teamwork.

Automate tasks between people

The next step for creating a virtual culture with remote teams is establishing the policies and guidelines that will drive the model. For instance, you should determine whether the team is going to work on a fixed schedule or flexible hours, or if there is going to be vacation time off. You should also outline your expectations, as far as productivity or product innovation is concerned, to ensure that everyone on the team starts on the same page.

Next, check out our guide to building successful virtual teams and these virtual wellness ideas for work. Here is more advice on how to manage remote teams and a guide to virtual leadership activities. To ensure employees meet or exceed expectations, discuss the desired workload and pace, and set a timeframe for follow-up and evaluation.

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It will help if you break this boredom if you’re going to build an effective remote work culture. For instance, you should create an activity to encourage new employees to join and participate from different locations — it doesn’t have to include working from home. Even better, you can choose an activity that frees the instructor or team leader from a work desk, and allows them to participate while up on their feet.

Feel free to fine-tune your messaging policies and add other standards for efficiency. For example, TeamBuilding asks employees to respond to Slack comments with emojis when possible to avoid cluttering the stream, and to tag appropriate colleagues with direct mentions. To impose or reintroduce restrictions seems counterintuitive, especially if elasticity can lead to boosted productivity and higher morale. Not to mention, if employers cannot justify reasons for constraints, more open-minded and amenable organizations may lure away top talent. The Cutting Edge PR website has been a trusted source of knowledge since 2005. However, you need to watch out forvirtual unconscious bias, where punctuation, grammar and word choice might reveal prejudiced attitudes towards certain groups.

There you can emphasize the main points for yourself and decide what is the most suitable. Not all organizations provide their employees with comfortable working conditions and development opportunities. Entrepreneurs believe that an employee should do his job, get paid for it, and that’s enough. Developing a great team culture will enable success and attract more talent. It is important to remember that at the heart of every great team are people, so it is necessary to understand the dynamics of how they work. A strong team will have a sense of ownership in the planning, problem-solving, and goal-setting for the vision of the team.

Her article, “How to stay connected while working remotely,” is worth checking out. It’s impossible to duplicate these chance encounters when everyone is working from home. People’s Introverts bring several benefits to a team, but also need different coordination and teamwork. This article from Reworked, “How to Manage Introverts in the Digital Workplace,” gives some helpful insights for interacting well with introverts.

Make a practice to form cross-functional ‘hack’ teams to solve issues and seek solutions to improve work processes within the team, project or company. Provide all the relevant training so that the team spends their energy on the project and not in figuring out how to collaboratively work as a team to approach or address the issue. Ensure that the performance management system emphasises and values teamwork. It’s vital to evaluate your sales team and company culture continuously, but the key to great culture is living it, not just talking about it.