Having a remote team has its pros and cons. One of its downsides is the lack of physical interaction that seemingly removes the ability of the team to organically develop a great work culture. Creating a culture with a remote team can be difficult to pull off well. But it isn’t impossible. With the right understanding, resources, and strategy, you can bring good habits and practices into your office — even if that office is virtual! In this blog post, we will tackle the question: how to build a great work culture with a remote team – so read on!
1. Start new remote workers with a solid onboarding program
Onboarding remote employees can be more complex than onboarding in person. Effective remote companies should have a comprehensive program to onboard remote workers and ensure the new hire understands their role, company policies, and expectations.
All details should be clarified from the biggest to the smallest to set remote employees up for success. Remember to provide your remote team ample training and support during this process. It is important to give your remote workers time to ask questions, familiarize themselves with their tasks, and get comfortable with the remote workflow so that they can hit the ground running on day one.
2. Exhibit trust in your teams and grant individuals autonomy
Trust and autonomy go a long way when building a remote work culture. When you trust your remote employees to do the work they’ve been entrusted with, you show that you have faith in their abilities – which fosters positive morale and motivates them to do their best.
Allow remote workers to decide how they want to tackle a project or ask them to develop new techniques based on their own ideas. Ask them to share these ideas with you and see how it works with your remote-first company.
Even though remote workers may not be in an office where you can observe their progress directly, tools like Time Clock Wizard can help monitor employees’ time and progress. This creates an environment of mutual trust and respect while still keeping tabs on progress from afar.
3. Understand Your Business Brand and Company culture
As a leader, understanding your business brand and company culture is critical when developing a good culture in a remote environment. As remote managers, you must embody the values of your business in both words and actions. It’s important to recognize that you are the North Star for your team, and your direct reports will reflect how you took the time to understand what sets your remote team apart from others. Ensure that your remote employees feel their work is appreciated, that you communicate that their contributions truly matter, and that being part of the company makes them ambassadors of the company brand. After all, your new employees, as well as the old ones, look to you as a model for how to exude the best version of your company culture.
4. Create A Consistent Experience For Remote teams
Establishing a company culture that is consistent across all boards is particularly important when it comes to remote teams. It allows everyone to have a sense of belongingness and equality especially. For example, if your company decides to have team-building activities, everyone should get the same experience.
Companies with remote workers need to ensure all employees are treated fairly regardless of their physical location. Doing this creates an environment where company goals and objectives take precedence over individual personality questions or concerns. Companies must also maintain their professional relationship and set boundaries among remote teams as this will help foster trust and respect between company representatives – be it managers and personnel. This practice will ultimately make for a strong remote work culture.
5. Adopt Asynchronous Communication Policies
Having a remote work culture means being able to successfully manage a company in a virtual environment and without the need for face-to-face meetings. To ensure success in remote project management, aligning every team member with company culture and adopting asynchronous communication policies is vital. Asynchronous communication allows teams to create a space for individual productivity as everyone operates on their own time. This policy takes greater credit for finished output over time spent working, thus creating an environment that invests less in hours worked and more in tangible results. By implementing an asynchronous communication policy, every team member will be clear on company expectations and can focus on producing valuable outcomes uniformly, no matter their time zone.
6. Use Collaborative Work Tools
If remote teams are ever going to be effective, the remote work culture needs to be properly built up with the right building blocks. This is where collaborative work tools such as Time Clock Wizard come in handy. With Time Clock Wizard, remote managers can create tasks and schedules for their remote team conveniently and easily on one platform. It also allows remote managers to manage resources effectively as it tracks individual remote employees’ attendance and progress, saving time from doing manual labor. With the help of this management tool, companies can foster a successful remote work environment and strong team cultures faster than before.
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Tips on becoming a good remote leader
Building an effective remote work culture requires a good remote leader. As remote managers, it is essential to develop good habits that can help create a thriving remote environment for the team. Here are some tips on becoming a good remote leader, which can help you develop a great work culture with your remote team.
1. Give consistent feedback for every team member
One of the first things a remote manager must answer is how to maintain consistent feedback with each remote team member. Well, by having regular check-ins or weekly meetings, remote managers can ensure they stay aware of how each worker progresses on assignments and monitor potential issues or challenges. This keeps everyone in the remote environment on track and sets high standards for remote work – it also shows every team member that you are involved as much as you need to be.
2. Prioritize work-life balance
As remote company managers, we are responsible for creating a culture that fosters happiness and success among our team members. To ensure this, we must ensure that remote team members have enough working hours to complete their tasks while being able to do things outside of work. Compensation should reflect the amount of work they are doing, and employees should always feel like they are progressing in their careers. Great remote company cultures give employees the right recognition and build trust among each other. Creating a healthy remote environment shows that the company is concerned with employee wellbeing and a health employee experience.
3. Show gratitude towards your remote employees
Demonstrating heartfelt recognition for employees’ hard work will show team members that their contributions are being acknowledged and valued. Expressing your gratitude to team members helps them feel good. This reduces their anxiety and stress and keeps them motivated. Showing gratitude to everyone on the team also strengthens the bond between team members and the team member-manager relationships.
4. Ensure that everyone is on the same page and has the same goal
Setting up and maintaining a great remote team culture starts with ensuring that team members are all on the same page and have the same goal. By having schedules and team meetings, team members understand who to ask when questions arise and become familiar with their organization’s mission. To further streamline this process, a time-tracking tool like Time Clock Wizard can help ensure everyone is working in tandem by scheduling team meetings and ensuring tasks get done on time. With everyone following the same book, team morale increases, and overall productivity rises as well.
5. Employ effective communication methods
Facilitating communication between team members and fostering a thriving remote team culture is also a crucial skill that remote team leaders must develop. By being intentional and harnessing the technology we have access to, managers can set up tools such as Time Clock Wizard to send out helpful, short messages such as reminders and announcements to team members. Furthermore, having team members communicate with one another through communication channels like video conferencing helps create connections between team members, regardless of the setting they’re in. As managers strive to foster a strong remote team culture that carries company values across all team members, effective communication must be kept in mind as well.
How Can TCW Help Improve remote company culture?
TCW can help remote companies strengthen their culture by providing remote team members with everything they need to build a great remote work experience. Here are some of the best features of Time Clock Wizard that can help you build a strong remote work culture.
1. Schedule and Task Management
With the remote culture and remote-first companies becoming more prevalent, it’s important for a leadership team to build an engaging remote work culture. Building a great remote culture requires careful planning and implementation of schedule management. The good news is that TCW can make remote schedule management easier for both you as a manager to implement and your remote team members to adjust to. With alternating days, pay rates, reimbursements, and now even with the ability to make adjustments on your phone as a manager, your remote team can start feeling part of a cohesive unit effectively and productively.
2. Remote Employee Monitoring
With remote teams becoming an increasingly popular way of structuring organizations, Time Clock Wizard can help remote employers monitor their remote team with ease. From taking pictures upon clock-in to verify the right employee is logging in to tracking employee location and progress – this service ensures that remote managers have access to information that can help their employees work optimally. For remote-first companies aiming to build strong work cultures on a personal level, Time Clock Wizard can offer vital assistance.
3. Report generation
Report generation can take a lot of time when done manually. However, it can be made easier by utilizing the right tools. Time Clock Wizard helps with payroll report generation so that remote managers don’t have to waste time with tedious tasks. You can generate payroll reports and integrate them with other existing accounting solutions you subscribe to.
Wrap Up
Building a great work culture with a remote team is no easy feat, but with the right strategies and tips, you can establish an inspiring work environment for remote employees. It’s all about exhibiting trust in your teams, understanding your employer brand and company culture, creating a consistent experience for remote teams, adopting asynchronous communication policies, using collaborative work tools, giving regular feedback to everyone, and of course, showing gratitude to your employees. Time Clock Wizard can help improve remote company cultures with scheduling management, task management, remote employee monitoring, and report generation. These steps will go a long way in creating a culture where everyone is on the same page and working towards the same goal. Start building a great work culture today!
