How to Build a Strong Company Culture With Remote Teams

Establishing an effective company culture is integral to running a successful business, yet creating one can be challenging when working remotely with new team members.

No matter whether employees are remote for COVID-19 compliance purposes or permanently, creating an atmosphere of connection is crucial for their wellbeing and productivity. Here are some tips to make it happen.

1. Invest in technology

Investment in tools that facilitate remote work will increase productivity and create culture; such investments should be assessed against their return on investment, ease of use, and team members’ acceptance and adoption rates.

Strong company cultures remain alive even when employees don’t interact physically on a regular basis, thanks to shared values and interests between staff members as well as an overall sense of connection across your entire organization.

Investment in remote-friendly tools and fostering an overall mindset of collaboration and connection will help your company establish a robust company culture regardless of how often the remote work policy changes. Keep in mind that an excellent remote work culture can benefit onsite teams as well – Help Scout has been pioneering remote working from its inception while Zapier boasts 400+ staff spread out across 80+ cities and six continents!

2. Focus on communication

Employees working from home often encounter multiple barriers that impede their performance and productivity, which is why companies that take remote culture seriously should establish policies which encourage communication.

Management must emphasize the fact that their company’s values and standards extend far beyond its physical location. While employees may easily acquire these traits when located near one office, acquiring them when working remotely may prove much harder.

Make meetings and asynchronous communication a priority for your remote team to ensure everyone feels valued and heard, thus improving collaboration and increasing productivity. Writing down all your communication policies into an easily accessed document would also ensure new hires quickly become acquainted with your culture or any remote etiquette policies you have established for the team, including culture quotes in emails or newsletters as reminders of values; doing this will further embed remote work culture within the company from day one.

3. Celebrate success

Maintaining a positive work culture among remote employees requires celebrating any successes your team may achieve. Otherwise, morale could quickly decline and their contributions might seem underappreciated.

There are various ways you can show your employees you care, such as sending out company swag or hosting a virtual party. Or use GooseChase’s team-building platform for hosting fun challenges that will allow your team members to bond while also learning more about one another.

Reward your team members by giving employee awards or creating a shout-out board on your work management platform. Be it for an anniversary, milestone achievement or simply because they’ve done such an exceptional job – this will keep the motivation flowing within the group!

4. Encourage collaboration

Remote work is no longer a trend; businesses must adapt to its reality as they expand. Establishing and maintaining an engaging company culture with distributed teams requires finding innovative ways to bring team members closer together, enhance collaboration, and boost productivity.

Team leaders can foster a thriving remote culture by providing their team members with the right tools and processes that facilitate collaboration. This may involve encouraging video conferencing platforms as means of meeting face-to-face, and setting clear expectations on when it’s appropriate to communicate across time zones differences.

Maintaining transparency is also vital to creating a successful remote culture. By hosting regular meetings and virtual lunches and ensuring all team leaders share updates at the end of every day, you can keep communication open and accessible for remote workers. A project management solution like Wrike can assist with team collaboration by sharing files, timelines, meeting notes and chat channels specific to projects or topics so your team members can focus on working together instead of getting distracted from doing so.

5. Encourage flexibility

An effective remote culture must enable its employees to work flexibly. Some companies allow employees to choose whether or not they work from home, in the office, or both; others set specific goals for time spent at the office, such as number of days per week spent there or percentage of work completed from there. Whatever their goal may be, creating an accommodating culture is an invaluable way to increase morale and productivity.

Encourage remote team members to utilize instant messaging and video chat solutions, such as Slack, in order to collaborate real-time regardless of location. You can help team members feel more connected by associating colleagues based on shared interests or pairing an inexperienced co-worker with someone more experienced at your organization.

Encourage your remote team members to take vacation and travel in order to stay motivated and stay productive. Some of the top remote-first companies, like Automattic (a WordPress developer) and Mozilla Foundation (with 13 global offices covering over 30 countries), do this and even promote it publicly.