Having a strong and positive company culture can help attract and retain talent, according to a recent study by Deloitte where 94% of executives and 88% of employees believe that a well-established company culture is essential to a business’ success.
Having a strong workplace culture can lead to employees feeling valued and content at work, which has other benefits on the overall business such as a higher employee engagement levels and boosted productivity, therefore leading to higher business success rates.
The thought of keeping company culture alive while working from home can be daunting for some, with no two employees having the same personal circumstances while remote working, but this is where planning and consideration makes all the difference.
Below, we outline our top tips for building a strong and engaging company culture that successfully works during remote working.
Use video conferencing for meetings
Text-based communication can create an array of issues as it can be hard to read what someone really means. By utilising video calls to catch up with your team, body language can be picked up on and priorities for the week can be laid out. It is also a chance to have a catch up with each other and check in on everyone’s wellbeing.
Encourage open communication and feedback
It’s safe to assume that remote working has brought about challenges that many businesses have never faced before, some of which can have an impact on employees too. By encouraging open and honest communication and feedback for employers and employees, this builds up a sense of trust amongst the team as well as boosting engagement and morale, which in turn has a positive impact on workplace culture.
Take time to talk to everyone
As an employer or manager, it’s key that you allow time to talk to everyone in the company. Whether it’s a quick chat at the start of the meeting about how their week has been, or a more serious chat about their wellbeing. By doing this, similar to the point above a stronger sense of trust and community will be built.
Be flexible
Juggling work:life balance may have become more difficult during remote working, so it is important for employers to acknowledge that personal needs will vary vastly from employee to employee. This should be accommodated by allowing your remote workers to be more flexible with their hours. The key to success is to invite feedback from your employees who need the flexibility to make sure a flexi-plan is inclusive of employee needs.
Utilise social media
The use of social media within businesses has grown over the past couple of years, with employees being brand champions and managers taking to social media to praise their teams. Using corporate social media to praise workers can really boost team morale, especially during remote working. These don’t have to be big successes, just celebrating someone who has gone the extra mile to be helpful is enough too!
Set clear expectations
Having a remote working policy in place both outlines the business needs and employee expectations. This also allows employees to raise any queries or concerns they may have, and also helps to set targets and goals. It is also important to have at least one weekly meeting with your team to outline priorities for the week as well as discuss the overall business needs to help keep workers motivated.
Be mindful of employee wellbeing
Lockdown and remote working have both had an impact on the overall mental and physical wellbeing of the UK population. Levels of anxiety, stress and loneliness have risen since March, so it’s important to really bear in mind the wellbeing of your workers. Check-in with them regularly, provide them with wellbeing support materials and allow them to have a safe space where they can discuss any problems they may be facing.
Have fun!
The last few months have been an incredibly stressful time for the majority of people, having to adapt to a new way of life both personally and for work. It’s important that businesses give employees the opportunity to switch off every now and then, and by doing it in a way that creates fun helps boost morale and teamwork. Examples of this include a weekly/monthly end-of-week/month quiz or having Friday after work drinks virtually together.
