A remote work culture is a culture that puts connection and sense of belonging of remote workers front and center. Without a solid system in place, you’ll create a poor employee experience and high employee turnover. From hiring and onboarding to communication and management, things can quickly get out of hand.
Like every remote-first company we admire, Zapier embraces the remote-first approach to documentation, hiring, compensation, benefits, mental and physical health, and connection. Zapier was founded in 2011, never had an office, and counts 400+ employees over six continents. “When you have a distributed company, you have to try to hire folks who are predisposed to finding problems and solving them,” says Wade Foster, Zapier’s CEO. Since their beginning, they’ve worked in the open and shared their commitment to remote-first work culture.
Normalize challenging personal assumptions
Cross pollination between departments encourages new viewpoints and perspectives, leading to more efficient and innovative solutions. Familiarity with distant colleagues and access to other departments’ tools enables staff to pool resources and use existing how to build culture in a remote team assets instead of reinventing the wheel. Working from home requires self-direction and self-determination, so grant your remote staff autonomy. If your workers need to wait for further instructions, then your team may lose time and motivation.
Additional ways you can show that the company supports work/life balance can include shortened summer schedules, half days, or company-wide closures. Review vacation schedules throughout the year and remind remote employees to take time off as needed. Just like with your employees working in the office, regular communication with a work “buddy” can improve an employee’s sense of belonging within your company. While this is likely to happen naturally for employees in similar roles or work groups, you can foster a deeper sense of team camaraderie by pairing work buddies across different offices or teams.
Use Nectar’s Recognition Tool
And if you throw every piece of documentation at them, they might get overwhelmed. Employee onboarding is the bridge between hiring an excellent candidate and making them successful in your company. Some 59% HR professionals believe that the battle for top talent is shifting from acquisition to retention. Remote-first recruitment also gives you the power to build a diverse workforce. Instead of relying on your job description alone to attract non-homogenous candidates, be sure to seek out a diverse applicant pool. This can include searching for talent in developing nations, or posting a job on a site for female engineers or people of color.
When the process is more thorough and involves more people, it’s also easier to steer clear of unconscious bias. I can only remember one time in seven years that we lost out on someone for not moving fast enough. That’s a risk we’re willing to take in favor of making the right decision. Experienced remote people are well aware that the “remote first” philosophy must be adopted in order for them to be successful. If they don’t see that in your company, they likely won’t take the risk. That’s why a lot of co-located companies underestimate the talent pool.
How to build strong virtual work cultures
This also helps you notice overworking, avoid setting unrealistic expectations and deadlines, and reduce stress. The essential benefit you can offer as a remote-first company is flexibility. Can your employees shape their work around their lives and not the other way around? Before you consider added benefits like learning stipends or co-working allowances, make sure your foundation is rock-solid. It’s up to managers and leaders to set the right example with asynchronous communication.
- Any remote company will tell you that it gets super complicated, and great work has the same value to the company, so we should be happy to pay the same amount of money for it.
- Big ideas can only come to fruition when you (and your employees) have the proper resources to support them.
- This is a recipe for disaster because the company hasn’t changed the way they share information.
- However, shouting out a job well done assures team members of a satisfactory performance and the team’s regard.
However, shouting out a job well done assures team members of a satisfactory performance and the team’s regard. As the sales team is tasked with helping the business grow, leaders need to ensure they are prioritizing personal connections with these employees, not just sales targets. Below, members of Forbes Business Development Council share recommendations on how sales leaders can strategically build a sustainable company culture remotely. When dealing with co-located employees, there are clear guidelines that guide how questions are asked, how discussions are carried out, and how meetings are organized. You should also have clear guidelines in place when dealing with remote teams. By prioritizing regular check-ins with your team, you can improve communication, foster stronger relationships, and ultimately drive better business outcomes.
You’re building a company culture, even if you aren’t intentional about it. You’ve established a reputation in your industry, even if you didn’t set out to do so. In a remote culture, it’s easier to get a productive 4-6 hour block of work done during the day.
I mentioned earlier that it’s harder to be a manager in a remote culture, and I’ve only realized this in the last year. I’m a huge believer in the Players and Coaches philosophy, which dictates that people be in a dedicated Player (individual contributor) or Coach (manager) role. Player-Coach (a little of each) doesn’t really allow someone to be at their best, and this is magnified exponentially in a remote workplace. When I lived in Boston, I noticed that a talented person would be on the market for a matter of days before being scooped up.
