Staying Connected To Remote Workers

It wasn’t too long ago that working from home was something that all employees scoffed at. The idea that they were going to allow their staff to work from another place that wasn’t an office? Unthinkable. Thankfully, we are living in a time that is more forward thinking than that and we are rolling forward with more remote workers than ever before.

In fact, we are spending more time working on retaining our employees with hybrid and remote arrangements now than we ever have done in the past. 

Workers have always wanted the option, and while employees considered it too much of a challenge, Covid proved everybody wrong. It’s no longer something that employers cannot offer, and it’s something that employees are demanding. With this in mind we have to look at all of the ways that you can stay connected to remote workers so that you can move with the times and retain your stuff without having to hire in a talent tight market. 

• Invest in technology. Connections have to be literal, which means that whether you are using Microsoft Teams telephony or you are ensuring that you have collaboration work boards such as Trello under your wing, you should invest in technology and make it easier for everybody to work together. Having a remote team does it mean you have to be disconnected from everybody, but having a remote team does take time to manage.

• Luke people into relevant conversations. When you are working in an office setting, you need to ensure that all conversations between teams that are relevant include everybody. There are no more casual office drop-bys or quick meeting times, and they’re really any pop-up lunches. However, you could let everybody into the relevant conversations and ensure that everybody is abreast of what’s going on in the business.

• Use chat apps. Microsoft Teams is one of the most popular works for you today and the reason for that is because it keeps everybody together. Chat services allow for real-time conversations to happen much as you would in the physical workspace and it also allows you to video chat or call your colleagues no matter where they are in the world.

• Keep up with the small talk. Just because you’re not in the office together any more doesn’t mean you can’t learn about people’s lives. Start conversations and ask questions. Keep people engaged and feeling as if they are part of the team. It could be something as simple as the weather or sports or even though we can plan, all you need to make sure that you do is engage them. Play games on Fridays and get everybody together for team meetings once a month. Tell them to keep the cameras on during the regular meetings, but you’re in team meetings everybody can see faces, play games and even listen to who’s got employee of the month. All of these things work together to keep your team connected.