How to Maintain Company Culture Remotely

How to Maintain Company Culture Remotely

Recent events have changed the workplace in various ways. Mostly, employees are moving out of offices and workplaces into working from home. Working from home is more convenient as workers don’t have to worry about commuting to the workplace.

However, it raises issues to do with productivity, motivation, and company culture. Maintaining your company culture can be challenging as there are no team-building activities or collaborative exercises. In this article, let’s look at some ways you can preserve your company culture.

Learn More about Your Team

Company culture is not something tangible. To maintain strong company culture, there must be mutual respect between workers as you work towards a common goal. To inspire your remote workforce, your expectations must be restructured. You must create an opportunity to learn more about your team. Your team members are different in many ways. Their preferences and personalities are not alike. Knowing more about your team helps you create the best strategy to keep the team together. 

Share Your Company Values

Your company values are what constitute your company culture. They are the pillars that guide your organization. Your company values should be the focus of your employees. Your remote workers should have a clear understanding of how your company operates and create positive work conditions. If your company has a website, it should contain your company values. Again, you can send weekly emails to workers to share your integrated company values. For workers that demonstrate to be the best ambassadors of your company values, give them rewards.

Restructure Expectations

For your workers to adapt to a new working environment, you need to redefine what you expect of them. The way culture is displayed in the office is not the same as it is expressed in a remote working environment. But culture should still reinforce behaviors that support collaboration and teamwork. This is achieved by focusing on shared goals and values.  

Improved Communication

Communication can be an obstacle to maintaining your company culture. This is due to workers working from different locations. However, communication issues can be fixed. You can establish clear communication measures. These measures should include chats, time frames for giving responses, and emails.

Communication measures prevent workers from being bombarded by messages, reduce interruptions, and ease communication. Additionally, you can hold surveys to let workers give feedback on what they do or don’t like about your company culture. Also, equip your employees with the right communication tools.

Avoid Isolation through Fellowship

Remote workers often work from home offices. A worker can feel alone and isolated. It is not like traditional offices where workers met every morning. In remote working, there is no chance for workers to meet in person, catch up and chat. This can make it challenging for workers to form a fellowship.

But, with technology, you can create fun chat channels for workers to bond on common interests. After work, employees can connect through video calls and engage in different activities. During breaks, encourage your workers to engage in activities that promote healthy habits.

Prioritize Face-to-Face Meetings

Even though it might be through a screen, seeing your colleagues face-to-face is crucial. Seeing and hearing your colleagues allow you to reflect on their voices and pick their body language signals. Identifying issues and connecting are easier when you can see each other. You can trust each other and feel like one team.

Every week, if not every day, there should be time designated for colleagues to meet via video chats. You don’t only develop trust, but you build connections and celebrate each other’s achievements. Video meetings also promote teamwork and help reinforce your company values.

Set-up Company Initiatives

Setting up company-wide initiatives helps promote and maintain company culture. These initiatives include retreats and training seminars. These events should be held throughout the year to keep the spirit of your company values alive and bring employees together. These retreats help the team to bond and uphold company values. This is without feeling the pressure of work. Your employees should be updated on all important events. To add, you can hold company-wide contests and competitions that include fun prizes.

Trust Your Workers

Employees treated with value and respect feels valued and gives their best at work. Even in remote working, ensure you trust your workers. Don’t over-monitor their work as it could affect their motivation and productivity. Rather, find ways for your team to share schedules, stay updated, and be in touch in their progress. Implement tools in your company that allows your team to interact without attending virtual meetings. When team members are aware of each other’s workflows and are not micromanaged, it reinforces trust. And, company culture is preserved.

Emphasize Behavior that Reinforces Your Culture

In a virtual workplace, coordinating projects and bringing the team together can be a challenge. This is because behavior and body language signals cannot be seen. Managers should be trained to excel in areas that reinforce positive behavior. They should set goals that challenge workers even when working remotely. Standards of performance should be set so workers understand what is expected of them. It is part of their duty to foster a culture that emphasizes accountability and gives feedback to workers on their progress. They should communicate clear goals so employees can develop trust in them.

Embrace Transparency

 To maintain your culture in remote working, you must practice transparent communication. It is through transparency that trust is developed. The company management should be transparent to their workers on how current events are affecting the company and what they are doing about it.

Your employees should be informed on the decisions that are being made in the company affecting them. Transparent communication greatly improves the trust of workers in the company. Workers who trust their company are ambassadors of their company culture.

Enhance Flexibility and Work-Life Balance

Any organizational culture should be caring for its employees. This means, in remote working environments, they should give their workers flexibility for working and enhance work-life balance. This can be done by acknowledging the challenges that workers are going through in their remote areas.

You then should schedule meetings and interactions during hours that show respect for family time. Like in the mornings and evenings. For example, your employees may be preparing their children for school or providing child care support.

Address Mental Health Issues

While it’s important to give a work-life balance, you must also promote positive mental health for your remote workers. Employees working remotely might experience mental health issues. This is due to loneliness, mourning the previous workplace, missing interaction with colleagues, or concerns for their job and future.

Mental health issues can be fought through supporting a culture of caring, empathy, consideration, and gratitude. You should regularly check on your employees and allow them to take days off to rest and relax.

Focus on Teamwork

Teamwork is when colleagues collaborate in doing tasks. Colleagues that work together know each other and hence like each other. People, who like each other have good relationships, want to do good jobs for each other, and help each other in times of need. Values for caring for each other naturally infuse in teamwork. People’s personalities come through from regular interactions. Company culture is built on employees’ personalities.

Identify and Solve Employee Challenges

Many challenges face different workers in remote working environments. As their leader, you should identify challenges that your workers are facing when doing their job. When you identify challenges, come up with suitable solutions to tackle those challenges. This way, you will build and maintain a winning culture for your company.

Use the Right Technology Tools

To enable remote working, the right technological tools must be used. Technology tools help reinforce the culture of your company in remote working environments. This is because technology is widely used in connecting workers and making tasks easier.

For instance, performance management tools help to communicate priorities and set the tone at work. The use of the right tools of technology helps your team work together towards the same goals and objectives. Through the help of virtual offices, remote workers can connect to their colleagues. By connecting, it becomes easier to maintain a culture of a company.

By following the tips I have shared above, be sure to maintain your company culture. To uphold your company culture is an important thing so that workers stay motivated and improve their performance despite working remotely.

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