How To Foster A Thriving Company Culture During The Era Of Remote Working

Remote working is on the rise. While working from home was becoming more popular before the pandemic, the Coronavirus years forced businesses to adapt and become far more flexible with their working patterns. As a result, WFH jobs have become the norm, and offer benefits such as:

• Lower costs

• Increased morale

• Increased productivity

So if businesses are saving money and employees are saving time, what’s the catch? And why isn’t every business swapping the office for remote working? The answer could lie in the C word: culture.

It can be much harder to create a great company culture if your staff never actually meets. Let’s discuss the impacts this can have on your business, and how you can maintain a strong company culture while building a remote team.

Issues resulting from poor culture

Communication

Culture and communication are intrinsically linked. And depending on your company’s efforts, it can be a vicious or rewarding cycle.

That’s because great culture improves communication, and great communication improves culture. But if your team’s communication starts to falter as a result of remote working, your culture won’t be far behind.

Depending on the nature of your business, poor communication can have several adverse effects. If you’re in the construction industry, for example, a lack of communication could have serious safety implications. If you’re an SEO agency, expect poor communication to equal poorer results for your clients.

Harder to attract top talent

Google is known for being ahead of the curve when it comes to technology, but they were also one of the first companies to seriously invest in its office culture. While competitors were still turning up to corporate offices adhering to formal dress codes, Google employees have long been surrounded by dogs, slides and juice bars.

As a result of creating such a fun, unique office environment, Google’s culture is considered one of the best, and the company has subsequently benefitted from being able to attract the crème de la crème of tech talent. 

On the flip side, not investing in culture can have the opposite effect. Good luck attracting the best staff if you’re not able to offer them a thriving, flexible company culture.

Increased staff turnover

If a company is finding it harder to attract top talent, there’s a good chance they’ll find it hard to retain talent too. But the drawbacks of this can be far more severe. Replacing staff can be time-consuming in terms of interviews and training but can also have financial implications as productivity naturally suffers when training new members of the team. 

How to maintain a good culture when working from home

Daily video check-ins

If you can’t check in with your team in person, virtual meetings become even more important. Fortunately, it’s never been easier to jump on a video call with the likes of Skype, Zoom and Google Hangout leaving you with no excuses.

Include a daily full-team meeting if you’re a fully remote organization to ensure nothing gets missed in terms of work-related tasks, but don’t forget to catch up with staff on a one-to-one level to discuss any personal issues.    

Promote IRL meetups

While it’s possible to maintain healthy relationships through a strong virtual culture, nothing quite fosters relationships like spending time together in person. If your team works remotely, pencil in a few days in the calendar when you can get together physically.

This could be as simple as finishing early to meet up somewhere for food and drinks or as extravagant as taking your team on a corporate holiday for some much-needed bonding.

Team-building exercises

If your team aren’t physically working together, it can be hard to build up a strong togetherness and team ethos. As already mentioned, the resulting drop in communication can be extremely harmful to your company.

To prevent this, incorporate team-building exercises into your team’s calendar. These can be physical exercises which can be used in conjunction with more social events or, if your team is spread across all corners of the world, consider ways to incorporate team building virtually.

Exercises that can be completed online include things like skillshare sessions, virtual wine tasting and everyone’s pandemic favourite, a Zoom quiz!    

Invest in wellbeing 

One of the biggest reasons for moving to a WFH culture is cost. Office overheads, decorating and emergency repairs can all be pushed to one side if your team is working from the comfort of their own homes.

Consider reinvesting these savings into your team and their well-being. Perks have become expected by teams of today, and they’re also one of the main ways that companies compete to attract talent.

Here are some of the perks you could offer your staff:

• Free/subsidized gym memberships

• Food delivery vouchers

• Home office allowance

• Increased training

• Extra holidays

• Pamper days

Author bio 

Amy Jones is a freelance writer from Manchester and has written for many different business publications. With a range of knowledge in the business and investing sector, she is an avid researcher and writer in the field. Having worked closely with a number of different businesses, Amy is now looking to specialize in workplace health and disputes and is currently researching and working closely with different health brands for this.

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