The challenge of maintaining a healthy remote work culture is real, but building trust and allowing for transparency enables to retain the best talent.

Maintaining the company culture should remain as one of the top priorities for organisations since employees continue to work remotely, given the paucity of talent on the other side of the globe. All of us have worked hard to create a workplace culture that encourages people to contribute, stay productive, and find happiness and fulfilment in their work. And remote work does not have to disrupt any of that, even if it shows clear signs of becoming a norm from which we are unlikely to revert.

Team-building activities or supporting business events, excursions, and celebrations are not the cornerstones of company culture, though they can help, even virtually. Employers must create a virtual environment in which teams feel connected and satisfied. Despite being pushed behind screens, it is essential that teams do not lose the magic ‘we experience’ when sitting next to our colleagues, where every voice is heard and every input valued. One of the apparent prerequisites for this is constant communication with management and coworkers.

Challenges For The Employers

HR consulting company Mercer reported that more than 40% of firms experienced a moderate to high impact on how their network managed the cultural and workplace transformation to working online in its study on the effects of COVID-19 on the business and workforce environment.

Working remotely without adequate face-to-face interactions is understandably difficult to establish a good working atmosphere spanning all sectors and locations. This can be particularly challenging in trending and emerging sectors such as Blockchain, Ed-tech etc. that continue to attract large chunks of young talent in the early stages of their careers.

Companies that are adopting the remote work trend must establish a remote work culture that can foster transparency and productivity, while also providing employees with a sense of belonging, even if they are dispersed around the world and rarely see their coworkers.

What is a Remote Working Culture?

Simply put, the remote work culture is a framework of beliefs and approaches that goes beyond the confines of a traditional office. It connects every individual employee, irrespective of location, to the organisation. Employees working in a good remote work culture have a sense of belonging that extends beyond physical boundaries. After all, every employee intuitively understands actions that are appreciated, what is expected of them, and where they can act independently. To enable all of this for a rising remote workforce, it is all the more critical for businesses to consider establishing a sustainable remote work culture and implementing associated tools and processes.

Elements of a Remote Work Culture

Flexibility: Employees desire flexibility, space, and independence to manage their job remotely. Top talent, especially young talent, should not feel excluded or left out. But the other extreme, micromanagement, is far from the solution.

Technology: Tech is, of course, a big component of the remote work culture. When it comes to looking for a new job, almost 82% of respondents say workplace technology is a decisive factor. In fact, millennials are more inclined to leave a job if they believe the technology in use is subpar. It is the quickest way to lose top talent.

Mindset: In the post-pandemic era, corporate culture should be inviting and consistent for all employees, regardless of where they work from. Furthermore, it should have room to accommodate goals and strategies that continue to provide top talent with appropriate opportunities to advance their careers, gain new skills, and expand their horizons. All of these opportunities were previously the realm of in-office work, but they must migrate to become location agnostic.

Building Remote Work Culture

1. Focus on the Kind of Culture

You Want Whether you pay attention to it or not, your workplace culture will develop—in fact, you probably already have one. Discuss your company’s culture with top management, supervisors, and employees in order to foster it better. Find strategies to support your current culture while workers work remotely. Start by identifying the culture you want to foster in order to help remote workers succeed. Encourage team norms that will help them operate together outside of the office, and ensure interteam communication is both established and maintained.

2. Transparency is Key

Maintaining culture remotely necessitates open and honest communication. Top talent must have faith in the enterprise, particularly during a crisis when job security is likely to be one of their primary concerns. Professionals, naturally feel a better sense of job security while working with transparent employers.

3. Trust is Crucial

Of course, compensation is only a small component to the challenge of retaining the top talent. Employees who are regarded with trust and respect, are more likely to succeed. Excessive monitoring of remote work, while can be viewed as a surrogate solution to maintain productivity, can stifle motivation and productivity. Today’s tech-agile organisations have worked out several methods for teams to share work schedules, with productivity management tools, communication tools, and whatnot. Platforms like Slack, Cisco Jabber, Microsoft Teams, Facebook Workplace, and Quip are already a part of every modern team, and need no introduction.

Employees establish trust when they are aware of their teammates’ day-to-day work tasks through workflow and communication technologies rather than micromanagement.

4. Use the Right Tools

Remote work’s long-term success is partly dependent on whether we are employing the correct tools to manage workloads. A digital workplace platform that allows teams to collaborate, interact, and complete work in a unified virtual space is ideal for remote workers. The majority of remote cultures are adaptable. The usage of a single platform, such as a digital workplace, can also enable remote workers to develop a positive culture and have a better and more positive work experience.

The Importance of Developing a Remote Work Culture

Employees who work remotely confront an ever-growing challenge - loneliness. A consistently strong remote work culture can bring people together and offer them a common goal. It also fosters a sense of community and leads to concrete acts such as casual check-ins and more casual talks, which prevent remote isolation.

Moreover, when the employees are asked to return to the office and fully embrace onsite work, an appropriate remote work culture is a win-win for your company. After all, a thriving teleworking culture is simply that. When remote employees’ team bonds are strengthened, better relationships, elevated trust, and enhanced communication are a few of the great outcomes. It not only makes things simpler for remote employees to communicate and collaborate with their coworkers in the office, but also enables the transition from remote to office work to go more smoothly. All these factors come together to help a company retain their talent and bring about an efficient workflow.

Constructing a good remote work culture in which teams feel trusted and encouraged to do their best work is a long-term process that takes a lot of effort and time. But it is also one of the low hanging fruits if we are looking to retain top talent. Whether you are migrating your entire organisation to remote work or introducing a new remote team, you will need to be prepared with all of the best practices and tools to ensure that your employees have a smooth transition.

The objective, after all, is to mould culture in a way that develops transparency, builds a trusting environment, and is a model for everyone else.