How to Successfully Build and Sustain a Remote Work Culture

Rhoan Morgan is a Forbes Agency Council Influencer and Thought Leader. This post originally appeared on Forbes.com.

 

For over a decade, my company’s employees have been working partially remotely, and since 2018, fully remotely. In that time, I have learned a lot about building and maintaining a successful remote work environment that facilitates groundbreaking work and engaged employees. Here are some principles that have served us well throughout that time.

Start With The ‘Why’

We’ve always sought out extraordinary talent, and we’ve been fortunate to find intelligent, accomplished people to join us locally and globally. From our earliest hires, we didn’t need to choose between hiring local versus nonlocal candidates—we could do both. As our team grew and became more dispersed, we realized that with some planning, we could give our local team members the same advantages as our remote team members. They leaped at the opportunity.

That was our “why” moment, and it happened well before Covid. The reason we went fully remote was that we liked the return on our investment—for the employees and for the company. And the pandemic showed many other companies that their employees could flourish in a fully or partially remote work environment.

Assess your company’s goals and capabilities. Talk to your teams about how they feel they work best and what can help them achieve their desired goals while keeping work processes running smoothly.

Separate Work And Home

Work and home lives can blur while working remotely, so one cultural tenet we have instilled since our founding is balancing the two. Our team works hard during business hours. However, once the day is done, the day is done.

Ensure fixed working hours.

As with any team of high performers, leaders may need to be the guardians of their team’s personal time occasionally. For example, remind team members not to send emails or check work messaging apps outside of working hours. People need to disconnect. You can’t refresh your mind when you’re constantly refreshing your email.

Encourage necessary time off.

Likewise, support your people in taking well-earned days off. Everyone needs a break to focus on things outside of work.

Create Closeness And Enhance Engagement

There are dozens of ways for remote teams to maintain connection and engagement between peers, managers and their teams. A digital talent management system helps new hires feel connected from day one. But with a fully remote team, you must be very intentional in designing systems and processes that make the entire team feel connected, engaged and included.

Overcommunicate to keep your team in the loop.

Company leadership must be committed to communicating frequently and transparently with their teams. Whether via regular meetings, email or messaging, create a clear communication channel to build trust.

Take note of individual interests.

Leaders and peer team members may find it helpful to keep a running log of their team members’ interests, home lives and professional goals to support conversations and drive genuine interest among colleagues. Create a personal bio document filled out by each team member to share with the entire company.

Celebrate personal and professional victories.

Get loud about teams’ triumphs via email or specific channels within your corporate messaging platform. Create ways for team members to share news about their personal lives, such as a new home project, fitness program, hobby or passion.

Manufacture spontaneous connection.

Get creative and find ways to encourage connection between every single team member. Set time aside to chat at the start of every meeting, and create a “watercooler” moment where employees from different teams can spend time chatting about anything but work.

Let Employees Define Culture

I can’t stress enough how influential culture is to an organization, especially a remote one. Culture isn’t something one person creates and hands out. It’s not a series of talking points to follow. Everyone in your organization nourishes the company culture.

Empower your contributors.

Sure, it’s one thing for leadership to envision their company’s desired culture. They also need to define the organization’s goals and expectations. But they must provide room to empower employees to contribute to culture.

Find your influencers.

Consider developing a core culture team composed of volunteers from various business units and job levels. They can help steer the ship, encourage cultural alignment and update your cultural principles based on your current environment.

Lead By Doing

Managing culture and remote teams requires a specific type of leader—one who fosters an environment of trust and keeps the lines of communication open. Because building a strong, meaningful culture across a distributed workforce—especially one that stretches over multiple time zones—requires a unique leadership presence.

Show them the way.

Good leaders hire excellent talent, provide the tools they need to get the work done, set clear direction, communicate about desired norms (which is not always clear in a remote setting) and trust their teams to do good work. They lead by example, favoring positive behaviors and actions over words.

Then get out of the way.

Good leaders foster creativity and collaboration, but they don’t micromanage. That’s why you hire good people, after all. If you’ve done that job well, you can point them in the right direction, let them do what they do best and then go back to doing what you do best.

What’s Next For Remote Work

The past two years have forced companies to accept remote work. Now, many are moving back to the office or are testing a hybrid approach. A large number of them have decided that remote-first is their new normal. The future of remote work will depend on the nature of your work, and success starts with the people at your organization.

As companies become more confident in the ability of remote teams to maintain productivity, even when remote work is no longer necessary, it will take more work and planning than anticipated. With the proper preparation and meaningful intentions, companies can develop and continue fostering a culture that makes their employees want to get up every morning and dive into their work—wherever that work takes place.