3 Strategies To Help Your Remote Team Feel More Connected

Fostering an environment of connection can be incredibly difficult when team members work remotely from their home offices, located across disparate time zones and geographic areas.

Having a remote team offers many benefits, but it is much harder for a business owner to gauge if team morale is dropping or if team members are considering moving away from their position.

Workplace connection impacts how team members view their organization. If folks don’t feel connected - to each other or the company - they are more likely to become disengaged from the business and its mission. Disenfranchisement leads to turnover, which is expensive and time-consuming. 

Nurturing an atmosphere of connection is critical to remote team success.

There are three critical ‘C’s’ of connection… three strategies that a remote business should focus on so their remote team feels an allegiance toward the company and one another. Those strategies are communication, collaboration, and culture.       

COMMUNICATION

Good communication is integral to every workplace environment. It can prevent problems, promote performance, increase productivity, and keep a team strong and engaged. Good communication is more than just the clear presentation of ideas and intent. It also involves creating a safe space where team members feel comfortable consulting with each other. 

Communication is an art form and a core leadership skill. It requires creativity and a high level of perception. The tone for workplace communication is set by a business owner who can delegate clearly and create an environment where everyone has a voice and the opportunity to be heard. Leaders empower team members to ask questions, present alternating viewpoints, and offer suggestions or critiques where necessary.

Without an atmosphere that encourages communication, remote employees can begin to feel left out, uninformed, or even mistreated.

Everyone on a remote team must be on the same page. If every team member understands the expectations for communication and has adequate tools at their disposal, they will feel safe expressing themselves. Feeling heard and validated by their colleagues and superiors will help them feel connected to their team and company.

But in a remote environment, employing the best communication practices can feel elusive. HOW do you communicate? How will you get project updates? How will meetings be conducted?

Business leaders should establish systems for communicating and commit to regular check-ins to ensure everyone feels supported. Each team member should train on the platforms used by the business and be given guidelines by which to operate. 

Thankfully, many practical communication tools have been built and developed for our remote world. They range from simple email and instant messaging apps to video conferencing apps and asynchronous project management team hubs. 

Some examples from each category:

EMAIL: Office 365, Gmail

INSTANT MESSAGING: Slack, Glip, Chanty, Chatter & Zimbra

VIDEO CONFERENCING: Zoom, GoogleMeet, Gather, Skype & Yammer

PROJECT MANAGEMENT PLATFORMS: Asana, Trello, Monday.com, Google Workspace

Good communication can be the determining factor in team effectiveness and engagement in the remote workplace. Good communication strategies can lead to a company culture of “we’re in this together.”

At Freedom Makers, we rely on Asana to communicate tasks and projects. Asana is where we document ongoing projects, maintain client communications, and layout weekly meeting agendas. We can tag each other on it, create tasks for each other, and see what our whole team is doing for the overall company. 

We assume positive intent within Asana – knowing that “tasks” are not “orders” and” tone” can be, unfortunately, defined by space allowed. The way we utilize Asana had become part of our unwritten operating code but was recently deliberately documented. It is explained to new team members as part of our onboarding process. Our core team felt that capturing how we communicate was critical to keeping our remote team strong and feeling connected. We ask that all who join us adopt similar communications practices.   

Our philosophy of communication – and the tool we have in place that works for us – enables us to feel connected to each other and the company as a whole. We endeavor to understand all facets of the business so we can assist, contribute and cross-check with each other as we grow. 

COLLABORATION

Remote teams have to work extra hard against the drivers that create silos. Siloing – working independently or existing in a bubble – is a proven pitfall teams working remotely are prone to. 

In a report published in September 2021, researchers with the Nature of Human behavior found that the shift to remote work as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic caused the collaboration network of workers to become more static and siloed, with “fewer bridges between disparate parts.”

Without the proper emphasis on connection through communication, team members aren’t inclined to share information and are uncomfortable crossing lanes to collaborate with each other.

Collaboration in a remote environment is more complicated than collaborating in person. How do you re-create the hallway run-in in a remote environment? How do you pitch in to put out a colleague’s fire if you don’t witness it happening? 

Theoretically, it might seem that dictating hours when everyone must be online would facilitate virtual “run-ins” that could prevent siloing. But there are drawbacks to that approach in addition to the limitations of actual time-zone differences. When working from home, team members juggle kids and partners and choose to work hours that fit their schedules best. This is how remote workers can be generally more productive when working – they work when they are free from home-based interruptions AND the interruptions that occur in an office environment. 

Effective collaboration in a remote environment requires a deliberate, practical strategy. 

If your team members are working on a project together but reside in different time zones or work opposing schedules, how will they share information or handle the workflow? How will the right hand know what the left one is doing? When people cannot interact in person, they need access to the other tools available (like email, video meetings, or instant messaging apps) and a clear understanding of how their remote-collaboration workflow will look. 

Clearly establishing communication expectations is critical to encouraging collaboration.

At Freedom Makers, we have a 24-hour response time. As long as someone checks their messages and responds within one business day, we do not care what time they work. We also have regularly scheduled core team meetings with a published, shared agenda where everyone is asked to contribute, participate and pitch in.

Having simple tactical processes prevents delays, decreases frustration, and improves efficiency and collaboration among our team members.

CULTURE

Building a vibrant company culture can be challenging with a remote team because the physical distance between team members can weaken the ties that bind colleagues together. However, if a business owner is mindful and deliberate when establishing the company’s core values, remote workers will feel connected, both to each other and to the business’s mission. 

When creating a culture for a remote team, there are three more ‘C’s’ to help keep that culture intact and team members connected. They are: caring for team members, celebrating victories, and congregating when possible.

CARE ABOUT YOUR PEOPLE

Effective leaders truly take care of their people. When a leader is genuine and honest, the people that follow them will feel connected. They believe their well-being is being looked out for. Even in a remote environment, team members will know if the person they work for is an effective leader or is simply good at “managing up.” 

What’s the difference? 

A true leader listens and does what is needed so that everyone is best equipped to do their jobs. Leaders create a baseline of trust and psychological safety when they work to understand a team’s personalities, goals, talents, and limitations. If people feel they can make mistakes, are encouraged to give and receive feedback, and believe they will learn while being supported, they will feel connected and inspired to do their very best work.

CELEBRATE!

If work was supposed to be a party, they wouldn’t call it work.

But the remote workplace should be one where celebrations occur regularly. Teams that are connected have leaders who seek out ways to celebrate individual achievements and collective accomplishments. 

For example, we developed a system to celebrate the amazing work our Freedom Maker virtual assistants do.  We created a series of badges as a way of recognizing when a Freedom Maker goes above and beyond. The way it works is that a Freedom Maker can be nominated by an internal team member based on established criteria. When they are awarded a badge, it is placed on their profile for clients to see.  Our badge system is both an incentive for Freedom Makers, and a way to celebrate hard work and dedication.

Currently, we have three badges (Team Player, Life-Long Learner, and Client Excellence).   Each Freedom Maker can earn a badge three times.  A star is added each time to indicate the additional award.  We are currently working to improve this as many Freedom Makers are maxing out categories and we don't want their hard work to go unrecognized!

We have also created a Spotlight feature in our newsletters that allows clients and potential clients to hear about a different, specific Freedom Maker each month. Tailored specifically to each Freedom Maker, Spotlights highlight the professional diversity on our team and help personalize our virtual assistants by including a segment about their lives and interests outside of work. We all love learning about one another and finding commonalities.

It is also vital that remote teams celebrate holidays, work anniversaries, promotions, and birthdays! Collectively celebrating all the elements that enrich our individual lives makes us feel connected to one another on a personal level.

CONGREGATE

For the first time in our company’s history, the Freedom Makers internal team gathered together in Dallas, Texas, last September for a week of camaraderie and strategic planning. The internal team traveled from Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Florida, and San Antonio. Teammates that had been working together for years finally had an opportunity to meet in person, strengthening their working relationships and deepening their connections with one another.

Of course, strategic retreats aren’t always feasible! Virtual congregations become super important if your team can’t ever get together in person.

Allowing time during routine video meetings where casual conversations are encouraged can bolster a team’s sense of connection and unity. Setting an expectation that team members keep their cameras on during weekly touchpoints might feel uncomfortable at first. Still, it will add to each colleague feeling like they know one another. Encourage team members to share anecdotes and what is going on in their personal life. Witnessing communication through non-verbal cues (like facial expressions) is important and just not possible over the phone or with the camera off.

ALSO, DISCONNECT

Finally, in a remote work world where team members are laboring hard from their individual houses, the lines between work and home are too often blurred and fluid. Fostering an environment where a work-life balance is encouraged will ultimately lead to an atmosphere of healthy, supported engagement. Encouraging team members to take time for themselves, set boundaries, and unplug from work where appropriate will ultimately lead to greater feelings of solidarity, united purpose of mission, and team connection.