It is no surprise that the pandemic since 2020 has changed our ways a lot. Not just our personal lives, but even businesses and how they employ people have also dramatically changed. Statistics show that employees prefer remote working ever since the pandemic struck us. Not only this, remote workers reportedly show 30 to 40 percent more productivity than their on-site co-workers. Keeping all this in mind, there are undoubtedly new challenges for employers. One of these challenges is keeping remote workers engaged.
5 Ways to Keep Your Remote Workers Engaged
Here are 5 easy ways to ensure an engaging and interesting work environment for remote employees.
- Utilize social media to the fullest
Social media can be a cost-efficient, instant and productive way to keep your employees in the loop. You can have weekly or daily social hours when all of your employees get together on a common social media platform and indulge in fun activities. The benefit of using social media is that everyone nowadays knows how to use it. Plus, everyone has access to high-speed internet. If your remote workers are working from rural areas, then they can easily use AT&T Internet and have unfettered access to social media. Some ways you can use social media for keeping remote workers engaged:
- Hold live sessions on Facebook or Instagram to interact with your employees informally
- Create a WhatsApp messenger group, so you can share informal content such as memes and jokes related to a common topic among the team.
- Hold small-scale social media challenges such as “Share your transformation picture” so your employees also get a chance to share something personal
- Online meetups or group discussions particularly targeted towards mental well-being can be really healthy and work towards team building
- Using the right tools for work, collaborations, and management
Since your workers are assigned goals, tasks and collaborate with the team remotely, you obviously need a streamlined system or a platform to do all of this smoothly. Make sure that the platform you are choosing for work management and collaborations is not only smooth but enables the following:
- Establish easy two-way communication
- Does not limit their access to further details regarding the team’s work
- Is user-friendly
There are tons of collaboration tools that also include a chat feature. This helps your employees communicate with one another, build professional communications channels amongst themselves without your (manager’s) assistance or involvement. Asana and Trello are some examples of such tools that let you organize your work in the best manner possible.
- Formal and informal check-ins
As the manager or the employer, it is crucial that you have a one-to-one relationship with your employees. This is especially true for employers who have employees working for them remotely. You should simply schedule weekly or monthly check-ins, where you ask the employee about his work, goals, performance, and even ask for their feedback regarding the organization. While this may be only work-related, there should also be some room for informal conversation where you both can talk a little about your personal lives as well.
- Choose video calls over messages, emails, and audio-only calls
One big issue with working remotely is that you and your employees will hardly ever get a chance to physically meet up and see what you all look like in real-time. Thanks to the fast and reliable internet speeds these days, HD quality video calls are a reality. As long as you are subscribed to good AT&T bundles, smooth video calls and generous amounts of data will not be an issue.
Talking over e-mails and messages is not only old-school but is also very alienating and dry. You need to make things more interesting to keep remote workers interested and engaged in the business. With video conferences, this can be achieved. Some excellent, free, and reliable platforms for videos call amongst organizations and businesses include:
- Zoom
- MS Teams
- Google Hangout
- Keep them updated
Remote workers tend to feel more alienated and literally “remote” from their employer’s company or business. This is why keeping them fully updated with the company news, business trends, changes and updates is crucial. This way, they will be able to feel more involved and might even end up giving some valuable input.
- Frequently update your team’s goals and keep the team members updated. If possible, asking for their ideas and opinions is also very healthy.
- Make your company goals and goal tracking accessible by your remote employees so they can also keep track.
- Share all news, good or bad. This news can be regarding the company as well as personal news about the employees such as announcing someone’s getting married, having a baby, or anything along the lines so the team feels more connected.
The Final Thought
The Internet has made everything so much easier for us these days. Whether it is accessing social media or having video conferences, providers like AT&T make an employer’s life easy. As long as you are making full use of social media, video conferencing apps and online organization tools, you are on the right track with your remote workers.
