You might think remote workers are just happy they get to work from home, but the convenience of having a home office isn’t quite enough to keep employees satisfied at work. Even the most shy and self-sufficient among us like to feel connected to the world at large, and that connection can fray all too easily if an employee works remotely the majority of the time. An effective manager should be aware of this risk and work to remedy it. Here are a few ways you can keep your remote employees engaged and happy.
Regular Check-ins
It doesn’t require a whole lot of advance planning to check in with employees who work on-site. It hardly even requires any effort. A short chat in the break room or a brief conversation in the elevator is often enough to get a read on how an employee is doing. More importantly, these check-ins let an employee know you see them. This is no small thing. Feeling like a faceless cog in a corporate machine can be absolutely devastating, and checking in with an employee about how they’re feeling at work can go a long way toward making someone feel welcome and appreciated. It can be all too easy to forget to check in with remote workers. As they don’t pop into your visual field on a regular basis, you aren’t given many opportunities for casual conversation. This can leave a remote worker feeling isolated and adrift, ignored and overlooked. You’ll have to be deliberate about your check-ins with remote workers. With a mobile video conferencing solution like Cisco Spark, which integrates with your mobile calendar and contacts, you can easily schedule regular check-ins with the folks you don’t pass in the hall.
Praise
This is important: don’t forget to tell your remote workers they’re doing a good job! Too often, remote employees only get feedback of the negative variety--fix this, fix that, don’t forget that thing you forgot last time--because that’s just the way decent work becomes great work. Balance this constructive criticism with plaudits and pats on the back. An email is a fine way to extend your thanks and appreciation, but a compliment means even more when the person can see you paying it. So when you are on video calls with your remote employees, don’t forget to open or close the conference with a heartfelt thank you for all that they’ve done. According to a recent study, remote workers are “29% less likely to strongly agree that they have reviewed their greatest successes with their manager in the past six months.” This is a depressing statistic--no one should have to feel like their strengths are going unrecognized. So get to recognizing, bosses!
Coworker Commiseration
You might be the greatest boss of all time, an attentive and considerate leader who is quick with praise and alert to the needs of your employees, but your remote workers will still feel a little bit lost if they aren’t given opportunities to feel like they are a part of a team. It can be exceedingly difficult to get remote employees to connect with each other in less formal settings. They might see each other plenty during video conferences, but they will lack the camaraderie and closeness that on-site workers get during lunch and coffee breaks or during down time around the office. So make it a point to invite your remote workers to the “home base” as often as possible. Invite them to the office to meet everyone in person over a lunch that you pay for. Or plan a team-building day that is actually fun, and be sure to prioritize getting your remote employees to participate. No one wants to feel like they are alone, even if they prefer working at home most of the time. And once your remote employees feel like they’ve made connections with their co-workers, they can nurture those new friendships with mobile conferencing and collaboration solutions.
See, it really doesn’t take much to make people feel wanted and welcome. So put in just a little effort and watch job satisfaction soar.
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