Thousands of people have shifted to remote work this year as the world navigates the COVID-19 pandemic, and there are many benefits to doing so. On an individual level, past data has shown remote workers are often happier, more likely to stay at their jobs, and more productive. With that being said, having entire companies working remotely does have its challenges—especially when it comes to maintaining company culture.
Celebrate Employee Success
Company culture is incredibly important to employees for multiple reasons. When you know where your company stands on its beliefs and values, and you prioritize the same things on a personal level, you’re more likely to stay with that company. And when a company has a culture that makes it a priority to celebrate the successes of its employees, takes care of its employees, keeps things positive, and keeps good communication, people tend to be happier, too.
While all of those aspects of company culture are great, they’re not exactly easy to maintain outside of a typical office environment when seeing each other face-to-face isn’t an option. You no longer get that feeling of pride when you walk through the doors of your office, or those mood-lifting birthday celebrations in the conference room. Celebrating the successes of employees now needs to be done via email, chat, or Zoom, which doesn’t quite have the same effect as it does in person.
Engagement Tools
Communication can be difficult, too. Check-ins with employees are harder to manage when they’re virtual. Even day-to-day meetings are different when they’re held from afar, as not everyone feels comfortable chiming in, which can leave people feeling excluded and disconnected to their teams. The good news is, even with these challenges, keeping great company culture is very much possible when you have the right tools on hand.
Intuition has a weekly schedule of live virtual experiences that can bring back that important feeling of togetherness in the remote workforce. Offering employees the chance to virtually gather for live music, comedy shows, cooking classes, workout classes, and other activities won’t just bring the fun back into their days—it shows them they’re important.
Aside from tuning into events together—which are also available on-demand—Intuition’s Challenges also give remote teams the opportunity to bond through step-counting competitions, meditation challenges, and more. It gives everyone something to talk about aside from work, and keeps employees feeling both mentally and physically healthy in the process.
When done correctly, the remote workforce can still have a very strong company culture. Even though it’s new and may take more effort, having employees who love what they do—and who they do it for—makes the extra navigating more than worth it.
