By David Henzel, co-founder of TaskDrive—we support sales and marketing teams with personalized lead research and outbound campaigns.
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With more and more digital workers abounding coupled with an increase in companies operating nearly entirely remote, it is important to uphold some of the most advantageous aspects of a corporate environment, which is namely the in-person interaction, keeping regularly updated on progress and tasks and maintaining strong social relationships with co-workers. Fortunately, there are a number of methods that can easily be implemented to create a strong sense of teamwork and a supportive company culture even if from afar.
Establish A Weekly Level 10 Meeting
Level 10 meetings are an integral part of the Entrepreneurial Operating System, in short EOS, which serves as excellent and efficient guidelines for how to enable a company’s internal operations to thrive. The six components EOS centers on are: people, vision, data, issues, date and progress—and the Level 10 meeting is designed to incorporate all of these elements in a short amount of time. In practice, it goes like this: a team of ideally up to 10 or fewer team members meet up weekly for an hour or 90 minutes to discuss wins, ongoing tasks, pain points or obstacles and, ideally, progress. The reason they are called “Level 10” is that each member is asked to rate the success of the meeting at its conclusion.
For remotely operating companies, Level 10 meetings can serve as a vital asset to making continual progress, understanding where challenges lie and problem-solving them while noting concrete progress along the way. This simple meeting format can go a long way to building a strong and progressive team—whether in person or in a remote company context.
The 15-Minute Stand-Up For Crunch Time
If there is a project that is a priority and needs tackling fast, then holding a 15-minute stand-up meeting every day of the workweek is a truly efficient way to build a strong and proactive team for any project and especially when it comes to remote workers. The premise is this: Team members get on a call for just 15 minutes to quickly discuss tasks at hand, progress made and any difficulties that arise. While the intention is to simply hone in on getting a job done, what results is a solid form of connection both professionally and personally, because even though team members may be connecting from all over the world, when they do so daily, bonds that surpass boundaries can indeed form.
Making Time For 1-On-1s Counts
There is also a great benefit to meeting one-on-one with employees whether or not you have a particular reason too. Of course, it’s great to catch up with individuals working on certain projects, but there is also a great benefit to just holding random personal meetings with your staff members to get a good perspective on how smoothly everything is operating. Great check-in questions to ask your staff are: “What is going really well?” “What is draining you?” and “How would you rate your performance from zero to 10?”
Town Hall Meetings Bridge The Divide
Town Hall meetings are generally held monthly among a company’s senior leaders and staff. Not only is this a great opportunity to reinforce a company’s vision, mission and values, but it also is an opportunity for remote workers to become more familiar with their superiors in a relaxed and somewhat informal environment. Town Hall meetings serve to communicate a company’s recent developments and can include Q&A sessions, which are an invaluable opportunity for remote workers to address any concerns or inquiries they may have regarding ongoing projects.
Creating A Virtual Social Community
One of the biggest trials for remote workers is the lack of social connections and the so-called water-cooler chatter. We, as people, are social creatures and it is important for a company to recognize and satisfy this need, especially when it comes to remote workers. Weekly extracurricular activities such as “Virtual Fitness” and “Virtual Karaoke” are fun ways to keep remote workers healthy, happy and engaged with their coworkers no matter how far apart they are.
In a similar vein, holding company-wide holiday events and including a talent show is a wonderful way to create an inclusive environment, and for co-workers who may not interact on a regular basis, to bond through sharing their interests and hobbies. One of the best benefits of being in an office environment is holding an office party. While this isn’t always possible with remote workers, a company can offer coupons or a small compensation to encourage their staff to pamper themselves somehow in lieu of a quarterly or annual party and they can post this nice gesture made on behalf of the business on the brand’s social media accounts.
Offering Outside Support
A wonderful way to embrace inclusivity in a remote company is to enable employees to share their external passions and projects through company-wide emails of upcoming events involving staff members. Examples of this could be advertising exhibitions, announcing new musical or publication releases and, even better, creating donation drives for staff members’ extracurricular projects.
Similarly, offering staff members the opportunity to receive online counseling can be an extremely valuable resource for all parties involved. If a staff member feels lost, then what could be better than providing them with the support they may not be able to access or seek out on their own?
After all, as the saying goes: “Happy employees create happy customers.” Therefore, it is important to ensure that all of the benefits of working in a social and buzzing office environment are also provided as much as possible for remote workers. From holding meetings and online social events to offering support for staff members’ outside interests, it becomes easy and enjoyable to create a win-win situation for all from afar.