A positive company culture drives employee engagement and contributes to high levels of productivity and performance.

Such a culture empowers your staff to invest time, care and passion into their work and output; they feel engaged with their colleagues and the brand.

Company culture is driven by many characteristics, from your senior leadership style and communication strategies, to your learning and development offering and the physical space you operate in. So how do you drive and maintain a positive and engaged company culture if some or all your team work remotely?

Remote workers and company culture – practical  considerations

How do you communicate effectively when your team, or part of it, is remote?

Communication builds engagement which leads to a positive company culture. There are several ways to communicate – one-to one, as a team and company-wide.

If you’re communicating with a remote worker/team you need to consider which technologies you may use, and for what purpose. How you would deliver negative feedback to a remote employee? Consider how you would share your company’s profit and loss for the year to all staff – those office-based and remote. Or, how you might announce a new remote member of staff and then induct and onboard them.

How would you manage your remote workers’ well-being and ensure they’re engaged?

Any negative feeling can impact engagement and a dampen positive feeling among staff. Some remote workers can feel disconnected from the team, leading to a demotivated mindset, lack of self-esteem and negative thinking.

Communication must heighten. A basic example – how do you ensure those working remotely are aware of what is taking place around them? Consider remote workers who may want to contribute to team discussions as they take place and not be updated after the horse has bolted. How would you manage that scenario?

What may appear a small and trivial discussion had amongst office-based staff may have a real effect on those working remotely. This can lead to ill-feeling, negativity and disengagement across the team, not just via the remote worker. As a result, how would you monitor stress and well-being levels from afar? How would you flag any areas of concern? Do your remote workers feel comfortable flagging their own concerns?

What are the best leadership and management styles to adopt?

56% of people surveyed on flexible working believe managers need to adapt their skills to manage a remote workforce¹

Office-based teams and those working remotely look for leadership from senior staff to drive company culture and unite all parties.

Leading a remote team is significantly different to leading one that is physically located together. There is often a tendency to control rather than lead from afar. Trusting an individual to work away from the office builds faith between managers and employees, so staff should feel empowered instead of micro-managed. What processes could you put in play to mitigate this?

How do you deliver L&D that ensures equal opportunity for all?

The option of flexible working leads to heightened morale and an engaged workforce. 67% of employees wish they were offered flexible working², so why should your approach to L&D be any different?

Encouraging self-directed learning promotes flexibility, trust and empowerment for all staff, not just those working remotely. Providing everyone with the tools and technologies needed to drive their own development puts them in control of their learning. Face-to-face training – such as compliance, process-driven or health and safety – can be digitised so company-wide L&D can still be delivered when needed.

Positivity, productivity and performance

Whilst it can appear daunting to lead, manage and engage remote workers, it shouldn’t prove challenging to maintain a positive and engaged company culture if you have the right processes and technologies in place.

53% of workers feel they would be more productive if they could work outside the office and 58% of people believe it would help them become more motivated³. Both trends drive employee engagement and contribute to a positive company culture. Research suggests remote workers consider themselves to be more productive than those working in open-plan offices. Ensuring they maintain this level of productivity is a result of trust and empowerment, heightened communication and effective leadership.

LiveTime Learning hosted a webinar in May, sharing best-practice processes to help forward-thinking organisations support their staff and get #remoteready. The webinar was repeated in June due to popular demand.

Missed the webinar?

Contact Jake Maxwell, Chief Commercial Officer, to arrange a bespoke session for your organisation at a time that suits you and your team.

^{[1] [2] [3]  https://www.powwownow.co.uk/smarter-working/flexible-working-statistics-2017}