When colleagues aren't physically in the same place, there may be fewer opportunities to foster interpersonal interaction and connection, so it's important to be proactive and creative. In reality, an effective remote team should look quite similar to a team with a physical office.
Creating a positive social atmosphere will help your team members build relationships with each other. Building strong relationships within your team can increase psychological confidence, strengthen team and organization attachment, and elevate performance.
How to create an inclusive and productive work-from-home culture?
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3 tips for an inclusive workplace
1. Be kind to the whole team
When you work remotely, especially if your team is new to working remotely, your colleagues may not know how to behave and interact with the team remotely.
Look for ways to open virtual channels for spontaneous communication - log into Slack for example to communicate regularly, or use other corporate chat tools like Teams.
Let your team know that you are always available even if they can't see you.
This is especially important if you haven't heard from them in a while, are worried about them, or are more introverted.
And finally, after a presentation, consider connecting with a team member right after to talk about it. This mimics the experience of walking out of a meeting room and debriefing in person. This can be about discussing little fun things or discussing feedback and next steps.
2. Find time to get to know your team even if you are at a distance
It takes longer to get to know each other when not working in the same physical office. And getting to know each other is essential for building a relationship of trust. So it's really important to make time for conversations that aren't all project-based.
These conversations probably won't happen as frequently as inside an office next to the coffee maker, so you need to focus on making them happen.
As a manager, you should be proactive and diligent to carve out time for your team.
Tips for bringing the team together:
Have a recurring virtual team lunch or morning coffee hour where team members can just relax. My team often uses ours as an opportunity to share photos and stories from vacations or other life events.
Also tell them that they don't need to have a specific project to discuss in order to take the time to chat.
Set aside five minutes at the start of a meeting each week to allow team members to share something. My team started taking turns every week to share a video tour of our home offices.
3. Schedule virtual team activities
If your team works half from home and half from the office, you need to arrange remote calls or video conferences.
Voxloud has the functionality that allows you to organize team video calls and manage everything from all over the world.
Now is the time to get more into practice and really realize the desire to make team communication more effective by using tools that connect you even more to your team and allow you to work from all over the world: the Voxloud phone system.
The cloud phone system is the perfect solution to communicate and work better, especially in remote working. Thanks to the absence of wires and devices, you will not need installation technicians who will come to the office, just do everything online and activate everything in 59 seconds.
Cloud technology will also allow you to work from wherever you want and make the most of the momentary remote working regime.
Just to give an idea, here is a preview of the advantages of our phone system:
- You can work anywhere without geographical restrictions
- Activation in 59 seconds, without the use of technicians
- Organize team video conferences
- You only pay for the features you use
- No hidden costs
- There are no penalties
Take your company into the future and make your team more productive! 👇
