According to a Glassdoor survey, 56% of employees stated a good workplace culture is more important than salary.
Company culture is the foundation for building a great remote organization. More people are working remotely and many for the first time. I want to share best practices for cultivating connections and creating a thriving company culture.
Determine Your Values
Defined core values help you make important decisions about who you want to work with, who you hire, how you lead, and how you make decisions. Values help you express what your company stands for and how you want employees to behave, regardless of location. If you haven’t defined your company values yet, here are a few questions to begin the process.
- What’s important to us?
- What are we most proud of?
- What are our strengths?
- What do we care about?
- What 3 words would we use to describe our company?
Once you have identified your core values, share them company-wide and make them accessible to everyone. In organizations where values are fully understood, people are able to align quickly on the company goals and move forward faster.
Hire the Right People
Hiring the ideal people for your team can be challenging, especially when you are a remote company. Start by developing an intentional hiring process to ensure candidates align with your company culture. Try incorporating these suggestions to recruit your next employee.
- Revamp your job description to include what it means to work remotely at your company
- Add your values to every job posting
- Share resources on your website that highlight your culture
- Post your opening on remote job boards
- Ask your current employees for referrals
- Conduct video interviews to determine values alignment
Design Meaningful Meetings
When working remotely, it’s easy to hold too many unnecessary video calls to make up for lack of face to face time. “Zoom fatigue” is real”. To make your meetings meaningful, you should have a clear purpose and goals and design an agenda that includes human connection. Here are a few guidelines for facilitating engaging meetings.
- Share the agenda ahead of time
- Greet people and intro them as participants join the call
- Encourage everyone to turn their video on
- Build engagement by asking everyone for individual feedback
- Think outside the box
Build Rituals
Rituals are important, but they become even more important when you aren’t working together in the same location. Kursat Ozenc and Margaret Hagan, authors of Rituals for Work, state “rituals have a special power to bring people together and give them a sense of purpose, values, and meaning”. Birthdays and anniversaries are a good place to start when trying to implement rituals for your company. Continue to create new traditions such as virtual coffee chats or weekly lunches to further connect your remote team.
Creating a positive company culture is possible, outside the office. I hope the tips I provided will help you build a great place to work, remotely. What other ideas can you add to this list that I may have not mentioned?
About the Author
This guest blog post is written by Maryellen Stockton, Founder and CEO of Work Well Whenever™! Work Well Wherever™ is a remote work consulting company that provides customized coaching, training, and guidance to small businesses and start-ups seeking change in today’s modern workplace. Maryellen is committed to helping companies focus on building human connection within their remote teams. For more information, you can reach her via email at maryellen@workwellwherever.com or connect with her on LinkedIn.
