How Modern Teams Are Reintroducing Emotion into Remote Work

While the rapid pivot to flexible working took many of us by surprise in 2020, any doubts that it would be more than just a passing trend after the pandemic years have well and truly been dispelled. The shift to remote and hybrid work is here to stay. Today, close to 30% of working adults are hybrid workers across the US and the UK, and a near-unanimous 98% of workers say they want this flexibility.

But even though we’ve had a few years to get used to remote and hybrid working now, many of us are still adapting to its challenges, particularly when creating emotional connections and team culture in our workplace. Many team leaders and managers are still figuring out how to offer employees this flexibility without sacrificing connection, collaboration and productivity.

In this article, we’ll explore how important it is to reintroduce sentiment and emotional intelligence in the virtual and hybrid workplace and – more importantly – how you can do it. Read on for the practical steps to build stronger connections, create a winning remote work culture, and lift your team’s productivity in our new hybrid era.

The Importance of Building a Healthy Remote Work Culture

While some corporate leaders would prefer to force employees back to the office, the reality is that the vast majority of workers in “remote-capable” roles want the flexibility to work from home at least some of the time. So, the pressing question for leaders shouldn’t be whether to allow hybrid and remote working, but rather how to create a hybrid work culture that fosters employee success and long-term wellbeing.

The impact of company culture on employee productivity and retention cannot be understated. A positive workplace culture means happier and healthier workers, which benefits employees and makes them more productive. Workers who have their physical and psychological needs met take fewer days of absence, are more engaged, and are less likely to leave their jobs. Companies that nail their culture turn a higher annual profit.

If you’re offering a flexible work environment for your team, you’re well on your way to creating a desirable company culture. While optimising your company culture takes more conscious effort and planning, it’s a fundamental part of your team’s success if your workers are hybrid. Read on for some of our top tips for building a healthy remote work culture.

Best Practices for Managing Remote Teams

Managing your remote team effectively is all about optimising engagement, offering feedback and maintaining clear communication channels. While the added distance requires creativity and problem-solving, it can be an asset in the right hands. These days, there are boundless software solutions that you can access to help your team connect and collaborate, so it’s easier than ever to tailor your virtual workplace to meet your remote team’s needs.

Micromanaging your remote or hybrid team is not recommended. It was never a good idea in traditional workspaces, and it’s ineffective in the new hybrid world. Aside from stealing away your employees’ sense of agency and morale, you’ll drive yourself up the wall trying to keep close tabs on everyone from afar! Your time would be much better spent working on your remote team culture and coaching your team.

A much better approach is to communicate clear expectations to your employees and create an environment where team members feel trusted, empowered, and responsible for their output. Rather than worrying about how a task gets done, focus on supporting your team to set clear, measurable goals. Ask them what they need from you to meet those goals, and tap into your company values to promote a culture of excellence, intrinsic motivation, success, innovation and acknowledgement.

Regular team meetings are a must for hybrid teams. Zoom calls don’t need to be long (read: boring). Countless platforms make chatting, video calls, polls and sharing your workflows easier. However, streamlining your use of these platforms is also key. Whether you opt to use Zoom, Slack, Teams, Trello, or a combination of tools, take the time to explore and understand all the functionalities, so that you’re truly tailoring your suite to meet your team’s needs – and leaving out the tools that don’t add to your efficiency. Read on for more tips about building up your communication toolkit below.

For a deep dive into building a thriving remote team, read our step-by-step guide for managers, and for even more actionable tools, explore our top 20 tips for creating successful remote teams.

Effective Communication: The Foundation of Remote Team Success

Communication is one of the key challenges for all business leaders, but it’s particularly challenging for remote teams. Research shows that remote workers are more at risk of feelings of isolation and loneliness, compared with on-site workers.

It’s vital to take stock of how communication is managed in your hybrid team, and actively put processes in place to ensure clarity, timeliness and openness of communication. Communication is the cornerstone of employee wellbeing, productivity and creativity. It’s also how to make your team members feel valued, thereby improving retention.

The remote working boom of the 2020s has seen a host of digital tools enter the market. While many of us were scrambling to set up whatever we could access to keep our teams connected at the start of 2020, there’s so much more on offer now. Tools like Zoom, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Trello and many more can be tailored to assist your team’s collaboration, whether you’re using them to facilitate a real-time brainstorm, share live documents, or create collaborative project workflows.

If your company hasn’t done so recently, now is the time to take stock of the collaboration tools in your toolkit. Consider what you could add to improve your team’s communication and, equally important, consider whether there are any platforms or tools that you could swap out for a more streamlined and effective virtual workspace. Browse these 10 must-have collaboration tools for remote teams to get your audit started.

Cultivating Work Relationships in a Remote Environment

Building and maintaining strong professional relationships is key to worker wellbeing, career progression, and effective teamwork and collaboration. But it’s one of the hardest parts of working from home, where those informal chats are much harder to achieve. Almost 50% of workers find it harder to connect with their colleagues when working from home.

There are, however, ways you can foster team connections, even from afar – whether you’re a remote worker looking to cultivate your workplace relationships, or a leader looking to boost your team’s connectivity.

First, it’s vital to prioritise virtual team-building activities in your company calendar. These should include regular formal team meetings, whether that’s a daily stand-up, a weekly roundtable or a monthly all-company town hall. But you should also create opportunities for more informal social interactions. Think about how you’ve built strong relationships with your colleagues in the past: usually, the coffee runs, lunchroom chats and desk drop-ins are where connections are fostered. You can create space for these interactions online by scheduling virtual coffee breaks, team lunches, mentor check-ins or one-on-ones throughout the week.

And remember, it’s not all about work. Celebrating birthdays, work anniversaries, personal milestones and cultural events with your team is just as important as your project scrums. Creating these rituals will, over time, lead to a stronger sense of camaraderie, decreasing the loneliness that leads to disengagement and dissatisfaction. A recognition tool like Thankbox makes it easy to mark these kinds of milestones with meaningful, tailored and simple gifts.      

How to Improve Remote Work Culture

We know how important it is to create a strong, collaborative and supportive company culture. But how do we go about improving our remote workplace culture?

Feedback is perhaps the most important ingredient in building and nurturing a healthy remote work culture. Research has shown that 80% of workers who receive meaningful feedback are engaged at work, regardless of whether they work in the office or remotely. Provision of regular feedback should be baked into company procedure. Those of us in management or leadership roles should be providing meaningful feedback to our teams regularly, through both formal and informal one-on-one check-ins.

And feedback shouldn’t be a one-way street. It is important to set up a workplace environment that enables a feedback loop and encourages employees to share their thoughts, experiences, and ideas with management. This not only helps workers feel heard and valued, but it also creates a culture of continuous improvement, where space is made for new ideas across the company.

Alongside constructive feedback, regularly recognising employee achievements is a sure way to improve morale and engagement. A culture of appreciation and recognition will keep your workers feeling valued and motivated, ultimately enhancing their well-being and productivity, and reducing staff turnover. Providing recognition, both informally and formally, should be a part of your company culture. For remote teams, it’s particularly important to create opportunities where team members can have their achievements recognised and their wins celebrated in a shared setting. You can easily slot a segment into your regular team meetings or staff newsletter, or create a monthly virtual check-in where wins are shouted out. Recognition doesn’t have to be time-consuming: a simple thank-you gift or personalised message can go a long way towards making your workers feel seen and valued.

And last but not least, take a look at your workplace flexibility. If you’re working in a hybrid environment, then no doubt you’re aware of how important flexibility is to today’s workers. While allowing workers to choose where they work is essential, it’s not the only thing to consider. Flexibility also allows workers to decide when they start and finish their workdays, how they approach a task, how they communicate, and what tools they use to collaborate.

The Emotional Side of Remote Work: Reintroducing Sentiment and Empathy

Emotional intelligence, or EQ, is essential for creating positive work environments. In fact, empathetic leaders perform 40 per cent higher than their peers when it comes to coaching, engagement and decision-making. EQ is especially important in remote work environments, where the added communication challenges require even more from our leaders than a traditional in-person workplace does. When managers and leaders set the tone for empathy and understanding, they create a remote working culture where everyone else in the company can follow suit.

Everything we’ve discussed in this article requires strong EQ: empathy for your employees, an adaptable communication style, an openness to meeting people where they’re at, and the ability to provide appreciation and support. Mastering these skills will help you to create a happy, productive and connected team, remote, hybrid or otherwise. 

If you’re a leader and you find yourself struggling with managing workplace relationships, compelling and persuasive communication, or providing empathy to your employees, you might need to work on your EQ. And that’s okay! Despite what you might have heard, EQ is not a static personality trait. Just like any other leadership skill, it’s something you can target and strengthen with dedicated effort.

The first step is to develop your self-awareness. This can be done through journaling, coaching, seeking feedback from colleagues and managers, therapy, or simply scheduling time to self-reflect. From there, you can identify which aspects of your EQ need work, and identify professional development and training opportunities that can help you reach your goals.

It’s clear now that remote and hybrid work is here to stay, and it’s up to us as leaders and employers to adapt to get the most out of our teams. We’ve explored a range of actionable tips in this article, so now it’s down to you to take some time out to reflect on what your remote or hybrid team needs to start thriving. Do you need to update your digital toolkit? Could you be communicating your company values more clearly? Are you creating enough opportunities for team connection, collaboration and recognition?

Taking the time to reflect on your team’s needs and striving to meet those needs will always pay off. If you’re a leader looking to optimise your remote or hybrid team, consider integrating emotional intelligence into your management style. An injection of empathy might just be what your remote team environment needs to make it the most effective it can be.

Images: Cover | Woman using laptop from her bed | Man working at a desk | Woman Writing on Her Notebook