Use These 5 Tips to Improve the Employee Experience for Your Remote Team
Even before the onset of the pandemic, businesses had already been looking into shifting to a remote working model. Aside from keeping employees safe, remote working is a cost-effective way of doing business. For one, you lessen the cost of office rental, electricity, and internet connectivity.
However, many remote workers feel that their employee experience is somehow lacking.
In today’s pandemic-ridden times, remote work set-ups are now more prevalent than ever. Besides lessening the risk of exposure to the disease, remote teams are also a cost-effective way to run an office, not needing any rent or amenities.
However, like any other business, you should still give your work-from-home staff the attention and work culture they need to be productive. It is difficult to provide an employee experience that simulates the office setting when your entire team works remotely. You will need to start accepting that the remote working model is here to stay, then build your employee experience around this fact
Why is the Employee Experience Important?
Employee experience is the overall feeling your employees have working at your company. Your employees need to have a separation between their work and personal life. They also need to feel they’re doing something worthwhile at work. If their work makes them feel like robots in an assembly line, you are not providing them with a good employee experience.
Your job as an employer is not just to give your employees a job and a steady paycheck. You should also help your team members grow personally and professionally. If your employee experience encourages development, your employees will stay loyal and motivated. Those who choose to move on, on the other hand, will look back fondly at their experience as a time of growth and learning.
Providing a good employee experience will improve productivity, reduce employee attrition, and help your business build a positive reputation that helps it attract the best talent available.
How can You Improve the Employee Experience?
The employee experience extends beyond the four walls of your office. It involves every facet of your relationship with your remote team members. Here are some things you’ll need to work on:
Investing in these areas will increase morale, improve retention rates, and build a better employer image. Read more for a more detailed guide on improving employee experience.
1. Align Employees with Your Purpose and Mission
When employees are not aware of your company’s values, they often do their daily tasks mechanically. On the other hand, an awareness of your corporate purpose and mission gives them a frame of reference for everything they do.
Here’s how you can align your workforce with your company’s mission statement:
- Mention it every time you have an all-hands meeting.
- Refer to it as the end goal whenever an employee proposes a new process, marketing campaign, budget, quarterly roadmap, etc.
- Perform employee assessments using your purpose and mission statement as the framework.
You may also create a separate mission statement that focuses on what your team does. For instance, a UX design team mission statement could be something like this: “Deliver a unique user experience that will make the user stop looking elsewhere”.
2. Support Work-Life Balance
The distinction between work and life is critical when it comes to a remote setup. A study published by Lehigh University discovered a relationship between the expectation to respond to emails after working hours and emotional exhaustion. If you want your employees to work at a high level, you cannot expect them to stay in work mode when they’re supposed to be resting.
This means respecting the off hours of your employees. When it’s 5 o’clock, it’s time to call it a day. Refrain from sending texts, emails, and calling your employees’ personal numbers when they’re off-duty. This practice will reinforce the separation between work and personal life and keep your employees from being stressed out when they should be resting.
You should also observe this work-life balance for yourself. Operate around the notion that you only have until 5:00 pm to do all your work. As much as you’d always want to be a step ahead of your employees so you can guide them, you need to do this planning during work hours – preferably at the start of the day.
Observing this habit isn’t only beneficial to your health, but it will also prevent you from sending emails to your employees after office hours. Respecting your own work-life balance will also ensure that you respect your employees’ personal time.
3. Create a Culture of Teamwork and Collaboration
Teamwork and collaboration has been shown to increase productivity in businesses of all sizes. In a remote work environment, it may be difficult to feel the presence of your co-workers, which might prove to be a challenge . That’s one of the downsides to a remote set up since interaction with your co-workers is one of the most precious experiences you’ll have in your employee experience.
Here’s what you can do to create a culture of teamwork and collaboration.
- Host virtual team-building activities.
- Start your meetings with ice breakers.
- Learn to write better and communicate your ideas well to make your messages more effective.
- Look for opportunities for your team members to share their knowledge.
A collaborative team is a productive one, even if the team members are scattered across time zones. Through team-building activities and knowledge sharing, your team can become familiar with each others’ strengths and capabilities and collaborate on important projects.
4. Use New Technology for Communication
Another critical way to bridge the connection gap caused by not being all together in one office is using the latest communication tools. Here’s a list of the applications you’ll be needing to keep your remote team connected.
- Messaging and collaboration platform (Slack)
- Video conferencing (Zoom)
- Kanban board (Trello)
- Knowledge base handler (Atlassian)
- Cloud storage (Google Drive)
- Shift management software (ZoomShift)
A messaging platform helps people communicate instantly and share files in real-time. Video conferencing allows you to see and hear your co-workers during meetings. Meanwhile, a Kanban board lets you assign tasks and track their progress.
A knowledge base handler collects all office documents, FAQ blogs for employees, SOPs in writing, and many other pieces of information that employees might want access to. Your company cloud storage is where all company files are stored and also makes it easier for employees to collaborate on files.
Finally, shift management software helps you assign employees to the correct shift. It also allows them to swap working hours or cover for each other.
These tools make communicating a breeze and encourage your employees to collaborate. With applications such as these, it’s like you’re all together in one spot.
5. Rework Your Onboarding Process
The onboarding process for a remote working business is somewhat different from the new hire orientation programs you’ve attended as an on-site worker. However, there are a few on-site practices you can rework into your remote onboarding process. You may use this checklist as a starting point:
- Give a list of company rules that they should follow.
- Give them a list of scheduled meetings.
- Introduce them to the people they’ll be working with.
- Ensure that they already have the devices and software they need before their start date.
- Have something fun and unwinding prepared for the Friday of your new employees’ first week. This can be something like a remote Kahoot game or a movie night. The goal of this is to distinguish between work and off hours properly.
You’d want your new employees to develop healthy habits that fully distinguish their work time from all the distractions at home. A proper onboarding process will make this distinction for your remote employees who’ll take with them as they stay longer in your company.
Employee Experience Takeaways
The employee experience is an important factor in creating a productive workplace, especially if your employees are in different parts of the world. Aside from maintaining a healthy work-life balance, your employee experience encourages personal and professional development, improves team productivity, and increases employee retention.
To create an excellent employee experience for your remote team, start by aligning your team with your company and team mission statements.
You also need to get your team to know each other through team-building activities and collaborative projects using communications software. Finally, rework your onboarding process to suit a remote working setup.
By providing a good employee experience for your remote team, you help them out of their shells and encourage them to perform at their best.
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