5 unique low-to-no cost ways to connect with remote employees

by JT Galloway

How do we engage with remote workers? How can we show we care about them? What do they want? These questions and more relating to engaging with remote workers has been some of the most common questions we've been hearing from organizations. We wanted to give just a few low-to-no cost ways to inject some fun into your remote culture. After all, we all need more fun this year!

  1. Custom virtual backgrounds - This is incredibly easy, quick, and can be fun. The most common way to do this is to hand it off to your marketing team and say "we'd love to have a fun virtual background...go". Your talented team can come up with a captain's quarters from a ship, or maybe a game-of-thrones seat for them to be in. Don't have a marketing team able to do this? No problem! Make it a team effort by getting ideas and assigning tasks for it. With how many zoom meetings there are now, this will pay high dividends through the year.
  2. Regular social collisions - Companies have seen success in having virtual happy hours, team meetings, and other ways of having everyone "bump into one another". Here's the thing, it's harder now, it just is. There's no doubt about it. So, it's going to take some input, team commitment, and fresh ideas to keep having your coworkers interact with one another. Maybe have a fun snapchat challenge, or possibly marco-polo stories of funny work stories. Opening these lines of communication up will grow relationships deeper in a time where we're looking more and more for that.
  3. "Treat yo'self baskets" - Employee appreciation can't go away right now. On the contrary, it's needed now more than ever. How you treat your teams and employees right now will stick with them for the remainder of them working with you. This moment in time will be something all of us will remember forever - who we worked for, what we did/didn't get to do, cancelled plans, and how we managed to get through it. So, why not get them a small token of appreciation? These baskets can easily be under $50 and can give a sense of commitment from the employer to the employee and let us tell you...that will be reciprocated!
  4. EI support - If you've read any of our blogs, we're a big fan of EI trainings. Emotional Intelligence is the biggest determinant of whether or not someone will be successful in business. It's what we look for and see in great leaders. Everyone right now needs this type of support to better manage stress, change management, resiliency, and mindfulness. There are plenty of apps, websites, and professionals (shameless plug for us) that can help you and your teams learn more about these so that your team is working more optimally.
  5. Milestone celebrations - When we say milestone, let's first say we don't mean sales quotas or that the company made XXX this last quarter. While that information isn't inherently bad to send out, so many companies have this as their main focus of celebrations. To frame this, think about your most proud moments in life. Take a good minute or two to reflect on that. Some of the most common moments we hear about are weddings, first homes, graduating college, and having a baby. Yet, for some odd reason, companies don't tend to celebrate these alongside their employees. Let us be real clear: DO THIS!!! You can have such a positive impact on their lives and when you invest into them as unique individuals rather than sales people meant to make the company more money, you'll have a more loyal, engaged, and thriving employee.

If your company is interested in having a culture that thrives, we'd love to come alongside you in your journey, so feel free to Contact Us today!