Successfully Creating a Remote Workplace Culture

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By Rachel Pelta

One of the biggest hiring trends for 2020 is company or corporate culture. Even though the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted businesses in numerous ways, company culture still matters. It gives job seekers insight into how much (or how little) a company values its employees. And company culture also tells current employees how they matter (or don’t matter, unfortunately) to the company.

Creating and conveying company culture is relatively easy to do in an in-person business. It’s shared during staff meetings, casual encounters in the break room, and during evaluations. The decor and vibe of the office can also reflect deeply held values.

Creating and conveying company culture in a fully remote company isn’t as simple. There aren’t many impromptu casual encounters, and staff meetings and evaluations are seldom face-to-face.

While creating a remote workplace culture is challenging, the benefits it will provide your company are invaluable. And, culture is, perhaps, even more important to create and convey when you’re fully remote if you want to recruit and retain quality employees.

What Is Company Culture?

Culture is the social behaviors and norms found in a society and shared by all of its members. So, by extension, company culture is the shared set of behaviors and norms of a company’s employees. To put it more simply, company culture is what you do, why you do it, and how each employee’s individual efforts contribute to the company’s overall success.

Just like each company is unique, so is its culture. There’s no one-size-fits-all strategy to create, grow, or maintain a company culture.

What Company Culture Is Not

It’s also important to understand what company culture is not. Company culture, for example, is not things like the dress code or the perks and benefits the company offers. Instead, these things are a reflection of the company’s culture.

For example, if part of your company culture is conformity and strict adherence to protocol, then you’d likely have a strict dress code that requires suits and ties, no Casual Friday, and serious limitations to remote work. You may also have hard “start” times, where everybody is expected to be online or in the office by a certain time. If, however, your company culture is one of trying out new and untested theories to see what happens, you’d likely have a loose dress code where every day is Casual Friday, and flexible work is either encouraged or perhaps the only way you work.

Why Company Culture Is Important

Creating and maintaining a solid company culture can help you achieve business success. A well-defined and understood company culture can help you hire and retain the best staff for your company.

When employees understand and embrace your company’s culture, they believe they are part of a team, and that their individual contributions help the company grow and succeed. They are motivated to do the best job that they can, making them engaged and positive employees who are less likely to quit their jobs.

However, when staff doesn’t understand the company culture (as in, they don’t know what the company does, why it makes the decisions it does, or how they provide value to the overall company), they become less engaged. And, over time, these less engaged staff are more likely to quit, or worse, stay at the job but do the bare minimum.

Why Creating a Remote Culture Matters

Before we explain how to create a remote workplace culture, let’s talk about why creating a remote culture matters.

While a company’s culture exists no matter where employees work, the fact is that remote employees are more likely to feel isolated and less connected to their coworkers because they work remotely. This disconnection can cause your employee’s work performance to suffer.

A fully remote team lacks the visual cues an in-person team has. If you don’t see your staff staring off into space, dozing off at meetings, or just generally seeming grumpy, you’re more likely to miss the signs that your staff isn’t as engaged as they could be. A company culture that engages and includes remote staff can help you head off any performance problems before they happen.

Right now, building a remote company culture is more important than ever. COVID-19 forced those with remote-friendly jobs to work at home without warning. As the days blend together, the economic forecast remains uncertain, and people start to get antsy, staff may be feeling disconnected from their jobs.

Creating a remote work culture amid a pandemic won’t be easy. But it’s not impossible. And reaching out to staff to help them reengage with the job may be the best way for your company to weather the pandemic and retain your best staff.

How to Create a Remote Workplace Culture

The reality about building a company culture—no matter where your employees are located—is that company culture is ultimately about actions, not location. If you create and maintain your company culture, the fact that your staff is scattered across multiple time zones shouldn’t matter. Your company culture will still get through loud and clear.

That’s not to say that creating a remote workplace culture is not without its challenges. Without the in-person reinforcement (say, a random chat in the break room about how a project is going), building a remote culture requires more intentional actions to ensure that the culture is communicated loud and clear.

Start With the Onboarding Process

Onboarding a new staff member for a remote team is, in some respects, no different than onboarding a new staff member for an in-person team. You’ll send the new person the information they need (like where to go or where to log in that first day), give them passwords so they can access company email, and let the team know the new person starts on Monday, likely through a company-wide (or team-wide) email.

Remote or in person, you probably also give the new employee an orientation guide, have them fill out all the necessary paperwork, and perhaps let them know what they will learn over the next 30 days or so.

The difference, though, is that a remote team member doesn’t have that in-person experience of meeting the rest of the company as they take a tour of the office. As a remote company, it’s your job to fill in these gaps, so new staff are introduced to your company culture and can start understanding that they are an important part of the company.

So, consider creative ways to fill in those gaps. For example, the CEO can create a welcome video for all new staff to review. It doesn’t have to be personalized, but it’s something that the CEO can use to talk about the company’s vision and mission.

Send a swag bag full of branded gear so the staff person can feel like part of the team and set up a virtual lunch with the whole team on the first day. Or, pair the new staff person up with a “buddy” who isn’t on the new person’s team so they can meet someone outside of their department and get a whole new perspective of the company.

These gestures let new staff know that they are welcome and more than just another new hire. They are part of a team and essential to the company’s success.

Maintenance Mode

Creating company culture is only the first step. You have to maintain and communicate your company culture, and that doesn’t just mean with new staff.

For example, how do you demonstrate to staff that they matter to the company—outside of annual raises and bonuses? Do you:

Send a fun gift on their birthday?
Share positive feedback outside of the annual review (especially if it comes from a client or outside vendor)?
Send a company-wide or team-wide newsletter?
Create ways for team members to stay connected outside of work?

No matter how small, letting staff know that they matter to the team and their contributions are important can go a long way toward creating positive engagement.

But don’t wait around for these small moments to happen. Take a pulse check of your staff and ask how they feel about the company culture. An anonymous survey is best, but check in with your staff and see if they understand their role and how they contribute to the company. If a person indicates they are confused or don’t understand how their work matters, there’s a communication problem that needs to be addressed.

Manage From Afar

While managing a team is, in many ways, the same whether you do it in person or remotely, there are some aspects of managing a remote team that are not the same as managing an in-person team.

The same goes when communicating and maintaining corporate culture. Managers play a key role in helping promote company culture, but accomplishing that goal remotely is different. Successfully creating and communicating company culture to a remote team requires that managers act with intention.

If part of your remote culture is open and honest (but thoughtful and positive) communication, make sure your managers (or you) understand how to accomplish that goal. For example, encourage that employees consistently receive feedback from their managers. Especially in a remote environment, it’s important that feedback is constructive and frequent.

Hard But Worth It

It takes a lot of work to build and maintain a company culture. However, that hard work will pay off in the long run with engaged staff who care about their job and are willing to work their hardest to see the company succeed.

FlexJobs has been a leader and advocate in remote work for over 12 years. We work with companies of every shape and size to provide support and advice for any business that wants to go remote. And, we’ve been recognized for our company culture throughout the years. If you’re looking for guidance, get in touch with us today.

Talk to a FlexJobs Expert About Building Remote Company Culture >>>

Photo Credit: bigstockphoto.com

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Successfully Creating a Remote Workplace Culture