8 Tips to Keep Remote Employees Engaged

In this guest post, Andrew Tillery, marketing director at MAP Communications, discusses how businesses can boost morale and streamline operations by keeping remote employees engaged.

The modern workplace has gone virtual, and there are more employees working remotely than ever before. COVID accelerated a work from home movement that had been quietly building for years. Employers now face the unique challenge of adapting their businesses for remote work and addressing the experience of their employees. Though replacing a face-to-face meeting with a Zoom call occasionally is an easy task, keeping remote employees engaged for the long haul is no simple task.

Why Keeping Remote Employees Engaged Is Crucial

Remote employee engagement efforts can help keep your team motivated and involved in daily operations all while improving morale. When supervisors and their employees work in harmony, you will see greater productivity, higher rates of job satisfaction, and potential savings on overhead expenses, too. Remote work can be a win-win for everyone involved, but you have got to put in the work to keep your team engaged.

Don’t Confuse Employee Engagement and Employee Satisfaction

In order to address employee engagement, understanding its basic definition is essential. Employee engagement is the commitment a person feels to their workplace, their passion for their job, and the effort they are willing to put into their role. Easily confused for employee satisfaction, engagement specifically refers to the level of motivation or involvement a person feels for the work they do.

Engagement is easy to monitor in person. An employee who rarely speaks up in meetings, doesn’t participate in team-building exercises, and puts forth minimal effort at the office is probably not very engaged. When working from home, however, an employee’s engagement levels may be harder to gauge. Employers must work smarter to motivate and inspire remote workers.

If you are eager to drive engagement in your virtual workplace, give one of these strategies a try.

Embrace Flexibility

The remote workforce as we know it is evolving. Your team may include individuals of all different ages, backgrounds, nationalities, and time zones. Each employee will have their own set of preferences and optimal ways of working. One employee may thrive in the morning while others are more productive in the afternoon or evening hours.

No one-size-fits-all approach to remote work exists. And that’s why employers must embrace flexibility if they hope to keep their teams engaged. Set clear expectations for employee availability, but also encourage flexibility in each person’s schedule. So long as productivity is not suffering, employee free time can and should be incorporated throughout the workday.

As employees get vaccinated and workplaces begin to open, maintaining flexibility remains integral. Many people are eager to get back to normal and work from the office again, but others may be hesitant to disrupt the work from home routine they have so carefully crafted over the last year. A hybrid model may be necessary for some organizations, with employees working both in-house and remotely. Fail to accommodate the preferences of your employees and you may see them less engaged than ever.

Set Meaningful Goals

Discipline is the key to successful remote work. There are a lot of distractions in our homes, and without meaningful goals to work towards, it can be hard to resist the siren call of the dishwasher, the dog, or a quick episode. By setting clear deliverables and specific metrics for success, it is easy to engage employees.

Communication becomes more important when your team is spread across the country or globe. Even if you feel burned out on conference calls, conduct virtual meetings to get updates and ensure projects are on track. A regular employee check-in meeting can do wonders for productivity. Instant messaging apps can help you keep tabs on progress in the meantime.

Encourage Learning

With commutes virtually eliminated by the remote work trend, employee free time is abundant. There has never been a better time for professionals to learn new skills or upgrade their existing skill sets. Webinars, online learning platforms, and virtual professional development opportunities abound in the COVID era, and employees do not even need to leave their couch to help boost their skills.

There are other benefits of investing in your employees as well. By promoting learning among employees, you help keep them engaged and motivated. Encourage employees to learn new skills even if they opt to explore non-work-related courses. Art classes, self-defense modules, and foreign language courses can all go a long way to relieve stress and boost one’s mood.

Promote Self Care

It is hard to stay engaged at work when you are not feeling like yourself. As we all adapt to working from home, self-care becomes more important than ever. Physical and mental health is crucial, especially during a pandemic. Employees may not realize they have been isolating themselves, staying indoors too long, or missing out on their usual fitness routines. That is why it is a great time to incorporate a wellness plan for your team.

Thankfully, there are more fitness apps and online classes than ever before. Make the most of this technology by encouraging employees to take time out of their days to prioritize wellness. Mindfulness apps can have a similar impact on the mental health of your team. However, you choose to promote self-care, make sure you do so with an eye on employee free time. People are not likely to be motivated to work out after long, stressful days on the clock!

Help Employees Stay Connected

Away from the office, it is easy to feel isolated, detached, and out of the loop. With no watercooler to stand around with colleagues, casual conversation becomes a challenge. Those low-key chats are where some of the very best ideas are tossed around. It becomes harder to maintain the company culture as employees scatter to the wind. And since so much of human interaction is communicated through body language, remote workers may miss out on important non-verbal messaging when they chat through email or instant messages.

While we typically think of office culture in terms of cubicle decor, impromptu team lunches, and happy hours after work, it is possible to translate these experiences for the remote worker. As you and your colleagues learn to navigate this new professional landscape, arrange social events like trivia games, coffee roulette, or other icebreakers. These team-building activities help connect employees who might not otherwise interact much, ensuring they stay engaged and communicative for the long haul.

Show Appreciation

We are living and working through unprecedented times. Acknowledging a job well done is an important part of company culture and employee engagement. Too often, though, these acknowledgments go out the window when folks are working from home. When employees feel appreciated, they are more likely to remain loyal to their companies for the long haul. It is important to evolve the way we show appreciation for remote workers.

The next time you schedule an employee check-in to acknowledge a job well done, make the recognition visible to other team members. This doesn’t have to be a big deal – a simple “well done” gif in a team chat can go a long way to highlight a person’s efforts to the entire organization. Of course, any appreciation you show should be on top of appropriate compensation, benefits, and promotions. Employees can see right through lip service, and hollow appreciation may push workers to seek other job opportunities.

Ask for Feedback

Remote work is new for most of us. It is okay if you have not perfected the art of managing people from afar just yet. What is important is the continued effort to improve and evolve. It is impossible to know where you are going without a full understanding of where you stand. If you are hoping to engage remote employees, start by taking their temperature. A simple survey asking for feedback can give you a good feel for the current climate and where to improve.

An employee check-in survey could ask a single question like “How likely are you to recommend our company to a friend?” or take a more comprehensive approach. Frequent, quick surveys are especially useful when you are eager to understand the employee experience, but longer versions can provide much-needed context for institutional issues. Regardless of your survey strategy, these tools can offer you the insight necessary to improve your team’s daily engagement levels.

In Summary

The factors that motivate employees to be engaged with their work vary from organization to organization. As more jobs become remote, it will be up to management to evolve with the times. In looking to engage remote employees, employers should prioritize communication, exercise empathy, and ask for feedback frequently. Employee check-in meetings can be valuable, but they should be just one part of your engagement strategy. By encouraging learning and self-care practices, employers foster a virtual working environment that is safe for innovation and risk-taking while improving employee retention.

There is no single solution that will ease all kinks from the remote work dynamic. With a bit of imagination, managers can spark camaraderie and encourage creativity, even when your team is working from home.

Author Bio

Andrew Tillery is the Marketing Director at MAP Communications, a leading provider of phone answering services and call center solutions for some of America’s finest companies. Hailing from Oregon and having spent several years in Washington, Andrew has a damp, green place in his heart for the Pacific Northwest no matter where he goes. When he is not in front of a computer, he’s fueling his passions for sports and the outdoors, or recovering from those activities at the best brewery in whatever town he’s in.