I’ve been well acquainted with working remotely for many years. As an analyst (my first position at Omnia), I was able to telecommute a few days a week. (The term “telecommute” tells you just how long ago that was – and how ahead of its time Omnia was in allowing employees to do so.) Years later, I started working completely from home, though I would still occasionally come in to see my in-office colleagues. In 2020 when many offices had to temporarily shut their doors, out of necessity all Omnia employees began working from home. Because of the forethought and groundwork laid by Omnia leadership years prior, the transition was seamless. So much so that our company eventually became a fully remote operation, and now every employee is a remote worker.
One of the biggest takeaways from all my years of working remotely is the value of collaboration and teamwork. Collaboration is vital to all organizations, no matter what business model they follow. While there are challenges involved in fostering teamwork among remote coworkers – namely the physical distance – it’s those very challenges that make it all the more important for companies to be intentional about facilitating collaboration among their personnel.
Some of the benefits of cultivating strong team dynamics within remote employees are:
Collaborative virtual teams don’t just happen. Leadership must be purposeful about putting strategies in place to create and nurture this dynamic. Here are 4 things to focus on when you’re laying the groundwork for your remote personnel.
Gaining insight into what makes each employee tick is the first step in creating a collaborative environment, even if that environment is virtual. A behavioral assessment, like The Omnia Assessment, is a helpful tool for discovering and understanding your employees’ strengths, challenge areas, and motivators. Equipped with this information, you can develop effective strategies for keeping your team’s efforts unified and moving forward.
Who on the team needs regular video calls and meetings to talk through assignments in real time? Who needs agendas sent out a few days early so they have time to formulate their ideas? How many meetings is too many for your reserved employees? How many is too few for socially driven personnel? It can be a challenge to find the right balance for a diverse team, but understanding each person’s intrinsic traits is foundational for figuring it all out.
Effective communication within remote teams helps minimize misunderstandings and keeps everyone on the same page, so set up clear guidelines for team interactions and dialogue. This includes defining when to use email, instant messaging, and video calls for different types of communication.
Also, use your knowledge of personality insights and employees’ different communication styles and preferences when establishing these channels. Some people will want to communicate primarily via video or phone calls, while others will prefer chats or emails. Try to accommodate these preferences when possible and offer a variety of methods of communication. Yet also ensure each mode of communication is the most effective for the specific task or situation. (We’ve all had meetings that should have been emails, and we’ve all also received information in an email that would have been better delivered through a phone call.)
Promote a culture of knowledge sharing among virtual colleagues. In addition to providing collaboration tools for communication, project/task management, and scheduling, encourage the team to share information through document repositories, wikis, online forums, and other platforms. These outlets can enable employees to contribute insights, ideas, best practices, and resources to other members of the team.
Despite physical distance, encourage team building and team bonding activities to foster relationships and trust. This can include virtual coffee breaks, online games, or group projects that require team members to work together toward a common goal.
Fostering remote collaboration requires a focused aim on the part of leadership, but the benefits far outweigh the effort put into it. By implementing these strategies, organizations can enhance collaboration among remote employees, leading to improved productivity and a cohesive team environment.
Omnia has been cultivating collaborative virtual teams for years, starting with the power of personality insights. Let us show you how to understand your employees on a deeper level and how to put that knowledge to work to benefit your remote teams. Contact us today for a complimentary assessment!
It is your new employee’s first day. Anxiety is building; questions are swirling. Onsite new hires worry about getting lost, talking to new people at the water cooler, and finding good places to have lunch. Remote work provides a whole new set of concerns, both big and small. Will my internet go out right in the middle of my first training session? Is my background professional enough or should I enable the blur setting? Will I mesh with my manager’s leadership style? Will my coworkers like me? In either case, the most fundamental question is: Is this the right place for me? This is the question you must address, so your new employees feel comfortable enough to learn all the new things they need to learn, ask the questions they need to ask, and bring the knowledge, skills, and abilities they were hired for to their new roles. You have three opportunities to impress upon your employees what your corporate culture truly is and how they can be a part of it—before, during, and after the hiring process.
It all begins before the hiring process. When candidates search for an employment opportunity, they are usually looking at many different companies. One way to stand out from the crowd is to be clear about who your company is right at the outset. Take a look at your website and social media presence. Better yet, have people who do not work at your company look at it and provide feedback on what they believe your company does and what kind of company you are. Is it a long-established company with a storied history? A plucky startup? Finding its rhythm and about to explode onto the scene as a major player? Who is your customer? Is it a niche market or something with mass appeal? What makes your company stand out? Being clear about who you are as a company helps attract candidates who will be a good fit.
During the hiring process there are several touchpoints, and your culture should be infused at each of them. Ensuring that you accurately represent the role in your job ad is paramount to finding the right person. Be clear about the level of authority, the daily duties and responsibilities, short-term and long-term goals are also important. Your job ads should include a small blurb about the company. It should succinctly convey enough for the applicant to have a high-level understanding of your culture. Where you place the job ad can also provide insight about your company. Beyond online job boards, you can post it on association sites with which your company is affiliated as well as associations for the industry that your candidate may be a part of. For example, if you are looking for an experienced corporate trainer, posting the job on the Association for Talent Development’s (ATD) site would be appropriate.
Once the prospect is intrigued by your job ad, the next touchpoint is the application process. When the candidate applies online, is the look and feel branded with your colors and fonts? Is the logo visible? Is the application itself long and arduous—a common complaint among applicants—or simple and quick? Does the candidate receive any sort of confirmation that their application has been received? Are the next steps clear?
The interview is next. Normally, candidates come to your office for the interview where they meet one or more people from your company and see your company’s culture first-hand. When conducting interviews remotely, you can take a moment to explain a bit about your company at the beginning of the interview. Perhaps you can tell them how you found the corporate culture different from other companies where you previously worked?
Finally, after you hire your new employee, you have a chance to demonstrate the culture during onboarding. Prior to their first day, send an email that provides clear instructions, their logon credentials, and how they will learn to use your system(s). If you send them a laptop, include some branded items like a mousepad. Make it personal and fun. Print the history of the company and the mission statement and values. Your remote orientation should match your in-person one. At small companies, the new hire may be solely matched with a mentor who shows them the ropes. At a mid-sized company, you may assign the new hire to a buddy as well as have them attend a brief orientation. At a large company, there may be an orientation that goes on for multiple days. Formal orientation programs can be moved online as other training has been.
This is where a personality assessment can add extra value beyond hiring for job fit. Share the candidate’s report with the trainer, mentor, and direct supervisor so they can adapt to meet the motivational drivers of your new hire(s). You can also provide your new hire(s) with one of Omnia’s self-awareness reports as a way to build trust, create transparency, and inspire open communication in a remote environment.
Millions of us are still working (and living) at a distance due to COVID-19. We’re heading into another holiday season socially distanced, and it’s having an impact. Even if you’re taking steps to help remote workers prevent burnout, balance working from home with homelife, and avoid Zoom fatigue, it can still be a difficult time for many.
In fact, it can have a negative impact on overall health. Did you know an article in Public Policy & Aging Report states that loneliness is as bad for your health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day? In 2021, we’re well aware of smoking as a bad habit and detriment to our health, but we’re only at the beginning of seeing how loneliness and isolation impact the masses.
Fortunately, there are answers and they’re generally easier than kicking nicotine. With these practical actions, you can help your remote employees build strong social ties, connect to their colleagues and leadership, and promote stronger communication – all of which help battle loneliness and isolation.
Besides the obvious health benefits, there are business benefits as well. Research shows social support is important because it can cushion us against a variety of anxieties, including workplace stress and isolation, that can compromise health. Better health means fewer sick days. Less stress often means more focus. Keeping people engaged benefits everyone. It makes sense to put a few things in place to facilitate social interactions.
Greatplacetowork.com studied employee experience and found key aspects of workplace culture that affect how connected and supported employees feel. They have discovered several key points that contribute to the well-being and mental health of employees:
Giving back, with time or money, has proven to produce feel-good results. Actual “acts of kindness” can reduce loneliness as well as anxiety-producing hormones, so encouraging people to get involved could also improve their mental health.
People love to feel good, so encouraging these acts and supporting your team’s efforts can benefit them and your company. People who feel good about what they do are more likely to stay engaged and champion their workplace.
At Omnia, we’re discussing local charities to support as a company-wide activity, and many of our employees have activities they support outside of work. Perhaps one of our next ice breakers (see #4) can be about “acts of kindness”.
Evidence shows that online acts of kindness are as beneficial as face-to-face acts of generosity. There are several ways to encourage philanthropy while working remotely:
It can be easy to forego celebrations when in remote or hybrid work environments. While remote work is great for flexibility and reducing commuting stress (and cost), it can also be easy to overlook achievements.
There’s good news here as well. "Celebrations” don’t have to be elaborate. If you know your employees, you can provide a personalized touch or a thoughtful gift with your verbal congrats. A little customization goes a long way.
We celebrated Tony Curtachio during our All Company meeting to acknowledge 25 years at Omnia. Among other things, we offered congratulations and shared cake from a local favorite, Wright’s Gourmet House.
Some ideas to celebrate with your remote workforce:
In an office, people tend to gather informally or pop over to each other's offices or desks throughout the week. These exchanges may seem trivial, but they are important to bring people together. In a remote or hybrid environment, it can be easy to not talk to a colleague for days, even weeks. It’s important to encourage interactions across departments when possible. It can build camaraderie and facilitate future communication.
Consider monthly check-ins with team members you don’t work with directly. A colleague of mine and I set up a monthly check-in when we realized we only interacted during last-minute projects, and the monthly 20-minute calls helped build a different level of communication. We regularly catch up on projects we need clarity on but also life and family things we would not discuss in a larger group. Encourage these 20 to 30-minute blocks of time; anecdotally, they’re useful in strengthening communication.
At Omnia, we often have ice breakers during our cross-department monthly meetings to get everyone engaged and chatting (aloud or in the chat). It’s a fantastic way to learn about the colleagues you don’t see throughout the week.
Supporting employee well-being works best when individualized. This can be leader-employee or peer-to-peer. Even better if you have a variety of 1:1 interactions.
These chats can be work-related but open to other topics or stressors. Sometimes, all it takes is a quick 5 minutes to talk through the workload to make you feel heard and less stressed. It also helps prioritize assignments and tasks to say them aloud to someone else.
No two people are the same. Every person on your team will need varying levels of interaction and engagement. It may not be the people you suspect, especially if you have onboarded people remotely or have staff you haven’t seen regularly in months or more.
It can take months or even years on the job for you to uncover every person's specific communication style and engagement needs on your own. In the meantime, your employees can become frustrated and less engaged or heading toward burnout if they have a manager who does not understand how to motivate them.
The Omnia Team is here to help. We help throughout the employee lifecycle to support you. Our assessments offer real, immediate insight into your team including ways to motivate them individually and challenges to watch out for so you can coach a solution before there’s a problem. At the end of the day, we all just need to communicate in the methods that best fit our personalities. With the Omnia Assessment, you are leagues closer than you would be on your own.
Working remotely certainly has its perks for your team members. Sometimes, doing so is a necessity. But, prolonged (or indefinite) physical separation can cause employees to feel lonely and disconnected from their work. Unfortunately, when their morale drops, so does their productivity.
As a leader, it’s your job to make sure that doesn’t happen. It’s your responsibility to keep your group unified, high functioning, highly effective, and in good spirits. How do you accomplish this when team members are scattered across the country or even the globe?
Bonus read: Conflict Resolution for Teams Working Remotely.
Enter: virtual team building. Team building involves getting employees together so that they can feel connected and learn about one another. Done right, the process can result in a tight-knit group that communicates effectively and collaborates to get things done for your organization. For best results, it should be done regularly and regarded as a critical business activity. Virtual team building is taking this important practice online.
Here are four main principles to keep in mind as you design your virtual team building program:
Let’s look at each in detail.
Clear, continuous communication is always necessary for your team to function at its best. However, it becomes even more critical when your employees are working alone in their homes. They can’t walk down the hall, pop their head into an office, and say, “got a minute?” That means they need to feel comfortable communicating with you and their team members in other ways.
So, how do you ensure that information and support flow as they should? Try implementing these tips:
When your team is virtual, in-person meetings are obviously out. That means you’ll need to find other ways to bring your team together and keep them on the same page. Fortunately, there are many tools you can use to make gatherings and collaboration a snap.
For example, Asana and Trello can help your virtual team keep projects organized. Platforms like Slack facilitate conversation throughout the workday. Programs like Zoom allow your team to actually see each other through video chat and are great for presentations. Of course, there are countless other options on the market. Your team’s unique needs will determine which specific tools to implement.
Your employees are people outside of work that have their own interests and like to blow off steam. When you encourage them to be their true selves during business hours, you’ll boost their morale and gain their trust. When you provide opportunities for your team members to be themselves together, they’ll forge lasting bonds that translate to improved employee engagement and productivity.
Here are a few ways your team can do this virtually:
Your team members crave professional development opportunities, whether they’re onsite or remote. When you provide them with a chance to learn new information and skills, you increase their loyalty to your organization, strengthen your team's talent, and set them up for future success. From a team-building perspective, it’s vital to give your group time to grow together.
Here’s how you could do it virtually:
At Omnia, we believe that truly understanding your team members is the key to leading them effectively. Our behavioral and cognitive assessments reveal deep insight into each employee’s strengths, challenges, and work preferences. This knowledge can help you create the ideal virtual team-building program for your group. The information you’ll get is so good that you might want to encourage results sharing as a team-building exercise!
Team building is essential for having a high-producing, tight-knit employee group. But, when your team members are remote, you need to get a little creative to make it happen. With the right tools, some employee intel, a willingness to experiment, and a few online-friendly activities at hand, virtual team building is possible.
Tell us: Which virtual team-building methods work best in your organization?
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Please tell me this has happened to you too. You go to Teams with thirty seconds to spare before the meeting starts to discover the meeting was set up in Zoom. Zoom says there’s a meeting already in progress (yes, and I’m supposed to be in it!), and it won’t let you in. Apparently, someone forgot to “open up the room.” What? Now I’m late, and I haven’t even gotten in my car.
I’ve also been blindsided (I’m a bit dramatic) with a GoToConnect meeting when I didn’t realize we were even using GoToConnect for meetings. Of course, I was trying to enter using Zoom. And to make things really interesting, I’m part of a 3-person special project team; we meet using Teams video chat. We call the team leader using that handy little phone icon. At least that’s how we’ve done it the last four times we’ve met. Only this time, after I click the phone icon, at the exact right time, I’m met with a “why didn’t you use the meeting ID link in the meeting, invite?” And now, for reasons that make no sense, I’m the one who has everyone confused. Now, admittedly, it was on the invite, but who reads those whenever you’ve been meeting with this work team the same way for a month? Sigh. At least I had the right platform at that time. Celebrate the little wins.
Being in the personality business, I can tell you; I have high attention to detail. That’s a tall column 8 on the Omnia profile. I like nothing more than being prepared and in the know on how things are going down. Also, although I am an introvert, I love our video meeting and collaboration tools. Each one has something about it that I appreciate. Teams is great for internal stuff, and the screen share is so easy; we’re about to experiment with break-out sessions next time, so that will be cool. Zoom is great for both internal and external meetings. It’s easy to access, and everyone seems to know how to use it. But here’s my first piece of advice:
Tip 1: Have a consistent way of doing meetings. As a structured person, it would be nice to know that for all internal team meetings, we’ll use Teams, not Zoom, not Skype, not GoToConnect...Teams. And that we will use Zoom for meetings involving external people. Just some easy formula I can rely on. And truth be told, this is good for all personality types because likely your low attention to detail staff will only be skimming your invite and the high attention to detail staff want some structure, so it’s a win-win. Basically, if you’re throwing darts to decide which virtual meeting tool to use for your next meeting, someone is bound to get frustrated. If you crave a little spontaneity, leave the last-minute surprises to impromptu video chats with one or two other people. You could all play virtual rock-paper-scissors to see who gets to pick the platform. But the bigger the group, the longer it takes to sort out the issues when one, two, or three people make the same mistake and attempt to join a meeting using the wrong platform.
Now, regardless of what platform you are using, let's talk about ways to make the most of every meeting that plays into each person's motivators on your staff. This is where behavioral insight can be so helpful.
Tip 2: Use the chat feature to appeal to your cautious, introverted team members. Ensure they know chat (typing, not talking) is available and that someone will be monitoring the chatbox for questions. It's best if the chat moderator is not the presenter/meeting leader. Get a volunteer who can alert the meeting leader that there is a question. We have the moderator read the question aloud, but we don’t call out who asked the question. The reserved analytics on your team will love you for this. They don’t mind being seen but talking in front of the group can be just as uncomfortable for them on a video call as it is in an in-person meeting. It’s too easy for people to feel like they are interrupting.
Tip 3: Always prepare feeder questions to get the ball rolling or to fill in dead air. Instead of asking if anyone has questions and crossing your fingers that someone does, throw out a question in the chatbox. This helps ease any anxiety people might be feeling about asking the first question or wondering if their question is too basic. This especially helps the more introverted, risk-averse people on your team. Of course, there are no bad questions. And if the meeting is on how to use a new software -or virtual meeting platform – you’ll get plenty of questions.
Tip 4: Gamify where you can. We meet monthly to sharpen skills on a wide range of topics, from new software and business trends to Omnia products and services; we call it the Omnia Learning Lab. Our last meeting was all about using SharePoint (a great collaboration tool), and we broke the ice using Kahoot, a fun quiz app. Most people enjoy games regardless of their personality type, though this is a great way to pull in the driven, impatient people on your team. We are also following up that meeting with a virtual scavenger hunt on SharePoint to encourage people to get in there and explore the application (and possibly win an Amazon gift card – as if Amazon doesn’t come to my door enough). So, sit back and watch while the competitive streak is ignited in your team. We have a week, and I’m in it to win it.
Tip 5: Use share screen; many people are visual learners and need to actually see what you are talking about. Plus, in remote meetings, you need ways to keep people fully engaged. If you happen to be meeting on a cloud-based collaboration tool, you can have people go directly to the application and give them tasks that you can observe. This way, people are doing the actions themselves, and you can diagnose issues in real-time. This is great for hands-on learners and keeps those fast-paced competitors on your team engaged in the process.
Share screen and collaboration tools are also a must for brainstorming meetings and special project teamwork so that everyone can be involved in the process.
So, embrace technology and provide your team with virtual meetings that are even more productive than in-person meetings, minus that one person whose audio never seems to work.
Remember when I asked who reads the invite every time? Me. That’s who. I’m paying attention now, so pick your virtual meeting platform and send over that invite. I’m ready!
I went back to the office for about a week in June; I needed to get out of the house, and I had a temporary childcare solution. Needless to say, I ran with that opportunity.
Currently, we have one employee going into the office daily. Really, he never left (thanks, Steve). And from time to time, others go in solo for various reasons, perhaps to use office equipment they don’t have at home or because they need a change of scenery. It’s also relatively stress-free to use the office; it feels safe since no one else is there. Oh, right, sorry, Steve.
Driving up to the building and parking in my usual space felt surreal. How could something I’ve done so much feel so weird? To be honest, driving felt weird too, but that’s another story. When I first stepped into the office, the thing that struck me was the stale, abandoned feeling of the place. It felt apocalyptic, as if we had all disappeared at once, which is sort of what happened. The calendar on the wall, along with our fun monthly bulletin board items, were still firmly displaying March as if time had stopped. It was… creepy. I took the old notices down, did a little cleaning up, and thought about the big and little things we needed to do to get our office ready for everyone again.
First, of course, is what to call this re-entry process. I thought I made up a cool new buzzword: reboarding - the process of bringing employees back to the office after working from home for a few months (or more). But, as usual, I was late to the party, and it’s already a thing. That’s okay; better late than never.
If you have not yet fully reopened your office, it’s probably a good idea to think about what needs to happen to make going back to the office a success. A good reboarding process can help.
Here are seven tips for reboarding success:
1) Have an A-Z plan. The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) observes that onboarding occurs at four levels, called the “Four Cs”: Compliance, Clarification, Culture, and Connection. You can use those same C’s to design your reboarding process. Compliance: Focus on safety precautions. Clarification: Put everything in writing, but use multiple communication methods to deliver and reinforce the information. Culture: Keep it consistent with how your organization operates. Connection: Keep it real. Think about the emotional impacts, and make it fun.
2) Ask for input. While there is certainly more and more information available on creating new procedures revolving around preventing the spread of Covid-19, it can’t hurt to ask what things would make your team feel more comfortable returning to work. You might hear some ideas that you never considered, but that makes a ton of sense for your organization.
3) Create safety procedures. They should be written. There is no single recipe that is best for every organization. Each must adopt a safety process that matches the operational and personnel structure of the company. Some companies might have very little need for face-to-face interactions both internally and externally, while others depend heavily on those interactions. Look for sample procedures online, and modify them to fit your needs. From masks to hand sanitation stations, there are many things to consider. Also, think about how both small and large meetings will be handled. Do you have space for an all-company gathering after you factor in social distancing? Or will you need to continue conducting those meetings via video from individual workspaces?
4) Make changes. Now that you’ve seen what can and can’t be done with a remote workforce, are there some changes that can be made to how you did business pre-pandemic? For example, does everyone need to come back to the office every day, or can you implement a new remote schedule that allows employees to work from home one or more days per week? Is it time to move from a formal dress code to something more casual? This is a perfect time to make changes.
5) Freshen up. Avoid having employees walk into an office that feels stale, dusty, and abandoned. If you have a cleaning service, ask for some extra TLC before everyone gets back. Also, get a small group together to spruce up the place and add a little something fun and personal to each workspace.
6) Communicate. Communication is critical. And no matter what the problem is, effective communication should always be part of the solution. Set up a formal communication plan to check in with the leaders and staff to promptly identify problems and resolve them.
7) Evaluate. Evaluate the reboarding process with your employees after 30 days. Ask how you did and what feedback they have for making daily operational improvements, especially regarding long-term safety measures.
These are scary, uncertain times, so let your team know that you are taking this seriously and putting energy into getting it right. Make sure they know that their health and well-being are priorities for the organization.
Just like with effective onboarding, an effective reboarding process will have many benefits. Employees will appreciate their jobs and their companies, commit to the organizational mission, perform more effectively, and even experience less stress, which we all need right now.
Remember, as your employees return to the office, it’s going to feel strange. Following these measures will keep it from feeling creepy and ensure a smooth return for everyone.
So, Steve, we’re ready to come back. Are you ready for us?
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