10 Ways to Help Remote Teams Bond

Lida Elias
Sep 7, 2018 · 6 min read
Photo: Caspar Benson/alarmy.com

One of the biggest problems with remote teams is that employees work in their own bubbles, which can be isolating and lonely.

Lately I’ve been thinking about ways to help remote employees bond and feel like they’re part of the team. Remote work might seem like it’s easy to those who have never done it. Although it has its perks, it can often lead to feelings of isolation — not being connected to co-workers and being out of the loop.

Here are 10 strategies to help reduce the feeling of distance between team members and create a sense of community.

1.Great Employee Onboarding

Remote companies with successful onboarding programs are more likely to retain new hires. One study found that 20% of employee turnover happens in the first 45 days. On average, 69% of employees are more likely to stay with their company for three years, if they experienced great onboarding. Doing things like setting up meetings with other team members, pairing the new employee up with a mentor / buddy so they feel comfortable asking questions and having frequent check-ins will all help your new remote hire feel connected to the rest of the team.

2. A Space to Connect

Whether it’s on Slack, Flowdock, Google Hangouts or another communication tool, it’s important to make sure there is a virtual work space where the teams can chat about projects, client or real-life issues. Communication (over-communication, really) is key in a remote work environment to ensure all information shared is as clear as possible. If you have a fully distributed or a remote-first team, you need to have tools for your team members to communicate when they’re not seeing each other regularly.

3. Happy Hour

If you have a distributed team, your remote employees won’t be able to get together for lunch or drinks after work. But that doesn’t mean you can’t have virtual happy hour to celebrate wins or let off steam. Plan and host weekly or monthly happy hours during a recurring date and time and have the team join via Zoom, Join.me or Google Hangouts. They’ll share some drinks, stories, laughs and strengthen their bond. To make it a work-sponsored event, send out virtual gift cards before to cover the drinks.

4. Employee Recognition

In a remote work environment, sharing what team members did well is a great way to make sure all employees know they are valued members of the company, are appreciated and that their hard work has not gone unnoticed. It will boost morale, build bonds between individual members and motivate people to do work worthy of recognition. Tools like Motivosity, Applauz, Kudos or 7Geese will help drive peer recognition to increase employee engagement and alignment to core values.

5. Lunch ‘n Learn

If a team member attends a conference, have them present their learnings to the greater team during a virtual Lunch ’n Learn. Invite the entire team on a call so that everyone can benefit from the conference insights. You can also purchase reloadable gift cards or UberEats credit to send to each employee, to use towards their lunch.

6. Surprise Gifts

Surprise and delight your team members on their birthdays, anniversaries, or just because. Also, set aside a budget so that your team can send each other e-cards or small gifts of appreciation for a job well done. One startup I know of has a $20 budget per employee per month to send a gift to anyone on the team. Of course, if employees don’t use it, they lose it.

7. Book or Podcast Club

A team that learns together, grows together. There are tons of great books and podcasts out there — from self-improvement to business. Each member of the book / podcast club chooses a different book to read or podcast to listen to for that month, and they meet at the end of the month to share their learnings. Services like Audible, Scribd, Overcast and Pocket Casts make consuming audio book and podcasts super easy. There are also book reading services such as Blinkist, which turns books into digestible summaries that take 15 minutes to read.

8. Fitness

Photo: Chris Stark — mbstarck

Sitting down for too long is often called a silent killer. A study found that workers need to find ways to stand for an extra four hours every day. We spend up to 70% of our waking hours sitting, especially for remote teams who work from home. To get your distributed members moving, get them a fitness tracker, such as Fitbit or Garmin. You can use the Health Hero app to keep everyone connected, motivated and to create special challenges for them. Another option is to just use the Apple Health or Google Fit apps for free. Create a “Fitness” Slack channel, so that each person on the team can join and share their progress and photos each week. This way, they can encourage each other to get moving and take better care of themselves.

9. Scheduled Fun

Photo: Lars Kastilan/Shutterstock

Just because you don’t all work in an office, doesn’t mean you can’t have fun. There’s lots of virtual fun to be had. Create a “Fun Times” Slack channel, set up a Zoom call (for face-to-face time), and choose a designated time each week that works for everyone to play online trivia via Trivia.fyi, online games via Ludo, puzzles, karaoke via Redkaraoke, Youtube videos etc.) You can even watch Netflix together online via Netflix Party. This gives employees a chance to connect and have something to look forward to weekly.

10. In-Person Events

Photo: West Coast Wilderness Lodge

While remote work is great, nothing beats getting together with your co-workers in person to strengthen your bond. Planning and hosting annual or semi-annual retreats in fun, new locations will enable the team to build relationships, brainstorm, strategize on complex issues, chat, have fun and recharge. You can choose to do one big annual retreat for the whole company and perhaps some smaller ones every quarter which are specific to each team.

I hope you will find some of these ideas helpful in strengthening the bond and happiness of your remote employees.

Did I miss anything? Are there ways your remote team stays connected? Let me know in the comments.

Lida Elias

Written by

Accounts/Culture (@PoweredbySearch). Chief Experience Officer (@savemydate). Wife to @msukmanowsky Mom to Aryana. Good thoughts, good words, good deeds.

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