Organizations often advertise and promote their nominations and awards for “Best Places or Companies to Work”, whether it be in a national survey or competition in their particular city. These awards are important for a couple of reasons. Showcasing your organization as a “Best Place to Work” is a valuable way to attract talent and it can be a way to survey your employees and gain an understanding not only of their satisfaction levels at the organization, but of what they value at work.
However, the title seems a bit vague, doesn’t it? What exactly constitutes a “Best Place to Work” nomination or award?
More often than not, this classification means that the organization provides a physical space for their employees. Ping pong tables, nap pods, massage rooms, cool landscape views. While companies like Google are incomparable, we mere mortals have to get creative. Not to mention those of us whose organizations are partially or completely comprised of remote workers, which has become progressively popular.
According to a 2016 Gallup survey, out of 15,000 employed participants, 43% reported spending time working remotely. And in a separate Gallup survey, remote employees reported being more productive than their days spent working in an office. Many companies nowadays allow for part-time remote work. However, like Peerfit, there are increasingly more companies solely comprised of telecommuters.
So, if your company’s office consists of homes across the country, days spent in coffee shops or coworking spaces, how can you be considered a “Best Place to Work”? For these types of organizations, the emphasis on intangible satisfaction is heightened.
In May 2017, Peerfit was nominated for the Tampa Bay Business Journal’s “Best Places to Work”. With that said, we’ll give you a taste of our secret sauce that helped us achieve something ordinarily reserved for companies with hammocks, pool tables, and four physical walls.
Numbers and Perks
As with any company, fair pay and insurance benefits are imperative. Employees need to feel satisfied with their salaries and secure with their insurance, or you risk them feeling undervalued. Beyond reasonable compensation, many startups or growth companies have begun offering employees stock option plans. With startups, in particular, it can be difficult to provide higher wages or bonuses to deserving employees, especially with limited funding in the beginning stages. Offering equity to your hard-working team is a great incentive and a way to attract talent.
Wellness also plays a big role in employee satisfaction and engagement. Employees who are satisfied with their company’s wellness program are more likely to stay. However, this shouldn’t mean implementing a corporate wellness program that you set and forget. Health is much too personal to use one-size-fits-all solutions; this is a surefire way to receive little to no employee engagement, thus decreasing your ROI.
At Peerfit, we’ve found that the best way to increase employee engagement through wellness initiatives is to focus on personalization and community. Through group fitness, our employees can exercise with their co-workers and treat their fitness classes like happy hour. This allows team members to form communities within the workplace and choose fitness classes that match their preferences, fitness levels, location, schedule, and more.
Additionally, our wellness platform allows for employees across the country to utilize the same benefits as employees that live in the company’s ‘home base’. While some team members in Tampa, FL are taking a bootcamp class on a Monday night, a couple of other team members are taking yoga together in Seattle, WA, all via the same digital platform. When team members travel for business to other Peerfit Studio Networks, they are able to take fitness classes on-the-go, as well.
In addition to providing group exercise for corporate wellness, applications focused on mental health are popping up everywhere to encourage mindfulness at work. For instance, Whil is an application that improves employee wellbeing through meditation and goal-based resilience practices.
When employees feel that their employer values their health and wellbeing, they are more likely to feel loyalty towards their leadership and workplace in general, and maintain a sense of happiness with their work environment.
Communicate, Communicate, Communicate
In the startup world, communication is a hard concept to understand and execute, especially in the building stages. While it might be one of the most difficult items to focus on, it is one of the most important, and it comes with a few steps.
In a literal sense, forming processes for communication is the first step. At Peerfit, we use Slack for our daily communications. On top of Slack, we use Trello for project management, Google Meet, and, of course, good old fashion telephone and email. We even have a Snapchat group (not necessarily HR approved…). Whichever form of communication you choose, these tactics are recommended to keep your employees happy and your culture up to par.
Set expectations for success.
In a remote environment, you’re not going to see each other consistently nor will you have the ability to steer employees in the right direction on a daily basis. It is necessary that you communicate expectations for success to your team so that they properly execute responsibilities. You can never over-communicate, especially in a startup or growth atmosphere. Make sure your employees know exactly what is asked of them, and that they feel prepared and have the resources to get the job done.
Motivate, encourage, reward.
It’s easy to get caught in a black hole of go, go, go, without stopping to smell the roses every once in awhile. In a remote environment, it’s especially important to put a focus on motivating and encouraging employees regularly. Whether it’s through Slack or a team conference call, remind your employees of the bigger picture: what purpose does your company serve? At Peerfit, we always try to keep this in mind; our purpose being to redefine wellness and contribute to the health and wellbeing of the population. If we can hold onto the fact that we are ultimately trying to make the world healthier, it can keep us going through rough days.
On top of motivation, encouragement is significant, as well. We look at encouragement from a few perspectives: encouragement to new team members who might feel lost, encouragement to team members whose project isn’t going as planned, encouragement to the sales team that didn’t score that partnership. We encourage you to encourage your team through thick and thin; the more employees feel cared about, the better they will do at their jobs.
Lastly, reward them when they do well. Again, this can be difficult for a startup or growth company, and a remote organization at that, but it’s not impossible. Simple public recognition can go a lot further than you’d imagine. There are plenty of low-cost ways to reward your employees- just make sure you remember to do so.
Performance reviews.
Executing annual or bi-annual performance reviews opens up a line of communication between employees and department heads. To take it a step further, allow your employees to do performance reviews for their department heads, as well. A way to execute this as a remote startup is to create a review document in Google Docs, and simply go over the review on a conference call or video chat. This way, employees can learn from their weaknesses and feel valued by learning what strengths have been noticed.
Another form of performance review is to keep constant communication between employees and department heads with weekly, one-on-one calls. At Peerfit, each employee has a designated day and time to chat and catch up with their team lead. This way, when official performance reviews come around, employees aren’t surprised by the feedback they receive.
Don’t Forget to Have Fun
Humor in the workplace is more important than you probably imagined. Light-hearted playfulness and humor at work helps relieve stress and boredom, especially for those that work remotely and are often alone for long periods of time during the week.
In a Robert Half International survey, 91% of executives reported that a sense of humor is important for career advancement. At Peerfit, humor plays a large role in our culture. As a remote company, we’ve found ways to express our sense of humor through Slack and social media.
We are hugely into GIF usage, whether it be on Slack or social media, and often joke that job candidates must be fluent in GIF to be hired. In Slack, we have a channel titled “Random” that’s dedicated to anything unrelated to work. This allows for us to express ourselves, take our minds off of work for a moment, and digitally bond with our co-workers.
“Humor is the glue to your company culture. Everyone wants to achieve the company goals and work hard by pushing each other forward and being able to have a great sense of humor with your team and everyone you work with is really what provides that energy and refuels everybody in between the wins.”
— Ed Buckley, PhD, CEO of Peerfit
Summary
All in all, being a remote company and holding a nomination or award for being a “Best Place to Work” is not impossible. To recap, it’s important to focus on these intangible concepts when you don’t have a cool office to lean on:
- Fair compensation, insurance, and equity options
- Wellness program focusing on personalization and community
- Open lines of communication between employees and leadership
- Employee recognition and encouragement
- Performance reviews
- Humor in the workplace
We’d love to know — how does your remote company maintain a positive culture and tight-knit community?
Christina Valenziano is the Digital Marketing Strategist at Peerfit. She’s an avid Peerfitter, peanut butter addict, and word nerd.
