Remote team building

With the sudden move to remote working for a lot of people in this time of crisis, it’s important not to feel alone. Here are some tips for keeping your team together

Remote teams were becoming commonplace before this global crisis began, but it has caused a rapid change and not everyone will be experienced in working from home. It might sound simple, but the reality is different. Teams are now faced with the challenge of working together when they’re not together. We’ve put together some advice on how to continue being a tight-knit collaborative team.

The benefits of remote working are a boost in productivity, improved job satisfaction and less employee turnover. This is very much on the individual level. How do we build relationships with colleagues when we’re not in the same office?

You can’t nip over to chat to your “work wife/husband” and grab a cheeky coffee between meetings… Or can you?

How do you close the virtual gaps and encourage team cohesion?

We’ve noted some things you can do to encourage a trusting and collaborative culture for your remote team.

What do I need?

Building an effective remote team is neither time-consuming nor expensive. What is at the heart of it is communication. You need methods of communicating and therefore the investment you should make is in software to facilitate this:

• Video conferencing
• A chat client
• A visual workspace

Video conferencing makes up for the lack of physical face-to-face connection between your colleagues. Allowing your camera to be on during meetings lets people see your face when you talk, your body language and other visual cues as well as generally being much more interactive than other methods.

Chat clients facilitate more casual communication and often office banter (which we cannot stress enough, is really important to carry on in times like this). Having an active chat client running all day lets people instantly talk to their colleagues for those times when you need a quick reply, but it’s also relationship building.

We advise having a work-only and a non-work channel so the two don’t get lost in one another.

A collaborative visual platform like Lucidchart or Trello makes it incredibly easy to organise tasks and brainstorm in a creative way.

Utilising these tools

You can use these tools to encourage team cohesion. Here are a few ways how:

Hold a coffee hour. Start a Google Hangout and just BE together. You can chat or simply carry on working with the comfort of another person there.

Hat days. If there’s a regular meeting with the whole team, make it a hat day. Whether you make one or wear something ridiculous that’s been hiding in your wardrobe, hat days can put a smile on everyone’s face.

(Of course, there are many seasonal opportunities for this, too!)

Messy desk day. When you work from home, the only pressure to keep a tidy desk comes from yourself. Thursday or Friday is a good day to pick and publically shame yourself (or humblebrag) by sharing a photo of the state of your work station.

Happiness checks. Each Friday, we send a simple Google Form (survey) to everyone asking them to rate how their week was and give them the opportunity to raise any issues, positive or challenging. More often than not, our team take the opportunity to thank someone else for their support that week.

Why is it important to maintain a collaborative team?

This should be obvious. When you work in an office you naturally develop relationships with your colleagues. A remote team doesn’t get the benefits of meetings, lunches and events. You have to work hard to replace that face-to-face bonding, but it’s not impossible.

Remote team building helps connect people to their teams and creates a culture. This is how you end up with happy, productive employees.

Final thoughts

These are just a few ideas to get you started. It’s possible to be creative as well as organised if you learn the right ways to communicate. You can also have some fun along the way, which we think everyone could do with at the moment.

If your company would like some help transitioning to being remote-based, we’re here to talk.