Keeping Employees Engaged While Working from Home
Throughout the past few years, innovations in technology have allowed companies to save money on office space and resources by having some of their employees work from home. Although financially, it saves a company a significant amount of money and resources, it can be harder to keep your employees engaged as if they were all in the same room. Thus, the following list includes a few ways you can begin to create a better virtual work environment for your employees.
Don’t Make it All About Work.
Remote workers are often alone in their home office, and thus having to deal with work topics for eight hours can be mentally exhausting. It is recommended to include a few off-work topics to get everyone out of their auto-pilot phase. These can be funny but appropriate emails, group games, or even asking everyone to share a fun thing they did over the weekend.
Face-to-Face Connections
For many years virtual chats were possible but often riddled with connection problems and voice clarity. Fortunately, today there are more than enough face to face companies that offer exceptional service. Replying through chat or email can become tiring, and thus a great way to help people remember that there are faces behind the computer is to utilize this technology. Virtual meetings can be a great way to get everyone engaged throughout the week.
Communal Workspace
If your company can afford to, renting out a communal workspace from time to time can be a great way to re-engage your remote employees. Communal workspace services provide a building where many companies and organizations share a space with some even allowing you to decorate your designated area. Having your employees work together once every couple of months can enable your staff to get out of the house for a bit and engage with their virtual co-workers in person.
Create Healthy Competition
One of the first things that go when working from home is the urge to compete. Because employees are no longer around co-workers or the boss, their competition levels dramatically fall. An excellent way to bring back that hunger is to create and implement healthy competition amongst your remote workers. This can involve sales, clients contacted per day, etc. You can even recognize their efforts on a public leader board such as the company website or social media page.
Originally published at https://richardsimonchicago.com.
