The pandemic has given a massive jerk to the business world. It has made organizations shift to a remote workforce culture all of a sudden. The sudden transition has posed many challenges to companies, and employee engagement is the hardest of them. The comforting ambiance of home, seclusion from team members, and numerous distractions all add up to disrupt employee engagement.
As a result, managers and team leaders like you, find themselves wondering if there is a way to overcome the employee engagement challenge.
Thankfully, there is. Not only one but five evergreen ways! These are easy to practice and fruitful. So, here is the list of 5 evergreen ways for you to cultivate an engaged remote workforce.
5 evergreen Ways for You to Cultivate an engaged remote workforce
1. Stay in touch with your employees:
Remote working leads to a disconnection between you and your employees. This is a significant cause of the disengagement of remote workers. To eradicate it, you should stay in touch with your employees. This doesn’t mean sending some formal messages to your employees. Instead, it means that you have to connect with them at a deep level. Such a connection can only be established through regular cordial conversations.
You should make it a point to call your employees at regular intervals of time, asking about their well-being. Your employees need such a gesture from your side during these tough times. So, staying in touch with your employees is the first thing you have to do for employee engagement.
2. Keep your remote team connected:
The disconnection between remote workers is another reason for their disengagement. To cope with it, you have to keep your remote team connected. For this, it is best to organize virtual get-togethers via video conferencing. The frequency of the virtual get-together sessions depends on you. But, it is good to have a virtual get-together once every week.
There are many activities which you can perform during the get-together. You can play games like Charades and Pictionary. Along with this, you can also have friendly interactions with your employees. This will help you to keep your remote team connected. However, you have to make sure that the get-together sessions don’t turn into office meetings. Thus, you should take care that no formal conversations happen during the get-together.
3. Extend more appreciation and recognition:
Appreciation and recognition are the must ingredients for employee engagement. The importance of these ingredients has increased even more during the pandemic. Your employees are struggling to manage household chores and work responsibilities together. It is not at all easy to work well while meeting the enhanced need for household hygiene.
We all know that! But, if your employees still meet deadlines, and perform well, they deserve a big round of applause. So, whenever your employees do something good, make sure to appreciate them. This will do wonders in keeping your remote employees engaged.
4. Let them take a leave, once in a while:
You may think that remote workers should not take leave until and unless there is something urgent. But the need for leave is equal for both office and remote working employees. This is because whether employees work from home or in the office gets them exposed to work stress. They do feel the need to give their mind a break from work. So, you must let your remote working employees take a leave, once in a while.
If you deny them the much-needed holiday, they will become unhappy. As a result, they won’t be able to stay engaged. This is something that you don’t wish to happen. Further, when your employees take leave, they return to work in a recharged manner. They are highly engaged, energetic, and productive. Thus, if your remote employees wish to take a leave, let them have it.
5. Let go of micromanagement:
More often than not, micromanagement is not an excellent strategy to follow. If you keep a constant check on your employees, try to manipulate their ways of work, they feel frustrated. As a result, their engagement level drops down. The chances of employee frustration from micromanagement have increased even more during the pandemic.
This is because most employees are already struggling to meet both household and work responsibilities simultaneously. Micromanaging them under such circumstances is not a good idea. So, you need to let go of micromanagement. Try to give your employees some autonomy. It will be instrumental in keeping your remote workforce engaged.
So, these are the five evergreen ways by following which you can keep your remote workforce engaged.
