At the beginning of the pandemic many of us were excited to take our work remote.For others, remote was always a part of their routine and everyone being remote just tripled their workload. I know for us, taking our work remotely allowed us to expand our work beyond borders and work intentionally with companies aligned with our values.
There are certainly many benefits of working remotely, you have more flexibility and autonomy. We have also seen that it helped people who often did not speak up have an equal playing field to participate, that of course always depends on the manager.
Now, there are also downsides for working remotely, studies show that 70% of remote workers can feel ‘left out’ of the workplace. Humans need connection, we found this great article from workplace.com on ways you can make your remote employees feel included. Here are their suggestions and our own interpretation.
- Keep people updated
- Support personal and professional wellbeing
- Help people feel empowered
- Help them feel part of company culture
- Encourage remote employees to communicate with each other
- Make sure everyone’s voices are heard
- Do fun activities to engage remote employees
One mistake we often see our clients make is that they don’t keep their employees updated on the projects, initiatives and decisions that are being made at the top of the organization. One of our clients has very successfully built programs informing and involving their Employee Resource Group Leaders, making sure the program being built is fully inclusive and Intersectional.
As we have all learned to navigate the pandemic, mental health has knocked on more doors than ever before. People are suffering from anxiety, depression to name a few. It’s important that if YOU want your employees to bring their whole selves to work that you make the spaces in your workplace to allow people to be open about their wellbeing, all without judgment.
There are many ways to make your employees feel empowered, one way is to involve them in your process of building a culture of belonging, making sure that they feel represented and understood.
It is crucial that companies have a very inclusive and clear set of company values. When your company is able to communicate these values and most importantly culture, it becomes easier for your employees to align and embody your values.
Make sure that in the hiring process, there is not only a clear expectation and introduction into the culture but also training that can support the transition of every employee.
There are many tools and ways to engage your employees to communicate between each other, let me rephrase, to people that are outside of their team. Working remotely can isolate employees from communicating and engaging with people outside of their manager, and colleagues.
Conferences and programs are a great way to intentionally engage your employees to interact with people outside of their circle, to build trust and also level the playing field on education + training.
This is VERY important, because even if you think that everyone’s voices are being heard, that’s not always the case. When we host conferences for our clients, we make sure that we assign roles with people that will lead a breakout, and prep them on timing to ensure everyone’s voices are being heard.
We also have phenomenal speakers we work with that teach your managers and employees on how to unmute each other.
This part is our bread and butter. If you read our logo, NOTA stands for none of the above and we believe that people want to experience differences and out of the box experiences.
This part is where most companies hire us, to build experiences with our speakers that not only will be engaging but brings them a level of awareness that will help them be Inclusive and conscious leaders.
Make sure that you do all of the above, and we are always happy to chat and find ways to make your culture (people) happier.