If you’ve recently moved your employees to at-home work, you may wonder how to maintain morale and continue promoting a healthy company culture. Remote work can cause you to lose important parts of your company culture that now need to be recuperated. Here are five ways you can keep spirits high and your culture alive during self-isolation.
1. Communicate Openly
With all this uncertainty, your employees may feel the stress or fear for what the future may bring for their job security. During this time, it’s more crucial than ever that you communicate honestly and frequently with your employees. Consider regular emails that keep your employees up to date on the status of the company.
Remember to be careful with how you present the information. Communication should make your team feel confident that the company takes the situation seriously and is looking out for your employees’ best interests.
When your employees feel secure and apprised of what’s going on in the company, they will be able to work better and maintain morale.
2. Offer Flexible Schedules
Most children are out of school, which means some of your employees may be in charge of educating their children during the day. Even employees who have no children can run into conflicts with everything that is changing around them. While you may need employees to be available at certain hours of the day, try to offer more flexible schedules for the rest of the hours they work.
You may find that your employees work better in the evenings or early in the morning. Some of your team members may want to take a longer lunch to take care of children or an at-risk loved one. Whatever the case, your employees will likely respond positively to more flexible working hours.
Additionally, when people can work at the times they choose, they may be more productive, leading to greater success for your business.
3. Recognize Employees
Now is the time to go above and beyond to make sure your employees feel valued. When working from home, it’s easy for employees to feel disconnected from the company and the company culture. So celebrate them, and remind them that the company recognizes their efforts and appreciates what they do as a member of the team.
This can be as easy as a birthday shout-out or a quick thank-you message for a task they handled well that week. Depending on how many employees you have, you could even consider setting up a weekly shout-out to make sure that someone is recognized at least once a week.
4. Keep Employees Connected
A sudden switch to remote work could leave many employees feeling lonely or disconnected from fellow workers. This could cause problems with productivity as well as team unity. Fortunately, you have a lot of options to promote active communication among team members.
Messaging Service
Emails are good for widespread and substantial communication, but an instant messaging service can make sure everyone gets information promptly and maintains healthy working relationships with other members of the team. You can consider services like Slack, Google Hangouts, HipChat, or Stride. Through these services, your employees can communicate with one another to maintain company culture.
Video Service
While chatting online is important, face-to-face communication is also a big part of team unity. Consider implementing regular video calls to check in on employees, or host meetings with video to replicate a live meeting. Services like Zoom, Skype, or FaceTime can be useful tools to keep your company connected during self-isolation.
With these programs you can also connect to your employees in other ways. You can use video calls to host an online game night or have a team lunch. You could have a team chat that is just for fun where your team can share stories or fun activities they do during quarantine. By continuing to offer team-building activities, you can make sure your employees feel uplifted by the company rather than burnt out.
5. Provide Resources
Many employees are probably struggling with the transition to at-home work as well as with all the stress from the constant changes around them. Do your best to provide them with resources or places they can go for help. If you have the means, connect with counseling services to offer your employees virtual counseling sessions to help them transition and cope with these changes.
If you can’t provide counseling services through your company, gather resources for your employees with places they can go for help or even useful articles with tips for successful at-home work or stress-management techniques. Many of your employees will be glad for the extra help and support they feel from the company, which may improve morale and productivity.
As you take care of your employees during this difficult time, let us help you take care of your business. Reach out to us to for marketing resources that will help your company thrive.