We’ve been hearing a little about people feeling disconnected now that we’re all back working from home. Back in ’16 when we first heard about Shopify in Ireland, we regularly heard that their teams felt more connected than they had in any other job.
Feeling connected and reaching a true connection in remote teams is possible, we’re aiming for level 5 on the ladder that Matt Mullenweg the CEO of Automattic created:
Through training over 30 companies in remote, we’ve learnt a little about what works to solve for this, some actionable tips include:
#1 Coaching people managers and facilitating peer to peer learning. This has proved really useful in helping people managers help their teams.
#2 ‘No agenda calls’ is something that a lot of companies are starting to bring in. This is a deliberate effort of connecting with team mates. Often this is done by phone where there is ‘Zoom Fatigue’ (which there shouldn’t be but as async communication wouldn’t allow for it).
#3 Mood Kickstarter. Some teams start their day by posting a sentence, gif, or emoji to let people know how they’re feeling. This allows teams to get what they used to get in the office, an indicator of the general mood.
#4 Internal community. Lots of companies are setting up internal communties for remote workers, and our team have some experience here.
How to build an internal community of remote workers
It generally made up of 4-8 people who take the lead, and then some local community managers. The team roles would include an online events person, offline events person (here’s hoping), communication person, story teller, community manager x2 and more.
A calendar events may look like monthly online events, offline retreats twice per year, capturing stories of remote workers bi-weekly, a yearly sentiment survey and sending out a mailer once per month.
There are two things to consider when setting up a remote working community. Firstly, these communities generally have an executive sponsor in larger enterprises. It really helps to have an advocate at a senior level who can advocate and support.
Secondly, people don’t feel real connection from group Zoom events and connection is a core tenant of community. Luckily, there’s a couple of things you can do:
- Facilitating 1-1 intros (like the Donut app on Slack) is really important. If you’re a large enterprise you probably don’t use Slack and so an online form and manual introductions may be what you need!
- Have a visible community manager who people can contact.
- Capturing the stories is not only good for visibility of remote workers but if done correctly, it can provide another way for people to connect.
- If you do host Zoom events, use the breakout rooms before and after. Generally speaking you can feel the energy change right after people come back from these!
Need some help? We have a channel for employers in our Slack community, and can always help out if you send an email to our general manager John Evoy at john @ growremote.ie.
