Since the COVID-19 global pandemic, companies have had to adapt to their employees working remotely from their homes. However, more business owners and managers are seeing the major benefits that can come from continuing to employ their workers remotely. More specifically, they are seeing a substantial improvement in overall company morale.
With remote workers, there can also be substantial challenges in maintaining this initial boost of productive staff. From enhancing communication practices or offering incentive programs, let us take a look into how your business can not only improve company morale but also sustain it.
Keep Your Staff Connected
Communication is one of the biggest points of maintaining the morale of your employees as well as productivity. It’s a way to help stay in touch for regular human interaction, maintain expectations, and learn about your remote employees’ experiences with the company. But most importantly, it’s also a way to implement new means of adding wellness into the company’s hemisphere.
Internal communication amongst employees through company SMS text messaging has been implemented by several major companies in various industries, from hospitality to hospitals. You may be surprised to hear that 91% of people in the United States have twenty-four-hour access to their mobile device or at least have it within reach.
This means you are leveraging something your employees are already actively using to help maintain the connection, and continue improving morale.
Host Virtual Company Gatherings
If the only time you are gathering your remote workers to virtually come together is through a meeting, you may want to consider switching it up. It’s important to implement team-building activities that can help build the relationship amongst your teams.
This could be anything from hosting a monthly Zoom happy hour to taking an hour before the end of the workday to play team-building games. Having a healthy balance between work and play is important – and that doesn’t just mean in your personal life.
Show Appreciation For Your Employees
One of the skills of showing exemplary leadership is by recognizing and paying tribute to the people you are leading. It is also incredibly powerful in boosting morale. Your employees want to have some form of validation that all of their hard work isn’t for nothing.
A recent study showed that 69% of workers said that they would put in more effort and work harder if they were shown appreciation. You can easily do this by sending a “call out” text message to the team for employees who have reached certain goals, or someone who is going above and beyond for the company.
This applies to personal milestones as well. Getting to know your employees and showing them appreciation includes acknowledging birthdays, anniversaries, etc. Remember that your employees have lives outside of the office and want to be recognized as more than just hard workers.
Give Your Employees the Tools They Need to Succeed
There is nothing more frustrating and that can decrease company morale than not having the proper tools to do their job, especially as someone who works remotely. They rely heavily on the proper technologies in order to do their job effectively. Providing your company with the necessary resources can allow for the domino effect to happen.
The better equipped they are to do their jobs, the more productive they will be. The more productive your employees are, the more they will be acknowledged for their hard work. The more they are acknowledged, the more they will want to come to work and do their jobs to their full potential.
Providing the tools doesn’t have to be anything that would break the bank. One of the most frequently missed opportunities is through providing automation.
Customer relationship management systems or project management software can easily help to maintain the flow your employees need to regulate sales and complete important projects. Automating your accounts payable can easily utilize direct deposit to pay your vendors, affiliates, and even your own employees.
Conclusion
If you are looking for ways to improve company morale for your remote workers, it starts by learning from your employees that are doing the jobs day in and day out. And you can not do that properly unless you have provided an effective open line of communication amongst your teams.
Provide the necessary tools to do their jobs and recognize your employees when they go above and beyond. As you start making small changes internally, you will absolutely see dramatic changes within the overall growth of your business.