Great wellbeing and high morale helps your team to work effectively and be productive.
Maintaining employee engagement can be difficult when everyone is working from home. We have put together a list of some areas to focus on so that your team can still work successfully.
Connection
Over the last week of lockdown, we’ve experienced just how important and powerful connection is to teams. So spending time together (virtually), is vital to helping boost morale and maintain connections. This can be through your usual team meetings conducted over video, shared lunch breaks, and, one of our favourites, Friday drinks and nibbles!
It’s also important that your team feels connected to their manager or supervisor – to know that they have the same opportunity to bounce ideas, work through problems or celebrate success as they would if working in the same office.
Recognition
It can seem a little harder to convey appreciation in a remote world of work – but a simple email, phone call or video chat will go a long way to boosting morale. Most people enjoy their achievements being recognised. It boosts self-confidence and can motivate innovation and encourage employees to go the extra mile. Maybe you wouldn’t normally reply to an email just to say thank you, but it’s a good idea to do so now. We aren’t around each other all the time to exchange smiles and polite words, so put extra effort in to showing (virtual) kindness!
Learning
If your team is working remotely, but have a bit more time on their hands day-to-day, now is the perfect time to have them take online courses or attend relevant webinars. It’s easy for life to feel a little stagnant when we are at home all the time, so make sure to put effort into the learning and development of your team. Supporting online courses for your employees not only helps them to learn new skills, but it also shows that you care about their growth and want to keep their minds engaged.
Ownership & Purpose
A key element that candidates tell us they look for in a role is ownership – they want to feel that a set of tasks or perhaps a key project is theirs to manage, problem-solve and complete. Fostering a sense of purpose will increase engagement in their work. Remote work can present challenges to overcome that might not exist in the office, so delegate relevant tasks to employees and leave it up to them to come up with solutions. This might include ironing out some IT issues, coming up with a plan of action for the team’s return to the office, or perhaps planning and implementing new social media or marketing projects that can help your company be seen during this time, are all great examples of projects that can be done successfully remotely.
Flexibility
The importance of a reasonable work/home life balance cannot be overstated. The team must feel that their wellbeing is being taken seriously, which sometimes might just mean a bit of flexibility in terms of working hours and alternative setups. It is important that your team can take time off work when necessary and have the ability to make some room for other important parts of their lives. Being able to spend a bit of extra time with your kids, do exercise, or sometimes taking a long lunch can benefit wellbeing in a big way. Just because everyone is currently at home, does not mean that they are relaxing 24/7. Flexibility is as important now as ever. Check in with your team that they are taking their breaks, taking time off if they’re unwell and making time for other activities to avoid burning out.
Trust
Because of the situation we are in now, where managers aren’t around to oversee employee activity, trust plays an especially important role in the smooth running of your business and maintaining team morale. Employers and employees who trust and feel trusted are likely to have a strong sense of team morale. Enabling employees to take ownership of their work and have a little flexibility shows that you trust them to do their work without being micromanaged. This allows employees to feel like equal partners, empowering them to work hard because they want to reach their potential and want the team and business to succeed.