Keeping Your Remote Team Motived

Remote and hybrid work have become staples of the last few years. Lots of us work from home and have found that it can be just as productive as working in the office. However, some management teams have found that they need to develop new skills to work with a remote team. Let's dive into some systems and concepts you could use to keep your remote team motivated!

Communication Is Key!

A significant element many people have reported missing when they switched to remote work was just the casual chats they would have with colleagues. It could be nice to get up, stretch your legs, and head to the break room, finding someone to have a quick chat with while you make coffee. This doesn't have to go away just because we're all on Slack now. You can set up a specific room with drop-in voice chat that people can enter just if they fancy saying hello. You could even call it "the breakroom" or "the watercooler."

It is also important to make time in the work day where people can just catch up with one another. It's a great idea to have a digital standup meeting on a Monday where everyone can discuss their weekend and what they've been up to. This can then transition to tasks they are working on that week and share any milestones they've hit.

A monthly virtual lunch isn't a bad idea either! If your team is across the country, or even the globe, set a date and time that works for everyone. Sure, someone might be having breakfast while someone else is having dinner, but this should be during work hours and a lunch that's paid for by the company. It lets everyone just chill and hang out for a bit more casually. Also, top tip, don't make it mandatory. Not everyone will get on with events like this, so always make it optional!

Someone sat, side on, using their laptop on their kitchen table, working from home requires some remote team motivation.

Collaborative Learning

Another thing people liked about being in the same office was the opportunity to learn from each other. It's vital to any team that you allow them to collaborate, brainstorm and learn. You can do this in several ways, offering them the opportunity, during work hours, to learn new skills from online courses. Doing this as a group is a great way to learn for some people so setting up a Slack channel with weekly meetings to discuss their learnings is a great way to facilitate this.

Has one team member just learned a new skill you want to translate to the rest of the company? Software like our own VideoCom Presenter lets them give a detailed presentation using media about what they have learned. You can also record this and upload it to the cloud so people can asynchronously access this kind of colleague-to-colleague learning.

A person sits on a sofa, talking on their laptop to a colleague from home, remote team motivation is important to keep everyone happy and productive!

Change How Meetings Work

Meetings have their place, but as we've discussed, there are much better ways to share information with a globally dispersed team. A great example is just having to share a straightforward bit of information that requires more than an email. Do you have to show someone how to access a specific part of a website or replicate a bug in the software you're working on? Using VideoCom Capture, you can quickly capture a video with a voice-over, where you can just show someone how it works. This is then uploaded to the cloud and is easily shared and accessible to anyone in your team.

VideoCom Presenter lets you give entire, media-filled, and engaging presentations that are also recorded and uploaded to the cloud. Now, you can have your big all-hands meeting ready to be viewed by anyone at any time. Don't worry about someone having to join a call at 6 am their time for an information download; they can watch it when it works for them! Not only that, but VideoCom Presenter takes your slides and elevates them by letting you add media, websites, your webcam, and more!

Remote work is here to stay, but in our opinion, things are only going to get better as technology and work intersect more and more. Remember, communication is critical. With everyone on the same page, you can't go wrong!