In the modern workplace, corporate culture has become exceptionally important.
The culture of a company speaks directly to how employees feel while they are at work. One workplace may have a culture dedicated to collaboration and communication, while others may encourage employees to put their work first and socialize after.
With a global team in a remote environment, building a culture for the entire company can prove to be difficult. Without a positive corporate culture, employees may experience burnout, become stressed, or feel isolated. They may find their remote work stressful, overwhelming, or downright unenjoyable.
For these reasons and many more,it’s so important to build a strong culture in a remote and global environment.
In this article, we are going to take a closer look at the importance of a strong culture, challenges in a remote work environment, and effective strategies to overcome each one.
Let’s get started!
Challenges of Building a Remote Company Culture
With a remote team that is not physically present with one another, certain challenges may arise when trying to establish a strong remote work culture.
These challenges with remote work can include:
- Lack of face-to-face interaction
- Communication barriers
- Different time zones and cultural differences
- Building trust and fostering collaboration
By familiarizing yourself with the challenges, you can better identify them as they arise. Not only can you identify and address each one, but you can also take a proactive approach with a comprehensive strategy and allow your employees to enjoy the best perks of a remote work environment!
Strategies for Building Corporate Culture in a Remote Environment
Clear Communication Channels
Without the ability to be physically present in the workplace together, employers must source alternative ways to communicate.
With certain video conferencing tools, instant messaging platforms, and regular team meetings, you can help your team to connect and establish genuine relationships.
Not only can they discuss work-related topics, but also their personal lives if they wish. Enabling bonding among colleagues , communication tools can help you build a more positive workplace culture.
Emphasizing Company Values
The values of your company will have a direct reflection upon the culture within the workplace. Those who value communication, kindness, empathy, and respect, are much more likely to have a positive workplace environment with a culture that reflects each and every value.
On the other hand, if a workplace prioritizes only revenue, efficiency, and work ethic, employees may report that the company culture feels robotic or toxic. While efficiency and revenue are both important with remote work, it’s essential that they are met with a balance.
Encouraging Virtual Team Building
Virtual team building can offer a great way for remote workers to connect with one another! Taking a break from your remote work from time to time can be healing on its own, let alone when combined with virtual team building.
To help your remote team get involved and engage with each other, here are some virtual team-building examples:
- Create a virtual watercooler space for casual conversations
- Host team virtual lunches or break periods
- Plan challenges and games with rewards or prizes
- Provide a paid service that entices employees to get involved
- Play a game or trivia during your next team meeting
How will you encourage virtual team building with your employees?
Recognizing and Rewarding Achievements
Your remote employees deserve recognition.
After the many hours spent working, gaining experience, and learning along the way, celebrating the achievements of your employees will go a lot further than one might think.
In a culture where it’s easy for an employee to feel overwhelmed, frustrated, or simply burnt out, having an employer recognize and reward their hard work can truly make all the difference.
To get started, we suggest implementing a system for acknowledging accomplishments. Not only will this set a process in place to ensure that achievements are recognized regularly, but so that employees are rewarded as well.
You may decide to provide your remote employees with a small gift card, team lunch, or half day off work, or perhaps take it a step further and provide an opportunity for professional growth and development.
Chances are that your employees will be left feeling appreciated, driven, and ready to take on another day.
Best Practices for Maintaining a Strong Corporate Culture
The culture within remote companies can be a direct reflection of the company's values.
By establishing your company values and implementing the following best practices, your organization will be well on its way to a strong remote culture.
Promoting Inclusivity and Diversity in Remote Company Culture
As an employer, it’s absolutely essential that you promote inclusion and diversity within your workplace. Both employers and employees should always aim to embrace different perspectives and backgrounds, all while ensuring equal opportunities for every single employee.
Not only will your employees gain a deeper respect for you and your company, but everyone will have the means to feel respected, accepted, and equal.
Here is a helpful resource for navigating language and cultural differences, especially among cross-border employees!
Supporting Work-Life Balance for Remote Workers
One of the most important best practices to be mindful of when building a remote culture is supporting work and life balance.
Remote employees on a global team are often working from the comfort of their homes. Due to these circumstances, many remote employees agree that there is a thin line between their work life and home life.
As an employer, there are many things that you can do to help guide remote employees into a healthy work-life balance, such as:
- Encouraging flexible working hours
- Promoting employee well-being and mental health
- Offering paid time off work, such as vacation and personal days
- Providing employees with additional benefits, such as a wellness spending account
- Maintaining open and honest communication with employees about their workload
Employers can also set boundaries and expectations with their remote team to help improve their approach to work-life balance. For instance, you may consider setting work hours and encouraging employees to not work outside of them.
This can help to reduce the risk of employees working late into the evening when they could be spending time with family, friends, or by themselves.
Developing Strong Leadership for Remote Teams
Not many things can have an impact on your company culture quite like strong leadership.
As an employer, you are in a powerful position, one that can have a direct impact on the environment of your workplace and workplace culture.
You should always aim to empower managers to be more effective, communicate regularly, and check in with team members, especially when in a remote setting.
By providing additional training and helpful resources, you can help to build a strong leadership team that thrives in a remote environment.
Tools to Create a Strong Remote Culture
With remote work culture, you may have to take an alternative approach when making improvements. While certain approaches may work in a traditional setting, an employer will have to think outside of the box when managing remote teams.
To help boost the company culture in your remote, global work environment, consider using the following tools, technologies, and service-based platforms!
Slack or Microsoft Teams
Stay connected with one another online with modern instant messaging. Both Slack and Microsoft Teams are designed to enable employees to communicate and stay in touch while working remotely.
Send work updates, provide feedback, and connect on a personal level — all while supporting a healthy remote culture!
Zoom
Zoom is a video conferencing platform that allows multiple people to connect via video calls. Host and attend meetings, set recurring calls, share your screen, and so much more — all with help from Zoom!
Free and paid accounts are both available, with certain limitations and add-ons.
Headspace
Put the mental health and overall well-being of your employees first with Headspace.
Headspace can provide your team members with access to calming sounds and music, so that they may meditate, relax, and practice mindfulness whenever and wherever they see fit.
Investing in mental health can not only boost employee morale, but it can also help to create an environment built around empathy, understanding, and respect.
Culture Amp
Culture Amp is a platform that focuses on measuring and enhancing employee engagement. It offers an integrated app that automates surveys for various important milestones, such as onboarding.
Culture Amp emphasizes the importance of gathering feedback and utilizes research-backed questions to ensure accurate data collection. Employers of a remote workforce can use this feedback to evaluate their support for employees and identify areas for improvement.
Culture Amp also provides benchmarks to help track progress in company culture development over time.
Officevibe
Officevibe is designed to help boost employee morale and engagement.
Especially for remote teams!
If your remote work culture is in need of a boost, Officevibe can help turn things around by gathering anonymous feedback from employees using pre-generated questions. Employers can have surveys sent to team members as frequently as they would like, while Officevibe handles the rest.
Review feedback immediately, track satisfaction, and provide every remote employee with the opportunity to contribute to the overall corporate culture, anonymously.
Pingboard
Could your remote work culture benefit from a boost?
Pingboard can prove to be the perfect addition to your remote team culture by helping you stay connected. The platform is designed to help users view and navigate the organizational structure of the company. They are encouraged to connect and get to know each other while working remotely, no matter their role or hierarchy.
Not only can new employees be onboarded promptly, but Pingboard can also be integrated with Slack to boost effectiveness.
Trello
Trello is a popular productivity tool for enhancing workplace collaboration and productivity.
With the rise of remote work, the need for platforms like Trello has become more important. It provides an online corkboard where tasks can be easily tracked and everyone can see their progress.
In these changing times, it's crucial to adapt and utilize digital platforms to improve work efficiency and productivity. Trello helps manage team collaborations, assign responsibilities, set deadlines, and so much more.
Frequently Asked Questions about Remote Work Culture
Do you have questions about remote work culture? From assessing the challenges to outlining the importance of creating a good remote culture, explore our Frequently Asked Questions below!
What is a global team?
A global team consists of employees who work from different countries around the world.
Is your team looking to include international top talent? Contact Borderless for support hiring, paying, and managing your remote, global team.
What is a remote team?
A remote team refers to employees who do not work from a physical office. Instead, they work from a remote location — such as their home, in public, or in a co-working space with other remote colleagues or professionals.
Your team can be fully remote or part of a hybrid model, which includes both in-office and remote work arrangements.
What is work culture?
Work culture characterizes an organization through shared values, beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors of employees.
Work culture encompasses the overall environment and atmosphere in which people work, including the mission, vision, ethics, and goals of the company.
Not only that, but work culture can also influence the way employees interact, communicate, collaborate, and make decisions within the organization. A positive work culture can help to promote employee engagement, productivity, and satisfaction, while a negative culture can unfortunately lead to low morale, high turnover, and decreased performance.
Work culture is undoubtedly shaped by leadership, company policies, employee interactions, and the organization's values and mission.
What are the signs of a bad work culture?
Signs of a negative work culture can include employees who are overwhelmed, burnt out, or feeling stressed, high turnover rates, negative feedback, poor performance, and disagreements between employees.
Things you can do to improve the culture within your workplace include:
- Prepare team building activities
- Organize company retreats
- Set up meetings via phone and video calls
- Meet with your team members regularly
- Help new employees to better adjust and settle into remote work
- Encourage open and honest communication with anonymous surveys
- Play games, host trivia and start challenges among employees
- Utilize tools that can help team members with their remote work
By taking an approach that not only encourages employees but also motivates and excites them, you can correct bad habits and instead build a strong company culture.
Why is corporate culture important?
Whether your team is fully remote, on a hybrid model, or in the physical office, the workplace culture of your company is exceptionally important.
Not only can it have an effect on the enjoyment that your employees experience on a day-to-day basis, but also the impact that your organization has on their mental and emotional health long-term.
Not many things can affect a persons emotional and mental well-being quite like a toxic workplace. It can result in employees resenting going into work or seeking new employment. By making corporate culture a high priority, you can showcase to your team that you also value their experience as well.
Our Final Thoughts
With the right guidance, support, and approach, you can build a strong company culture in a remote, global environment —one that is truly reflective of your core values.
Once you have identified the challenges that your remote team members are having in regard to company culture, you can make a strategic plan to address each and every one. Not only that but with a preventative approach, you can also reduce the risk of these challenges arising again in the future!
For help strategizing, we recommend reviewing some of the best practices and utilizing the tools, technology, and services available to you. Before you know it, your remote workers will be enjoying a company culture that is truly reflective of the legacy you have built.
Elevate Your Remote Team With Borderless Today
Do you manage a remote team? With Borderless, you can benefit from a number of elevated services that cater to your unique needs. From hiring and managing remote employees to ensuring that all team members are paid correctly and on time, Borderless is here to help.
We proudly offer the following services:
Learn More About Managing a Remote Company
For more information, take a look at the other helpful resources in our blog or contact us today! To help you get started, here are some other blog posts that you may find helpful!
- Managing and Tracking PTO for Your Global Team
- Guide to Hire in the United States as a Canadian Company
- Rehiring an Employee as a Contractor: What You Should Know
- Global Parental Leave Policies
Disclaimer
Borderless does not provide legal services or legal advice to anyone. This includes customers, contractors, employees, partners, and the general public. We are not lawyers or paralegals. Please read our full disclaimer here.
