When you’re working with a remote team, it’s easy to lose some of the traditional elements of in-office work. Whether your team is spread out across the U.S. or across the globe, it’s important to focus on company culture even remotely. Learning how to improve company culture when working remotely is essential to fostering connection and even boosting productivity among your team members.
That’s right—when your team members have authentic relationships and feel a sense of culture, they’ll be more motivated to work hard. Even better, you’ll improve employee retention rates and cultivate a true sense of community amongst your team.
But how do you actually improve company culture for your remote team?
Ways To Improve Company Culture For Your Remote Team
There are some specific steps you can take starting now to improve company culture for your team, even if it’s fully remote. No matter your niche or the size of your team, company culture matters.
Here are six ways to improve your company’s culture when working remotely!
Make Sure You Have Clearly Defined Company Values
First, it’s so important to set and maintain clear company values. Our values shape everything about the way we work and interact with each other. Really, your company’s values steer the direction of your company and team.
If you haven’t already defined your company’s values in your mission statement, it’s time to do so. With those clearly defined values, you’ll be able to improve company culture by cultivating a positive, cohesive environment.
When everyone is on the same page about what matters, the whole team can feel supported and find success.
Communicate Your Company Culture With Your Team
Just having those defined values is a good starting point. But there’s an important extra step you need to take, and that’s communicating your company culture with your team.
Simply having a vision for your company’s culture and values isn’t enough. That culture has to be something that everyone is not only aware of, but also puts into practice.
Create a Company Culture document that everyone on your team, including new employees, has access to. This document needs to be specific, detailed, and actionable. It should include expectations, performance measurements, and how you plan to integrate company culture into your team’s remote work life.
As your company grows, you should continually reassess your company culture and values. How are you living up to those expectations you set? Do those expectations still reflect what your company is aiming to achieve, both professionally and culturally?
If you want to improve company culture, creating this document and consistently making changes is absolutely essential.
Related: What Is The Importance Of Team Building (Especially Remotely)?
Introduce New Team Members To The Entire Team
Just as you would in-office, make sure that you spend time introducing new team members and welcoming them to the team. This helps your new team member feel included and builds community by fostering those essential relationships.
Whether you do this through a quick email (that you can even create a standard template for to save you time) or as part of your regular video meetings, make sure to take this step. You can also encourage subdivisions of your team to have individual meetings to chat and get to know each other whenever someone new joins.
Hosting team events are another important part of onboarding new team members.
Personal, engaging events offer everyone on the team a chance to connect in a less intimidating, more natural way. Since your team is remote, it’s important to offer opportunities for connection like you would naturally experience in person.
Delicious Experiences offers unique opportunities for team building through culinary and beverage-centered experiences. These are memorable experiences that allow your team to connect, bond, and build those key relationships virtually.
Remember how important it is to introduce the team to the new team member—not just the other way around. You’re adding someone new to your current dynamic, so you need to prioritize making everyone feel comfortable and confident.
When everyone knows each other on a deeper level, they’re able to understand each other, communicate better, and work together more smoothly. Even better, they’ll produce consistently high-quality work and be motivated to support each other!
Create Multiple Communication Avenues and Set Expectations
There are so many ways to communicate, especially for a fully remote team. One important part of maintaining strong company culture is to clearly set expectations on what communication channels should be used for various purposes.
For example, how should someone communicate about legal or serious matters? How should your team communicate about more fun, casual topics?
Creating a simple communication guide for your remote team helps everyone be on the same page and feel comfortable communicating. After all, if you’re trying to build relationships between remote team members, they need dedicated spaces to build those relationships. And often, those spaces should be different than ones used for work-related questions.
In-office, most of us experience the watercooler effect, where people gather together and chat about casual topics. Creating a dedicated space for this virtually will help you improve company culture.
Oh, and remember to set and communicate any expectations around content and communicating, like language and humor.
Host Unique and Fun Team-Building Events
If you want to improve company culture, a HUGE part of that is hosting unique, fun team-building events. Of course, you want your team to be productive. But if you’re hoping to improve your company’s culture, sharing experiences and getting to know each other on a personal level helps build stronger and closer teams.
The more creative your team-building events are, the more your employees will enjoy them. And honestly, the more YOU will enjoy them, too!
With Delicious Experiences, you can effortlessly host incredible culinary and beverage-centered experiences.
Our experts craft experiences that are fully customizable and tailored to your unique needs. We’ll even send packages with ingredients so that there’s no extra work for your team members—they can just enjoy bonding and sharing a unique experience.
Promote Team Relationships By Fostering Connection
One of the final steps to improve company culture is to consistently foster connections between your team members in order to promote relationships.
With a remote team, you should regularly check in with team members to see how they feel about the company culture. This feedback can help you switch things up and improve employee satisfaction. And long-term, this is a great way to boost productivity and performance!
Learning how to improve company culture doesn’t have to be overwhelming. With a few strategic steps, you’ll implement a culture that’s welcoming and positive for all of your remote team members.
Create incredible onboarding and team-building experiences for your team with virtual culinary or mixology experiences through Delicious Experiences!
