Setting Your Employees, Teams and Managers Up for Success in a Remote-First Environment

Part one of a five-part series. To read the complete piece, download here.

The way people work is ever evolving, and today — more than ever — businesses are being asked to consider how to care for employees working remotely. Recent responses to COVID-19 have certainly accelerated the adoption of working virtually, but the way the world works has long been under transformation and is not likely to revert. According to Gartner, “by 2030, the demand for remote work will increase by 30% due to Gen Z fully entering the workforce.”[1]

Creating an effective remote-working team goes beyond IT logistics. Make no mistake — the tools are important. Remote employees need to have access to, and an understanding of, the tools needed to do their job each day. But keeping your team engaged and working well together remotely requires an understanding of — and a plan for — the key influencers of your organization’s unique remote work dynamic.

Throughout this series, we’ll focus on supporting and sustaining success in a remote-first environment. In this first installment, we’ll give you a bite-sized overview of what you’ll read in the coming days.

OVERVIEW

When we think about supporting a remote employee (or several remote employees and teams), we often think about the tools or technology first. Although having the right technology to provide access and connection is paramount, your tools are simply channels. An equally important consideration for your team’s success is your plan to help employees stay engaged and feel supported. Consider the following, and explore how to coach and cultivate each of these influencers of the remote work dynamic for your organization intentionally:

1. Culture: Culture is both the spirit of your organization and the environment that individual remote employees must navigate to feel engaged and successful. A positive remote-working culture includes acceptance, trust, consistency and openness.

2. Individuals: A remote employee faces different daily working circumstances than someone who shows up to the office. Seeing the whole person when employees aren’t at their desks calls for evolved and intentional tactics.

3. Managers: Managers play a leading role in successful remote-work cultures. They must actively engage with remote employees and set the example with others across the organization for best practices on interaction and support.

4. Teams: Team dynamics can be simply thought of as the daily manifestations of your culture. How people work within a team and with other teams greatly influences how they’ll approach remote working and whether they make remote employees feel part of the whole.

Tools: Another key element of your remote work dynamic is a clear understanding of the reliable tools that are easily accessible and help remote employees work collaboratively to do their job each day. The tools topic is a comprehensive one, including capabilities and governance, and this series will not address it in detail.

Tomorrow, we will dig deeper into how the culture sets the context and provide some activities to try out to strengthen a remote-friendly culture.

Author: Mariah Young, Marketing Strategist
When not off playing in the mountains, Mariah works as a marketing strategist for Ogilvy’s Employee Experience practice based in Denver, Colorado. She enjoys digging deep into the human psyche and analyzing market trends to make brands matter from the inside out, starting with the employees — the arbiters of a company’s vision and mission. When not deep in the weeds of research and strategy, she enjoys getting active, rock climbing, reading and live music.

[1] Gartner Press Release, “Gartner Identifies Six Trends for Chief Human Resources Officers That Will Impact How Organizations Experience the Future of Work,” February 5, 2020, https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2020-02-05-gartner-identifies-six-trends-for-chief-human-resourc