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Deal and Kennedy defined “culture” as “how things get done around here” or what is required to succeed in a particular corporate environment. In any organisation, it is the unspoken set of expectations and rules that all team players have to follow.
We’ve written about how to maintain your company culture with remote employees and how important it is to build a strategy on how to achieve that. Even when you only meet your team virtually, it’s crucial that you take an initiative to build your remote team culture. This will help your members feel connected to others in the team.
When your team is 100% remote, building culture remotely may not be as easy as you would when you can all meet in a physical space.
In this article, we share more advice on how you can do that. Here are five low-cost tips on how you can maintain a positive remote team culture.
1. Keep all communication lines open.
Mathilde Collin, the co-founder and CEO of app Front, maximized all communication channels available to keep their team “psychologically knit together during this challenging time.” Given the current setup of teams right now, having open communication channels is the only way to promote organisational culture.
For Collin, they set up a 24/7 Zoom Room, an open Zoom meeting room where anyone can jump in and chat. They also created a Slack channel called #life-wfh, where their employees could connect socially and share resources about remote work and other ideas on how they can succeed in the current work-from-home setup.
2. Schedule more time for conversations.
Another idea related to promoting better communication is to book meetings and regular catch-up sessions with your team. Aside from your regular team-wide calibration meetings, you can also hold short huddles throughout the week where you can promote knowledge sharing.
For these informal learning sessions, you can set a theme or a question or prompt that can guide your discussion and encourage your team to share knowledge and learn from one another.
3. Organise team-building activities.
While many cities have started opening up, your team might still be operating from home at the moment. To help everyone feel a little less isolated, you can hold team-building activities to lift the team’s spirits and give you a chance to bond and have fun with your team even when you’re not able to meet face-to-face.
Some companies hold a virtual game night where team members can play virtual versions of board and card games such as Mafia or Werewolf. At Amped HQ, we have weekly catch-up sessions where we play games via Zoom and share interesting stories with our teammates.
You can try other activities depending on your team’s culture: you can have virtual drinking parties or karaoke sessions on Fridays to get to know one another better. Some teams organise wellness activities on lunch or afternoon breaks, such as yoga, Zumba, Pilates, or meditation.
4. Start a buddy system or a mentorship program.
Since most of us are working remotely, there are more possibilities to build relationships within your company. It’s the perfect time to network with other members of your company who might help make your work a lot easier. For your direct reports, it can also be a great opportunity to strengthen their connections within the company. You can even pair employees from different locations or business units to learn from one another.
5. Check in on your team members.
Even when we’re physically apart, we can still help our teammates feel supported and engaged. As the leader, you can schedule individual face-time with team members via video calls to check in as often as needed. You can use these meetings to establish trust, build connections, and celebrate individual accomplishments.
If you manage a team of leaders and managers, make sure that you also check on them, too. Help equip your managers with the tools they need to work on their projects and keep their teams motivated. In order to have cohesive, highly effective teams, you need strong leadership -- and good leaders who can model the behaviors that you expect of your team.
Conclusion
Even when you’re all working remotely, you can still have productive and successful teams with a strong culture. When we take the time and effort to develop a strong remote culture, employees will feel empowered and trusted to accomplish their work.
This process takes time, though. We need to be creative and intentional to make sure that our efforts to foster a consistent company culture that would stick, even when we’re still working away from the office.
Partner with reliable virtual accounting experts
We know how hard it is to find great accounting talent who can work well with your team. When you’re running a tight-knit organisation with a strong culture, it’s important that your accounting team is also a cultural fit.
At Amped HQ, we pride ourselves on taking extra care and effort to build a solid relationship with our clients. Contact us today to learn how Amped HQ can support your accounting team.
