14 Apr Managing teams & building company culture remotely

How do you keep an inclusive workplace environment when we are all separated and working from home? 

How do we ensure every staff member remains productive, feels valued and kept engaged?

How do we build a remote team culture? 

These are a few of the many questions which are coming up at the moment from our clients. The rapidly changing landscape we are currently living in means we are adapting to the new legislation and economic pressures right alongside you. We are monitoring the government announcements and working alongside the REIV and AHRI to provide the best advice we can. 

Just like we would in an office we need to adapt to our staff members different personalities and work styles. For example, if you know you are a more social person and you feed off other people’s energy to have a productive day, one idea could be to schedule regular video catch ups with your team. This can be informal and during a lunch break or regular morning meetings where you set the goals for your team’s day. Similarly, if you have a staff member who is easily distracted, perhaps setting up a structured work flow in bite size pieces will be more effective. 

Team meetings are very different to what we are used to, however the same principles apply to in the office. It is easy for the extroverted personality to take over the conversation and quieter staff members to get lost in the background. We have set some ground-rules with this, questions are always directed at an individual ensuring every individual has the chance to respond and everyone will prepare and plan prior to the meeting any questions they may wish to ask. We have also found that limiting the time to half an hour is beneficial to keep engagement. In order to boost everyone’s mood our Director, Melissa has been starting each morning meeting showing us her two pugs. This is a great way to lighten the mood and start the day in a positive head space. 

Many of the Australian workforce has never worked remotely, therefore, we need to ensure team inclusion to ensure a positive mindset and maximise team productivity. There are three key essential steps to inclusion. Firstly, that each individual is valued and respected. this includes their professional and personal self. Secondly, each and every staff member has access to the same resources ensuring a “fair go”. Thirdly, it is important to enable individual employees to contribute ideas. One way of ensuring this is to communicate with your team in different ways, over email, calls and video so all types of personality feel comfortable to contribute to your business.

At this point in time it is also effective to agree as a team for everyone to be open minded to change and work together to achieve the best outcome for your clients and each other. As always, but most importantly now; the most important thing to remember is to communicate clearly with your team. One of our clients have been sending a weekly video update to their whole office, this has been exceptionally well received and calmed nerves of job insecurity. 

If you need anything at all during this time, please call 0402 550 556.