Top 5 Effective Strategies for Cultivating a Strong Virtual Culture

One of the biggest challenges of remote staffing is building an inclusive and encouraging workplace culture. Remote staffing is an unprecedented but not hopeless situation. With out-of-the-box thinking and a shift in attitude, managers can create a virtual culture that delivers all the positive outcomes of physical workplace culture. Although, how do you build culture virtually? Read on to know the benefits of nurturing inclusive virtual culture and the effective strategies you can adopt to achieve that goal. 

Benefits of Positive Work Culture

Whether the workplace is physical or virtual, employees need to feel comfortable, respected and valued. Mostly, all it depends on how do you build a strong culture with a remote team? When employees feel like they are part of a team and belong to an organization that recognizes their contributions. As a result, remote employees will be more engaged, productive, motivated and inspired to perform at their fullest potential. Companies that actively promote team-building activities and thriving work culture are more successful in accomplishing these objectives. With more and more companies opting for remote staffing, virtual culture building is as important as workplace culture building. 

Rigorous Online Communication 

Managers would do well to remember that there’s no such thing as over-communication. Repetitive communication is a powerful and effective virtual culture building tool that delivers multiple benefits. Under-communicating can contribute to doubt, misinterpretation and uncertainty. It can lead to disastrous consequences such as missed deadlines, unfinished tasks and decreased productivity. To avoid these consequences, managers should repeat communication through various channels including e-mail, video calls and text messages so that remote employees feel included in projects and take precise actions in a timely manner. 

Collaborations on Virtual Platforms

Many managers think collaboration is impossible to achieve in virtual culture. However, there are many tools and techniques that managers can use to foster collaboration. For example, managers can use online platforms such as Zoom or Google Meet to host group video conference calls with team members. An effective strategy is to host a video conference to discuss a problem. During the call, everyone can have an opportunity to share their inputs or solutions. This way, the entire team can solve the problem together. Another strategy is to allow everybody to share their experiences or express their needs during video calls. Additionally, individual or team milestones recognition can also done with video calls. 

Online Team Building Activities

In conventional workplace culture, the entire team sets aside time for team-building exercises. Various platforms such as company annual days and conventions are leveraged for team-building activities that keep employees entertained, engaged and connected. A great virtual culture idea is to hold friendly online group challenges where individual teams earn points and possibly rewards. At a pre-determined time everybody can join through a virtual meeting platform to held on activities. This is an excellent way to break the ice between team members and help them get to know each other better. 

Recognition of Employees’ Contributions

Recognizing employees’ contributions and achievements are crucial to keeping them motivated and productive. Annual performance reviews are one channel to communicate appreciation for an employee’s contributions. However, appreciation on a continuous basis is more. When remote staffing comes into the picture, you can take advantage of virtual culture ideas to recognize employee contributions. Through e-mails, Zoom conferences, one-on-one virtual meetings and town hall events appreciation can be given. Appreciation in a group setting where everyone participates in celebrating each other’s’ contributions is likely to have an even greater impact.

Time for Non-Work Discussions

A positive virtual culture is one where people know more about each other outside of their job roles. This can happen when managers take the lead to build and maintain relationships with remote employees. A manager can set up video meetings where employees are encouraged to speak about their backgrounds, interests, hobbies and much more. This helps everyone participating in the meetings to interact with one another, find common ground and possibly find solutions to their problems. You never know – remote co-workers may become friends and pillars of support to one another. 

Building an inclusive, collaborative and engaging virtual culture is well worth the time and effort required to create it. Overall it will be a prominent factor how do you engage team virtually. Your organization will benefit from happier, more productive and more motivated employees who are inspired to work to their fullest potential and deliver exemplary customer service!

Read here to know 10 Ways That Can Ease Virtual Onboarding Process.