Building Company Culture and Retaining Employees When Your Employees Work Everywhere: An Employment Attorney’s Perspective

Remote employees are often the first cut in a layoff. 

Why? Likely this is because there is something lost when communication is almost exclusively online. You probably won’t learn as much about an employee’s life, regularly grab lunch together, or bump into each other in the grocery aisle. It’s easier to lay off someone who doesn’t have a son or daughter on the same soccer team. That’s reality. 

If your company is serious about remote work, you have to fight against the tendency to diminish remote employees and applicants. If you don’t, word will get out, and talented remote employees will be reluctant to join your company. 

How do we combat the tendency to treat remote employees like second-class citizens? I don’t have a perfect answer. But I know it starts with building relationships. Here are three suggestions for building relationships in a remote work environment to help you recruit and retain quality remote employees.  

Create a Rhythm of Regular Check-Ins

At a minimum, supervisors need to have a rhythm of weekly check-ins. I know meetings have a bad reputation for wasting time. But building relationships is as important as encouraging productivity.

Let the weekly meeting be an opportunity for the supervisor to see the projects the remote employee is working on so that the employee stays accountable and gets the help, support, and counsel needed. This can also be a time for the supervisor to ask questions, delegate new tasks, and open up the conversation for the employee. Of course, the most important thing about this meeting is that the supervisor shows that she is engaged, cares about the employee’s development, and will listen to ideas. 

Create a Monthly “Work-From-Work” Day

Meeting with other employees through in-person interactions can be a great tool for humanizing remote employees. One of my favorite ways to do this is a monthly “work-from-work” event where employees can work at the same physical location. It does not need to be mandated. Some employees probably live too far away to attend. Others don’t want to go into the office no matter what. But physically being around others, and enjoying the in-person group dynamic, is a great way to get to know colleagues better and learn about their experiences and skills. 

In-person interactions can be a powerful way to break digital cliques among remote employees. Try to make this an event where there is food, which always helps bring people together. If the employees are almost exclusively remote, consider reimbursing for mileage to help encourage attendance for anyone within 100 miles. 

Celebrate In Person

If your company doesn’t have a reason to celebrate, you’re doing something wrong. You should consider hosting in-person celebrations. These events are an opportunity for employees who ordinarily would never interact to get to know each other. Building relationships outside the 9-5 context can help create the kind of dynamic that will allow ideas to cross-pollinate between departments.  Plus, nobody likes those awkward virtual happy hours. 

Conclusion 

It might seem counterintuitive in a book on remote work that one of my solutions to build a better remote work culture is to find time to gather in person. I agree. But it works. It’s part of the reason I believe the future of work is fluid between remote and in-person work. Most employees need some of both, though in different proportions depending on personality. 

Remote work is here to stay. But you don’t want your remote employees to feel isolated and marginalized. Touching base with them in person is one of the best ways to humanize your company and its people. This will improve work culture, retention, and collaboration. It will also help you ensure that remote employees are not unfairly penalized when you must make difficult staffing decisions.