With the outburst of the pandemic COVID-19, businesses had no choice but to embrace the work-from-home lifestyle. But, now two years later, its’ not a choice anymore. People are finding comfort in working from home or remotely.
No wonder remote workers are happier than office-based employees. But, remote working isn’t all milk and honey, it has its challenges and one of them is keeping remote employees engaged. A lack of engagement may lead to an absence of passion for the organization’s goals, feeling unhappy, unappreciated, isolated, and lonely. Employee engagement is nothing more than just the process of making workers feel satisfied, loyal, and happy in their place of work. It ensures the working team is still as productive and efficient as they would be in the office.
Here are a few ways to engage and motivate remote employees and make them feel as indeed part of the team:
Host casual meetings and hangouts
Seeing and sharing information and ideas keeps employees excited and updated about what’s happening in the external market. Multiple remote teams maintain frequent communication through instant messaging, web conferencing platforms, email, and video calls. A video or voice conferencing call using Adobe Connect while the whole team is working can help encourage group collaboration. Fostering a personal connection with employees may also help in recognizing their weaknesses, strengths, and interests. The casual talks provide chances for your team members to get to know each other better. It is also known as virtual water cooler space.
Gamification
Give your remote employees a chance to relax and unwind by inviting them to a virtual game. Through these gaming activities, employees get a chance to collaborate and learn more about each other. There are numerous applications available in the market to avail. These applications have become a popular strategy for organizations to encourage employee loyalty and engagement in a fun way.
Also Read: Top 5 Hassles In Working From Home And How To Tackle Them
Encourage physical and mental wellness
Remotely working can be pretty challenging. And unless the employee is physically and mentally well, any type of employee engagement idea will not work effectively. So, the very first priority should be workers’ health and wellness. Look for ideas to make your employees practice healthy habits. You can start a wellness program for your team like one month of daily walks, 30 days of yoga, etc., or give free subscriptions to meditation apps. Hence, it is very important to ensure that your employees are in a mental state to do their job without any issues.
Online training and tracking
A productive way to keep remote employees occupied and educated is to finish company-mandated online training. Get an online learning management system and upload different training courses to keep your employees skilled and engrossed. This software also helps you track employees’ progress and help them achieve their goals.
Accomplishment celebrations
The best thing to keep employees engaged is to offer them positive feedback and recognize them for all the great work they do. Virtually appreciating your team members with simple thank yous on video calls or asking the whole team to clap for them when they reach a milestone encourages employees to keep hard working and achieving targets. You can also opt for remote-friendly options like reward points, electronic gift cards, and more.
Giving special perks
Proving pocket-friendly benefits to your remote employees is also an amazing tactic to keep your employees engaged. These perks could be:
- State-specific healthcare coverage
- Free subscriptions for Disney+, Netflix, or HBO
- Access to online fitness training programs, and more.
Final thoughts
Digital employee engagement ideas are necessary to keep your remote employees engrossed and improve their levels of productivity, happiness, satisfaction, and loyalty. However, there is n number of ideas available on the internet but it totally depends on you on how you implement them and make sure that strengthen the professional association among your team members.
Also Read: 3 Ways Hackers Can Attack Everyone Who Works From Home
