Boosting Employee Morale in Remote Teams

Blog Articles
21 October 2021

Working remotely has a number of positive benefits for both employees and employers alike. However, while it can increase productivity and lead to a greater work-life balance, many people may also struggle with maintaining morale. It can feel like a mission to maintain a personal connection with the people you work with and it may be hard to get support or feedback from your managers.

Thankfully, there are a few things we can do to help boost employee morale across remote or hybrid teams.

Encourage boundaries between work and personal life

When you’re working remotely, it can be tempting to stay in bed until 5 minutes before your first meeting or work late into the night because your laptop is right there. While this can be ok from time to time, it can lead to unhealthy boundaries between work and personal life. As a manager, it’s important to encourage your employees to keep a strong separation between the work they do at home and the rest of their life. Encourage them to switch off at a certain time of day or have a separate workspace in their home.

Ask for feedback from your team

Your team is built up of people with a wide variety of past experiences, personal preferences, and learning/working styles, so it’s important you ensure they’re incorporated into your business practices. If your employees feel like you’re always making choices for them and not with their input, it can lead to lower morale and thus, lower productivity and satisfaction.

It’s important to regularly check in with your employees and get feedback on the practices you’re implementing and the tools you’re using. You’ll likely find that they have valuable insights into how to improve what you do.

Implement an employee recognition program

This may seem like a biased tip coming from us, but when you’re working from home your work efforts can become a lot less visible. This often leads to less recognition, even from peers. By implementing a formal recognition program and customising how you show appreciation for your employees’ efforts and achievements, you can help ensure they feel valued even when you’re not face-to-face to say it.

The My Rewards platform gives you the chance to fully customise what your employees see, how they’re rewarded, and how they interact with your brand and your brand’s partners.

Spend time talking about day-to-day life on calls, not just work deadlines

Often one of the biggest things employees miss about being in the office is the day-to-day chit chat that comes from making a coffee in the kitchen, standing in the lift, or sitting outside for lunch. While Slack, Microsoft Teams, etc. allow people to have general conversations (as well as work conversations, of course), it doesn’t always have the same impact.

We encourage you to take some time on phone calls and video calls to check in with how your employees and peers are doing, what silly thing their dog has done that day, or whether their neighbour’s DIY construction project has ended yet.

Make the most of the communication channels you’ve already got

Sometimes the communication tools we’re already using have features that we don’t know exist. Reach out to their support teams and see if they can do an education session with your team to run through all of the cool (and probably useful) features that they’ve got and some tips and tricks for making the most of their platforms.

For instance, did you know that Slack has a ‘Workflow’ feature that lets you automate daily/weekly messages to your team? It may be useful for asking your team what their top priorities are for the day and whether they need help from anyone in particular.

Whatever method/s you use, maintaining your employee morale is incredibly important for their happiness and success in their roles.