How To Engage With Remote And Dispersed Teams - There's An App For That!
Kazim Ladimeji shares his wise musings on why we need to improve and adapt our engagement with remote and dispersed teams.
Even before the pandemic companies were finding it hard to keep their employees engaged. Way back then, staff burnout was already a known problem with less than half of the work-force in the UK feeling happy to go to work[1]. The pandemic added some unneeded spice to the mix as, quite bizarrely and literally overnight, everyday jobs were thrust into the limelight as they were deemed ‘essential’ to maintaining the very fabric of society. No pressure then! Nevertheless, the blitz spirit took over and this newly high-profile category of essential workers drew on reserves to rise to the challenge and focus on serving a lock-down nation.
Nationwide, homeworking was another pandemic phenomenon which started literally overnight, and which meant from a typical manager’s perspective that everything had changed. Managers could no longer rely on the traditional employee engagement practices such as water cooler chats, break-out meetings, management by walking around or even leading by example because staff were working remotely. All they had was Zoom, email and a pressing requirement to remotely engage a geographically dispersed workforce.
Organisations adapted through necessity, but it was a muddle for many, and as a result, the pandemic has left us with a slightly unstable, post-pandemic hybrid-working scenario as organisations finalise their new hybrid working status quo.
While remote-working has been the norm in the tech sector, more traditional sectors like social housing, construction and local council departments are relative newcomers, having been propelled into a world of dispersed and remote teams with many people working alone. These sectors will now be facing the fresh challenge of remote team engagement with hybrid teams that are more socially fragmented than ever. The face-to-face engagement tactics that these sectors have been used to will no longer be sufficient and will need to be supplemented with new, innovative methods to engage remote teams.
Organisations can’t afford to let employee engagement slide at the best of times, but especially not in these post-pandemic period. It’s these employee engagement strategies that will prop up morale in these challenging teams, building a much-needed sense of team cohesion, team identity and the idea that everyone is working in pursuit of a common goal. Also, engaged employees tend to be absent less and are more committed to your organisation which are critical traits at the moment.[2]
Technology has a huge role to play in allowing you to engage your staff in a remote organisation. Using purpose-designed software applications, employers can still effectively engage their hybrid teams in inspiring ways. Employee engagement apps enable businesses to reach out to hybrid workforces and can help shape an organisational culture, bring teams together and help connect with the central and wider business. Here’s some examples of how employee engagement apps can help you connect with and motivate remote teams.
Simply the Best Engagement Medium
The simplest way to consistently get into the heads of your hybrid workforce is to use a mobile communication app. Let’s face it, your employees love their phones, carry them everywhere, check notifications, even during the night (although not to be encouraged!), and so if you have an engaging stream of corporate mobile content employees will read it. And of course, it will need to be engaging, because you are competing in your employee’s busy social information feed for their attention.
The best-of-breed employee engagement apps help to ensure that you are actually delivering engaging information. Too much bland, generic content will turn off your staff and the best engagement apps therefore make it easy for you to personalise content, for maximum reader relevance, by allowing for the segmentation of audience by location, job function, project etc. This means that when users switch on their phone, they see personally relevant information and notifications from your organisation that will help them to feel really connected. These apps also provide insights on content engagement and interactions which can help you adjust and optimise your communication strategy
Praise and Recognition
Public recognition is harder to do in hybrid work environments as people congregate less, so this area of engagement can suffer. Technological remedies do exist, for example, best-of-breed employee engagement apps include peer to peer recognition features that allow employees to publicly thank one another for assistance, good work, or just being a good team member etc... Typically other staff can view, like and comment on this praise on the public forum, magnifying the effect. This is a great way to build a self-perpetuating ecosystem of praise and recognition within your hybrid working organisation, the data from which can be added into existing reward and recognition programmes.
Social Engagement
Employee engagement apps can alleviate some of the feelings of isolation associated with hybrid working through Facebook-style social features, providing a social ecosystem where employees can publish content in return for views, likes and comments and ultimately engagement. It’s a great way for employees to introduce themselves, learn about others and what they are doing both in work and play and to simply stay connected with each other on an ongoing basis, even if they don’t physically see each other that often. This kind of socialisation functionality can be a godsend to new starters into a hybrid or remote-working environment who are probably most at risk from feelings of isolation.
Onboarding Employees
It’s worth expanding on the cause of new hires as they are perhaps one of the most vulnerable cohorts of staff in the new hybrid, remote-working environment. Without any pre-existing supporting relationships in the company or knowledge of how things are at your organisation, the feeling of estrangement associated with being a new starter are likely to be magnified in a hybrid organisation. Using all the socialisation, personalisation, push-notifications and information dissemination features of a good engagement app, you can create a welcoming, informative and nurturing online environment that will enable new recruits to rapidly and successfully onboard into a hybrid working organisation.
Streamlining Internal Operations
The best-of-breed employee apps like Thrive app are now also helping organisations move their internal paper-based processes into a digital space. For instance, empowering employees and line managers to share and download rotas, timetables, images and other important documents instantly using User Generate Content features, which makes the process less time consuming and more efficient for everyone
Others are directly targeting and gathering employee feedback for Compliance, Events and Competition-based content. Meaning everything is stored and shared within the app and employees are acknowledging they have ‘read and understood’ Health and Safety training, for example, or ‘Accepted’ an event invitation or ‘Entered’ a competition, all through the click of one button within their app.
The Thrive app also offers a unique Workplace Capacity Management within the app, where organisations are managing their reduced capacity in offices during the pandemic. This capability helps organisations implement Covid-safe policies with self-service convenience for employees to request office space as well as providing data export reports to feed into the organisations Track and Trace procedures.
Much like the pandemic, hybrid working has been highly contagious and has now become endemic in the population. But, thankfully, that’s where the comparison ends; we should welcome it’s prevalence, rather than just learn to live with it, because it’s hugely beneficial in many ways. But to succeed with hybrid working organisations must change some of the old ways of engaging staff and replace them with new and innovative technology inspired employee engagement solutions.
Thrive.App Ltd provides the technology and support to assist organisations in transforming their internal communications and improving employee engagement through the successful launch of secure employee apps.
With the Thrive app, every employee can easily access information they need, in real-time, to support their role, get organisational updates across all areas of the business and feel supported and recognised as they carry out their duties.
The Thrive app brings everyone together, including deskless, dispersed, remote workforces with limited or no access to corporate emails or intranets. Its client-base includes councils, healthcare companies, manufacturing businesses, food firms, retailers, ports, logistics companies and other organisations across the UK, Ireland and internationally.
This software as a service solution enables HR, Marketing, Internal Comms, Corporate Comms, IT, Operations and other professionals to create and promote important, relevant, timely and customised information. Reaching everyone, everywhere, every time with an engaging, secure mobile app that is ridiculously easy to use.
Thrive.App's clients include SSE, SGN, Air France KLM, Carlsberg, McCarran International Airport, Michelin, Biffa, Fairchild Medical Center, Meath County Council, and many more.
Jollyworkr is super excited about our new partnership with Thrive.App!
Contact us here to arrange a demonstration and discuss the Jollyworkr online learning packages included for free with Thrive.App.
[1] https://www.gallup.com/workplace/290573/engaged-workplaces-world-put-people-first.aspx
[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/nazbeheshti/2019/01/16/10-timely-statistics-about-the-connection-between-employee-engagement-and-wellness/?sh=5387ef5c22a0
