Creating a team culture when working from home

 

The rise of home working means that it’s more important than ever to create and foster a strong team culture. Doing so means that staff will be motivated, engaged and willing to go the extra mile. Developing an enjoyable day-to-day experience where everyone feels involved, even while working remotely, will go a long way to ensuring employees don’t look to move on to a new role. It’s all about forging bonds that will help your business to grow while staff can achieve their goals. These tips will help you create an excellent culture, no matter where your workers are.

Make sure you choose the best tools for the job

Remote working tools are perhaps the biggest factor in creating a culture when the workforce isn’t located in one place. Choose the right one and your team will be able to thrive. Pick a clunky or outdated platform and it will make working from home harder for everyone.

Fortunately, the latest software is excellent and capable of separating chats into groups, meaning teams can keep their work conversations in one place while having a dedicated space for one-to-one conversations and areas to save files and documents that can be easily accessed by those who need them. Best of all, this can cut down on endless back and forth over email, making teams more productive, developing better focus and ensuring tasks are completed efficiently and in short order. Using Wacom pen tablets with Microsoft Word and Powerpoint makes it easy to draw and annotate documents before sharing them, giving work a more human touch. Think of these tools like a virtual office, replacing the daily hubbub of an open plan space.

Make time for downtime

When everyone is working from home, there is less scope for the social interactions that go a long way to creating a strong team. That means it’s more important than ever to try and move chat beyond work during the day and not push teams to work constantly without the breaks and downtime they would have enjoyed when in the office.

There are a number of tactics that can work: put two staffers together and give them dedicated time to chat each week about a shared interest; hold a weekly virtual social event, using video conferencing tech, ideally during office hours so staff don’t feel resentful about work spilling over into home life; and actively encourage the use of non-work channels on your remote working platform. The latter is vital: sharing social media stories and swapping jokes online can be a handy substitute for spending a few minutes together around the water cooler or in the staff kitchen.

Foster initiative to help create leaders at home

With employees working from home, it can be more challenging to foster initiative among employees. That means that simply setting tasks and asking for them to be completed to deadline can only be one part of the strategy when it comes to creating a strong team culture. In addition, assign newer members of staff a mentor so that senior members of the team feel valued and can develop their management skills, or ask less experienced employees to run a project or take the lead with a new pitch. This goes beyond simple delegation and will help ensure equity within the team.

Build team culture. Get started with Wacom Intuos.

Wacom Intuos makes staying connected with colleagues easy. Use it to explain concepts visually, facilitate teamwork and strengthen collaboration. The pen feels just like paper on the 13.3” screen, so you can share ideas in a way that feels completely familiar. Connect to your Mac or PC, as well as certain Android devices.

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