If you employ a remote workforce, it’s imperative that you go above and beyond to keep your home-based staff members engaged, connected, and motivated at all conceivable points. Should you fail to forge and maintain a strong bond with these workers, they will be liable to feel disconnected from your team culture. This could then have a negative impact on their day-to-day morale, which in turn could have an adverse effect on their overall productivity levels.
There are a whole host of things that you can do to engage your remote employees on a deeper level, one of the most effective being to provide them with the benefits listed below.
Here are three must-have perks that you should consider gifting to your remote workforce:
Employee swag
No matter where they are geographically based, your remote workers need to be made to feel like they play a crucial role in your team culture. Providing them with some top-of-the-line employee swag is a great way to cultivate this crucial level of inclusiveness. Whether you supply them with branded apparel, swag bags, stationery, water bottles, or tech items, this is a great way to remind your remote staff members that they belong to your professional family.
Wellness programs
They might be operating in the comfort of their own homes, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that your remote employees will be relaxed during their working hours. These workers can and, unfortunately, will suffer with work-related stress issues from time to time, which is why you must go above and beyond to protect their mental wellbeing. Running wellness programs is an effective way to perform this all-important task.
Don’t worry; implementing wellness programs into your remote employee outreach initiative need not be a difficult task to undertake.
1. Encourage transparency and openness by opening up a direct email/phone line that allows your remote employees to connect with your HR staff
2. Provide your remote workers with links to useful mental health resources (Headspace, Elefriends, What’s Up?, etc.)
3. Create a mental health toolkit that your home-based staff members can access at all points
4. Subsidise healthy activities (gym memberships, yoga classes, meditation apps, professional virtual counseling support, etc.)
5. Host casual virtual meetings with your remote employees regularly
Professional development
Often, remote employees are made to feel like just another brick in the wall. Sooner rather than later, these feelings of discontent manifest into resentment, and these grievances then force home-based workers to seek alternative job roles. If you want to boost your remote employee retention rate, you need to make these staff members feel valued. Investing in their personal, professional development is an effective way to perform this crucial task.
For advice on investing in the development of your remote team, click here.
The ability to roll out of bed and straight into work shouldn’t be the only benefit that your remote employees reap. If you want to keep your home-based staff members connected and engaged with their work at all times, you should consider providing them with the must-have perks listed above.
