How to improve employee engagement in remote workplaces

Employee engagement is vital. It can be the difference between a successful business and one that barely scrapes by. This is equally true for remote and hybrid workplaces, which are often overlooked in the engagement equation. After all, it can be challenging to gauge how engaged employees are when you’re not in the same room.

If any positives came out of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was proving that remote and hybrid working can be positive and productive. A study by the UK government found that 78% of those who worked from home said being able to work from home gave them an improved work-life balance. Similarly, another study by Stanford University revealed that nearly 40% of respondents have been more efficient while working from home.

Accordingly, the main question is, how do you improve engagement for remote employees? We’re going to examine exactly that. We’ll look at strategies to improve remote employee engagement and offer tips and ideas to get the most out of your digital workforce.

For a deeper dive, check out our whitepaper, Employee engagement strategies to build successful L&D programs.

Understanding remote employee engagement

Employee engagement is sometimes overlooked in a remote workforce. After all, if employees are meeting their targets and aren’t raising concerns, surely that means there’s nothing to worry about? Not necessarily.

Ensuring employees are engaged should be a priority for every business leader. Engaged employees are efficient, productive, proactive, and more likely to innovate. Therefore, engaged remote employees tend to produce better work on time and within budget.

It can be difficult to determine how engaged remote employees are, but it’s something business owners must be on top of. If employees aren’t engaged, they won’t be as invested in your business achieving its goals, which risks underperformance.

The benefits of remote employee engagement

When employees are engaged, it not only benefits them, but your entire organization in the following ways:

• Greater productivity
• Better efficiency
• More job satisfaction
• Improved communication
• Improved teamwork and collaboration
• Greater flexibility
• Better work-life balance and wellbeing
• More innovation and creativity
• More flexibility and adaptability
• Higher retention
• More opportunities to promote from within

These factors also contribute to cutting costs or producing consistently high-quality work, resulting in more revenue. As such, ensuring remote employees are engaged makes sense from a financial point of view.

For more information, check out our blog on building strong relationships in a remote work environment.

The challenges of maintaining remote employee engagement

Since remote teams don’t work together in the same room, measuring engagement can be tricky. It’s much harder for managers and leaders to observe when engagement levels are down, meaning potential improvements are overlooked.

However, there’s more to it than that. Below are some of the reasons it can be difficult to maintain remote employee engagement:

• Communication challenges
• Limited opportunities to interact socially
• Team building limitations
• Monitoring and accountability
• Impact on work-life balance 
• Ineffective onboarding
• Few opportunities for career development
• Issues with technology
• Time zone difficulties

For more information, read our blog post on using connection and belonging to combat loneliness in your team.

Strategies to improve remote employee engagement

The good news is that while there are challenges in maintaining engagement with remote employees, there are strategies you can implement to boost engagement. Below are just a few engagement ideas for remote workers: 

• Ensure there are plenty of ways employees can communicate, which offer transparency for who is available and when
• Set clear and measurable objectives
• Encourage senior management to communicate with employees regularly
• Be open and honest about the organization’s goals and objectives
• Promote inclusivity, acknowledge achievements, and recognize great work
• Encourage virtual team-building sessions and activities that go beyond discussing work 
• Regularly check in with employees and schedule 1:1s
• Offer thorough onboarding and training opportunities
• Allow flexible working
• Encourage open and honest feedback
• Consider offering benefits, such as those related to employee wellness
• Invest in the right technologies and tools. 

More resources to support your remote team

There are plenty of tools and resources that can make remote workspaces more engaging. Examples include everything from communication software to project management platforms. Some great tools your organization could consider are:

• Training resources, including Go1
• Communication tools, including Slack, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams
• Project management platforms, including Asana, Trello, and Monday.com
• Collaboration tools, including Miro and Google Workspace
• Virtual team building tools, including TeamBonding and Donut
• Time-tracking tools, including Toggl and Harvest
• Employee recognition platforms, including Bonusly and Perkbox
• Health and wellbeing resources, including Headspace and Wellable

How to measure remote employee engagement

Providing employees with the tools and resources they need to stay engaged is one thing, but measuring engagement is equally important. By not measuring employee engagement, you risk low engagement levels because you can’t say whether your strategies are successful. 

Just like there are tools to improve engagement, there are also ways to  measure engagement, such as: 

• Employee surveys, which can cover a wide range of topics, such as feedback on job satisfaction, collaboration, and communication
• Meeting attendance and participation
• Absenteeism rates
• Retention rates
• Task completion rates
• Quality of work
• Customer feedback
• Learning analytics and course completion data, which can be simple and fast to pull if your business utilizes a learning management system (LMS)
• Communication data if your business uses a platform such as Slack or Microsoft Teams
• Whether the business meets or exceeds its goals and objectives
• 1:1 meetings

Inspired to boost engagement? Download our whitepaper, Employee engagement strategies to build successful L&D programs, to get started! Or, you can book a demo today to find out how Go1 can help with your team’s learning needs.