Effective communication and collaboration have always been challenging in corporate environments. Today, that’s even more true with workers dispersed across offices, remote locations, in the field, and more. The key to improving collaboration and communication is creating a cohesive culture.

It has always been a challenge to communicate with team members across departments and divisions and make sure everyone is informed, up to date, and aligned. That challenge has only grown in recent years, even though we now have access to an increasing array of tools to help us. Post-pandemic, teams are grappling with new working styles and formats. They now have remote colleagues and flexible working patterns — and the rules continue to change.

With staff working from home, in offices, on-site at client offices, and in the field, helping the whole workforce stay informed and included is even harder. Remote workers can feel easily forgotten, especially if they do their jobs seamlessly. That’s not to mention that everyone is so busy in today’s world; even if an employee actively and directly reaches out to connect, the rapid pace of communication in the workplace means emails are skimmed over, pertinent information missed, and thus opportunities lost.

In addition, communication is being challenged by outside influences like social media, advertising, and email marketing. The number of emails we send and receive daily is predicted to reach 347 billion this year. Spam litters our working day. In a desperate bid for clarity and productivity, it can be tempting to avoid opening emails and missing important information (40% of us admit to having at least 50 unread messages in our inboxes).

What Cultural Problems Does a Shifting Workplace Create?

For teams in 2023, communication is about more than just information. Staying connected to teammates is important for many reasons, including feeling a sense of belonging and meaning in our work.

Per a study by Indeed and Forrester, trust, belonging, and inclusion are some of the most cited cultural qualities that employees need at work, and feeling excluded is detrimental to well-being.

The ways to resolve feelings of exclusion or a lack of belonging might be obvious for an office-based team, but for a remote or hybrid team, fixing the culture is a more complicated task. How can you begin to express your company’s culture if no one meets in person? If you don’t have a water cooler to gather around?

Culture is a huge part of any organization. At Enertia, we are protective of it. We value our flexibility, our open-door policy, and our individuality, and we share these values with everyone who works with us and even individuals who are just visiting. But even when we have a clear idea of our cultural values, it can be challenging to keep living them in a varying and shifting workplace environment.

Keeping Culture High on the List of Priorities

We try to combat these challenges by keeping culture high on our list of priorities. To make our workplaces feel more connected, more akin to the in-person days, we encourage video calls as often as possible — with cameras on. Personality and character come through via video, and we’ve all learned from quarantine how important that human element can be.

We also try to convey our company culture in client environments by making sure our on-site subject matter experts are good personality fits and implementing quick changes if relationships seem stale. A prolonged, strained on-site relationship can be detrimental to both our and the client’s success, and injecting a new personality can reignite and energize the situation.

How to Give Remote and Off-Site Employees a Sense of Belonging

It is vital for your company’s success to figure out how to make all employees — regardless of location — feel like part of the organization. With so many workplace challenges to deal with and so much digital communication flying around, how can you do that successfully without losing your grip on reality? Try these strategies:

1. Host a team happy hour.
   Team building is an overused term, conjuring images of Jenga towers and sharing circles. However, the ethos of getting teammates together outside of the usual workday and asking them to participate in unusual activities can be pretty beneficial. A good old-fashioned happy hour or team-building exercise is an opportunity for colleagues to experience each other in a social way rather than as “those people I owe emails to.”

   Pro tip: Invite clients to the happy hour, too, to begin to merge your internal and external cultures. The casual nature of the environment should help everyone let their guard down and learn from each other on neutral territory. It also exposes clients to more personalities, so if there is ever a need to make a change, you can be ready with some viable options.

2. Host a virtual meeting without shame.
   Virtual department meetings are still OK. Though the mention of another meeting might make some eyes roll, the truth is that video chats are beneficial for the greater good of the team, especially when they’re well organized and purposeful.

   Part of the reason meetings might be getting negative “press” in your team is that you’re not that fond of them yourself. So, figure out why that is. What can you bring to the meeting to make it a better use of your and others’ time? What resources or experiences could you share that might help other team members and make the meeting culture feel more personal?

3. Show your team how to include themselves.
   We often talk about inclusion as something we must offer very actively to our teams; we need to be the ones reaching out and bringing people in. Sometimes, though, the best way for people to feel a sense of belonging is to make an effort themselves.

   Consider self-inclusion. This one is hard for people to hear, but the truth hurts sometimes. The best way to feel included is to try to be included. How can you open channels in your company so that people can reach out themselves? Can employees ask to be added to lists, groups, and teams? Can you remind people of ways they could create the culture they want to experience?

Your workday is hectic, and you have team members all over the place — in home offices, shared working spaces, off-site with clients, and more. You need ways of bringing these busy people together for moments and occasions that will remind them they belong to something larger than themselves.

Written by Nicole Durham, Marketing Director at Enertia Software.

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