A Gartner survey reveals 88% of organisations have encouraged or required employees to work from home due to Coronavirus, enforcing a global ‘Work from Home experiment’ which none of us saw coming and nobody had planned for.
Surprisingly however, the experiment seems to have paid off. Studies have proven that most employees working remotely have not only adapted quickly to the new ways of working – but they have thrived too, reporting positive effects on their daily work, feeling more engaged, and having a stronger sense of well-being than those in non-remote jobs with little flexibility do. The post-COVID era is dawning, and now is the time to start planning for the Future Workplace.
With Employee Wellbeing being a top priority our People & Culture team, along with our workplace culture champions, have come up with a list of activities for remote staff to;
- Ensure workplace culture is strong, despite employees working remotely
- Avoid social isolation amongst employees through constant communication
- Help employees maintain a positive mindset towards work, during these uncertain times
Without further ado, I present to you - Weploy’s “7 Commandments” for optimal engagement amongst remote workers whilst WFH.
1. Thou Shalt Continue Learning
This involves company leaders and employees running virtual Lunch and Learns via Google Hangout relating to new product features, sales techniques, start up success stories and much more.
2. Honor Thy Lunch
Utilising internal chat platforms like Slack has allowed team Weploy to create shared forums where team members can post a photo of their lunch for the day and vote on the best one! The lucky winner for Best Lunch of Week could win a tasty lunch on the company card when back in the office or have it delivered via Deliveroo!
3. Thou Shalt not Disconnect
Hosting a morning meeting via Video Conference is a great idea to quickly discuss tasks, goals and objectives for the day and ensure teams remain connected and accountable.
4. Thou Shalt Covet Thy Neighbours' Goods
The team here at Weploy is filled with some colourful characters and it’s a true testament to our culture, that despite our many differences, the relationships within our business are so strong. For this activity, our employees are encouraged to share photos of something interesting from home with their colleagues via Slack.
5. Thou Shalt Celebrate thy Neighbours Wins
Companies can create a “Wins” chat group or Slack Channel to allow people to share their quick wins from home, whether it’s a breakthrough from our product team on a new app feature, successful onboarding of new staff from talent or a new piece of collateral created by the marketing team.
6. Thou Shalt not Underestimate the Importance of Gossip
This is my personal favourite, for which we schedule a 5-10 minute meeting with colleagues from other teams and just catch up, like you would in the kitchen when making a tea in the office kitchen. Try to avoid work chat here people!
7. Thou Shalt continue to Play
Ever wondered who in the team can’t stand coriander, has lived abroad, worked in the team the longest etc? Well now you can guess as part of a company quiz! We’re putting up one question per day until the end of the month to help us get to know our colleagues even better!
Despite the uncertain times we’re all facing, remaining connected and staying engaged has never been so important, particularly if you’re working remotely.. Although it’s early days, the activities and ideas above are so far working well for us here at Weploy and we hope they’ll work for you too.
If you have any other ideas or would like to discuss the option of working with contingent staff, feel free to reach out to a member of our team via the link below.
