Plenty of team members have switched from coming into the office every day to staying at home for their 9-5 workday, while others have been remote for many years. Regardless of why your employees have switched or stayed remote, it’s essential to keep them in mind by recognizing their performance and abilities. Neglecting employee recognition, no matter how near or far, could be detrimental for your business, team morale, and your overall job satisfaction rates.
How Many Employees are Considered Remote?
In regards to team building and establishing strong relationships with our employees, those that don’t work in the main office are often neglected. Before the pandemic, 31% of Americans worked remotely for four to five days a week, but that number skyrocketed immediately when lockdown procedures were initiated. Some figures state that over half of the American workforce is staying home 40 hours a week in all job markets.
It’s easy to forget about something or someone that you don’t interact with daily, but your remote workers are just as valuable to your business as central office employees.
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The Value of Connection Between Employees
Employees want to feel connected to their coworkers and managers. In a 2014 Globoforce study about work relationships, 93% of respondents want their colleagues to think highly of them and want to engage positively with the entire workplace. Face-to-face interaction can improve productivity, innovation, and efficiency in all collaborative efforts.
To keep morale high, which will improve the quality and quantity of work produced, a peer-to-peer recognition program isn’t just a benefit but a necessity.
Why Remote Employee Recognition Can’t Wait
Most employees require recognition from their coworkers and management to understand if they’re doing a good job. Simply not firing them isn’t good enough to keep their worries at bay, especially if management only speaks to them to criticize. Criticism is necessary for the workplace, but it shouldn’t come without positive assertion or congratulatory statements.
Manager and worker relationships are the most important factor in regulating the moods of your employees. Sometimes the problem is more profound than a bad manager. Managers also need to have a good relationship with their higher-ups to perform better on the job. If your managers are also feeling underappreciated, why would they go out of their way to improve employee relationships at all?
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1. Work Pressure isn’t the Culprit
A heavy workload has little effect on the happiness of your employees. Many employers will cut back on project quantity because they think it will improve the quality of the work produced, but if the manager doesn’t have a good relationship with the employee, this will backfire. They will likely think you’re cutting back their workload because you consider them incompetent.
2. Workers Perform Better When Appreciated
Treating your employees as people will make them better workers, but micromanaging or using other dismissive behaviors won’t. When employees feel that they affect the company’s economic performance or that they’re an essential part of the team, they are more likely to work harder. The idea that all workers are unaccountable or lazy simply isn’t accurate.
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3. Workers Leave Jobs Because They Feel Underappreciated
There is nothing more disheartening to your employee than receiving no recognition after finishing a project, especially if they worked overtime or dropped other projects to focus on yours. Depression is likely to develop, and employees will become less open to helping you in a crisis. As a result, they will either get fired from diminishing work performance or quit in frustration.
How To Give Remote Employees The Recognition They Deserve
While it’s more challenging to show recognition to employees with whom you can’t communicate face-to-face, there are still plenty of ways to show appreciation for your workforce.
1. Encourage Equal Participation in Meetings or Group Emails
You likely converse with your remote employees via Zoom call or group email. If you don’t, this is a great place to start. Asking your remote workers to commit to a weekly meeting can help them get up to speed and feel included in company decision-making. During the meeting or email chain, go over key points, ask questions and encourage feedback.
Make your remote employees equal participants by including them in in-house meetings as well. People can join in on phone or video chat whether they’re home or on the road.
2. Recognize Contributions Publicly
Too often, contributions of remote employees go unnoticed, or a satellite office is grouped together, so recognition is given to the whole team and not the individual. A simple “good job” is incredibly meaningful, especially if congratulatory words come from a manager or CEO. However, giving individual employees recognition requires an audience to be worthwhile.
The most memorable form of recognition involves public acknowledgment because it sends a message to their coworkers on what success looks like. If a group meeting isn’t an option due to money or time restrictions, send a group email or a Slack message to all employees.
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3. Never Scapegoat
Scapegoating is when someone blames another person for their actions or the actions of others. It’s easier for remote employees to blame other remote workers because they often don’t know each other or for in-house employees to scapegoat satellite employees. In a VitalSmarts study, 41% of remote employees said their colleagues had bad-mouthed them.
Always hear both sides of the story before blaming anyone because you could lose trust in your remote employees. If the problem escalates, hold a private meeting between both parties.
4. Reach Out During Crunch Time
Most employers will let other duties fall at the wayside during tight deadlines or other stressful moments. When you feel you don’t have time for your remote employees, that’s when you should reach out to them the most. Work relationships are never secondary, and if you’re feeling the heat of an impending work crisis, they are also more likely to feel stressed as well.
Waiting several weeks before interacting with remote employees will make them feel unappreciated, so it’s important to continue communicating with them. Taking the time to reach out will improve your remote workers’ mood and increase productivity.
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