The widespread acceptance of distributed work has changed the workplace as we know it, in many ways for good: countless workers have thrived at home, enjoying freedoms around everything from acoustics to quality time with loved ones; and employers, in turn, have had the ability to work with the most qualified talent, regardless of their location. In other ways, though, this new model has come with sometimes intractable problems. Chief among them, remote workers have a tendency to feel disconnected from coworkers or their organization at large. And it makes sense: without the ability to share serendipitous encounters in the hallway, lunch breaks, or after-work happy hours, distributed workers don’t have the same built-in opportunities for interpersonal connection that they may have had when they worked in an office. As they miss out on that sense of community, workers and managers alike also lose the psychological safety net that helps buoy their emotional well-being, which, in turn, bolsters productivity.
Psychological safety is a centerpiece of any healthy and successful workplace. Studies demonstrate that teams with a sense of high psychological safety – in short, the belief that they can confidently take interpersonal risks – are more likely to engage in the kind of constructive feedback and self-reflection that’s essential to innovation. They’re also more satisfied with their work, tend to have lower turnover rates, and exhibit more versatility whenever adaptation is necessary.
But instead of assuming that psychological safety cannot be achieved in a distributed office, organizations can use proven methods to cultivate a workplace where everyone is encouraged to take care of themselves – and each other. By thoughtfully taking organizational, personal, and technological measures, employers can offer the social resources needed to foster a climate of connection and emotional well-being amongst all workers, no matter how distant they may be. Below, we go through a list of proven tactics for instilling a sense of community amongst a distributed workforce. Health and happiness, we find, don’t have to be at odds with flexibility.
Step #1: Start with Onboarding
Remote onboarding can be a trying time for new hires who are seeking out the kind of guidance and personal connection that help establish their own self-confidence. Onboarding is your organization’s opportunity to build trust from the onset, and let each employee know that they have the support system to take risks or turn to their peers and supervisors for support. Toward this end, proactively ask remote workers what supplies they need to thrive, send any at-home office gear as soon as the contract is signed, and assign new hires a “buddy” who they can reach out to informally with questions or concerns. Pairing new hires with experienced team members facilitates knowledge transfer and helps to build strong relationships. It also encourages mentorship, exemplifying a culture of support and camaraderie.
You’ll also want to use onboarding to establish a clear precedent of prioritizing employees’ mental and physical health. Long virtual onboarding sessions can induce severe Zoom fatigue, so it’s typically great to break up trainings into smaller chunks and offer short video tutorials that can be referred back to later, instead of one-time livestreams. Just as our earliest years of life are typically our most formative, so are any employee’s first few days on the job. A thoughtful, nurturing onboarding process will make it clear that your company values everyone’s well-being, opening up workers to the idea that they can comfortably seek out support whenever they may need it.
Step #2: Implement Flexibility Wherever – and Whenever – Possible
Distributed workplaces, at their core, are advantageous thanks to their built-in flexibility. But this doesn’t have to be limited to employees’ whereabouts. After all, is a company that lets you work from anywhere, so long as you’re always at your desk from 9-5 Monday-to-Friday and reachable at any hour, actually flexible?
In a situation where people already don’t work from the same place, we may assume that having them consistently work at the same time is essential to building genuine support systems. But the best path to ensuring a sense of community actually begins with honoring individuality. Assuming it’s not strictly essential to the business that workers be available at a specific time, then there’s no need to make them follow strict working hours. The best results-based management systems prioritize outcomes, trust, and accountability over presence, and balance a fine line between accountability and adaptability. This gives workers the leverage and direction they need to do their best work on their own time, and a sense that they are psychologically safe to express and honor their needs. As in any healthy relationship, remote employees should be able (and expected) to set clear personal boundaries that instill a sense of autonomy and self-respect. This truer, more wide-ranging flexibility instills a sense that workers are cared for, inspiring better psychological and professional outcomes.
Some of these flexible policies are already pervasive at distributed workplaces. Open vacation allotments, for instance, with no enforced minimum or maximum, are one way to reflect an understanding of people’s diverse lives and priorities. Perhaps less common, though, is a workflow that affords workers the flexibility they need to connect with one another. Chronically understaffed companies often fail to foster a sense of community, as employees are constantly grappling with too many obligations. A constant sense of pressure renders work matters too urgent for anything personal to “get in the way,” and this lack of communication, which can exist at in-person and remote workplaces alike, prevents workers from building deep friendships with colleagues. A KPMG survey, which found that 81% of employees consider work friends highly important, with 78% acknowledging their positive impact on mental health, demonstrates that friendships are the main fabric of any healthy safety net. Every employee finds comfort in the awareness that they have at least one “work best friend” who they can call in times of need, or who will ask what’s wrong if they’re clearly in a state of distress. If workers are constantly drowning in work, they won’t have the time to nurture those relationships.
While a more realistic workload opens up the possibility of more personal connections, virtual workplaces still need to recreate the potential for spontaneous interaction that’s offered by hallways, cafeterias, and even restrooms in the physical workplace – the freedom to move about is its own kind of flexibility, which we often take for granted at the office. Virtual channels on platforms like Slack or Microsoft Teams that are devoted to informal, casual conversation give employees the chance to connect outside of their day-to-day work obligations. In these informal channels, colleagues can ask one another how their weekend was, how their family is doing, or whether they caught the game last night – it’s these kinds of gestures, simple though they may be, that are the first stepping stones towards cultivating real friendships. Every virtual workplace should have at least one “space” in which these interactions are explicitly encouraged.
Step #3: Build Connection Into Your Routines
A more accommodating workplace is certainly a great start, but it’s not enough on its own to create a psychological safety net. With nothing but maximum flexibility, distributed employees would still have to go out of their way to foster connections. To really create that sense of interpersonal connection, then, workplaces should integrate social activities into daily and monthly work routines. One of PLASTARC’s clients, Intercom, found that devoting the first ten minutes of meetings to icebreakers or chit-chat could emulate the joyful spontaneity we typically associate with vibrant in-person workspaces. Some time, too, could be specifically set aside for team or personal check-ins: employees feel seen and heard when they’re explicitly invited to offer thoughts on their jobs or personal lives. Using regular check-ins as a chance to have self-reflective conversation feeds directly into psychological safety.
Remote workers may not be able to commiserate over that after-work drink, but it doesn’t mean they can’t find other ways to establish real connections. Work events through which employees, remote and in-person alike, are invited to learn about each other can spark new connections that transform physically distant colleagues into genuine friends. It also addresses one very real social danger of hybrid workplaces, in which remote employees can feel like outsiders while their in-person colleagues have more chances to get to know each other. Scheduled virtual “mingles” are always a great start, as are opportunities for folks to learn a new skill together – work-related or not! And some social events are actually more well-suited to a distributed workplace: cooking lessons, for instance, aren’t really possible in an office that only has one kitchen at best. To cultivate a sense of connection amongst remote workers, identify and feature those social opportunities that are more well-suited to virtual environments. With enough attention to these details, you can cultivate a sense of belonging, which empowers workers to take meaningful interpersonal risks.
Step #4: Listen Closely
As tempting as it always is to assume that panaceas exist, the fact is that it’s not possible to meet specific employee needs if those needs haven’t already been identified. In addition to check-ins, workplace surveys are a necessary outlet for employees to voice the kinds of support systems they need. This article, published in Harvard Business Review, explains how measuring workplace loneliness, for one, can provide the first step towards cultivating a more supportive workplace. The best part about surveys is that they exemplify a caring workplace – they’re a great opportunity for employers to listen to and integrate employees’ demands.
This ethos of listening and checking in can also be implemented on a more granular, day-to-day basis. In her research at Harvard Business School, Amy Edmondson shows how proactive, transparent leadership styles can further establish a culture of inclusion. By openly admitting to mistakes, pointing to uncertainties, inviting feedback, and then integrating that feedback into workplace systems, leaders can model a humility and collectivist spirit that workers can emulate in their own day-to-day interactions. This kind of vulnerability gives remote and in-person workers the chance to express compassion and care for one another, as they collaboratively create the workplace’s psychological safety net.
There’s no reason to assume that a sense of connection in the workplace is predicated on in-person work. In fact, many employers – our clients among them – have implemented various measures that instill a culture of care amongst employees scattered across the world, much less the country. This is a great moment to check in with remote employees directly – if you’re never seeing them in-person, you might need to intentionally ask deeper, personal questions on a day-to-day basis. Find new ways to provide mental health resources, ergonomic guidance, and opportunities for physical activity that clearly prioritize employees’ work-life balance. Send out a well-designed survey to gauge individuals’ desires and concerns regarding why, how, and when they work, and include questions about their sense of community. Then, coordinate with individual managers to determine responses to each team’s needs. By listening closely to your workforce and responding attentively, you’ll create a workplace where people feel like they are both cared for, and equipped to care for others.