Your company culture will only be good if your employees feel comfortable with you and the core values of your organization. | Photo by Christin Hume on Unsplash

Company culture is crucial to the success of a business.

As an employer, you need to promote company culture. It keeps employees engaged and motivated and can be an extension of your company’s own presence. You do this through your values, goals, habits, and preferences.

Your company culture will only be good if your employees feel comfortable with you and the core values of your organization. So how can you do this with a remote team?

Importance of Company Culture by Numbers

Your employees are more likely to be happier and more productive when their views and values resonate with those of the company they work in.

Forbes contributor Brent Gleeson says that choosing to hire employees who are not a good fit with the existing or desired company culture leads to negative outlooks:

The work quality is poor
The job satisfaction is decreased
The environment often turns toxic quickly

The end result?

High turnover, which also means increased costs for the company.

Remember, high attrition rates can negatively affect the bottom-line results of your business — You'll waste a lot of time and spend more money on recruiting and training new employees just to see them leave after a few months.

Culture fit hiring is one of the defining factors for many of today's HR executives and managers, according to the 2018 Recruiter Nation survey.

How Does Culture Fit Hiring Tie in With New Employment Trends?

Remote employees are becoming a cost-effective solution for lots of organizations worldwide. It’s not just about cost, really, it’s about getting the best possible talent for the job you can.

Many businesses today are looking for the best possible ways to preserve their company culture across their virtual staff.

How can you ensure your new virtual hires will feel like a part of the team?

By ensuring that everyone in the organization shares the same core values.

The following strategies and tips will help you build and manage a remote team that lives and breathes your company culture.

Encourage remote workers to find their own groove and to take breaks and time away. | Photo by Daniel Funes Fuentes on Unsplash

#1 Clearly Define the Core Values of Your Business

Formulate suitable policies and regulations that can promote the culture and core values of your company.

By including these as part of your standard workflow systems and back end processes, your staff and remote teams can get together while practicing your company culture as they work to hit your common objectives.

This can also help you quickly pinpoint problem areas and troubleshoot issues as they happen, which can, in turn, enable you to further enhance how you promote your company culture and values across your organization.

#2 Optimize the Work Schedules of Your In-House Staff and Virtual Workforce

An awesome way to ensure your remote staff lives and breathes your culture is by integrating them into the work schedules of your in-house personnel.

If you are able, ensure your remote employees visit the office and work from there a few times a year so they can mingle and chat with your inhouse staff during their breaks.

Or if your remote teammates can’t make it in house, try hosting digital meetings, conference calls, or Slack AMAs. Even encouraging your in-house team to try a few remote days to get a feel for the balance your remote workers deal with day-to-day can even help.

If you’re fully remote, you can opt for coworking spaces for virtual employees so you can all meet a few times a year and see each other in person.

#3 Help Them Keep Work and Life Apart

Employee burnout is among the leading causes of high attrition rates.

This is especially true when it comes to your remote workers, more so if they have yet to optimize their work environment at home.

Keep in mind, it's quite challenging to separate their activities at their jobs from their domestic duties.

Or you can even ensure that the work schedules of your virtual staff are aligned to the time that they're most productive and motivated. Encourage them to find their own groove and to take breaks and time away. And clearly communicate expectations as far as when projects should be completed or when they need to check-in.

Be sure to note:

Remote employees tend to work longer hours, oftentimes forgetting when it’s time to stop.

Remind them it’s okay to take a break and stop working for the day.

Ensure the workload is acceptable and that they don’t go overboard with work. You can do that by tracking hours, scheduling time, or simply letting them know when it’s enough.

Positive company culture is one that values their employees’ free time, so make sure your remote employees feel that too.

Make sure that you train your virtual workers and in-house staff to use the right collaboration, communication and reporting tools.| Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash

#4 Implement an Effective Buddy System

Assigning each of your remote workers to partner up and closely work together with a buddy can be quite helpful.

This can either be their co-virtual employee, or one of your in-house staff.

You'll be able to help them feel that they're part of the company even while they're working remotely. And encouraging everyone to collaborate.

#5 Promote Enjoyable Team Building Exercises

This can build and nurture friendships between your in-house staff and virtual employees, which can, in turn, enhance their professional collaboration. For a remote team, this can mean having a virtual happy hour where you all join a video chat with your own beverages, or maybe you do a virtual book club. Or you put a recurring question each week in Slack and ask everyone to share a success. Get creative.

Plus, this is a suitable opportunity for you to make sure that you can constantly promote your company culture and values across your managers and staff.

Just make sure that your face-to-face sessions and team building activities are significantly more fruitful and productive than your regular video conferences.

#6 Enhance Your Reward Systems

A healthy competitive work environment can motivate and inspire not just your remote employees, but also your in-house staff.

Many of them are likely to feel more connected to your company and also to their co-workers when they constantly learn about the commendable results that their peers are producing on a regular basis.

This can also motivate lots of them to improve their work productivity and the quality of their output. Maybe celebrate successes in a channel or create a public project board so everyone sees what each other’s focused on. Host a weekly stand up to check in with each other. Again, get creative!

They'll feel inspired to do their best not just for the rewards that you offer— maybe it’s something for meeting a sales goal or a monthly shoutout— but also because of the recognition of their co-workers about their stellar performance.

The key thing to remember here: healthy competition among team members.

The team is always the most important thing, and everyone should hold that value. You want to celebrate and support one another and push each other to keep thinking and striving upward.

#7 Use Cloud Solutions and Automate Repetitive, Time-Consuming Processes

Make sure that you train your virtual workers and in-house staff to use the right collaboration, communication and reporting tools.

There are lots of cloud-based solutions out there, so choose those that are best suited for your business - this doesn’t mean choosing the most popular option, but the option that is best for your requirements.

Learning to use them should be part of your onboarding process for new remote employees. You can’t expect them to know them all immediately because of the sheer number of solutions to choose from.

These technologies and systems should help them to easily perform their day-to-day responsibilities and to effectively increase their productivity.

#8 Build and Nurture Trust Between Your Employees

Trust is among the most important things that you should ensure across the various departments of your organization.

Your executives, managers, virtual workers, and in-house employees should completely trust each other when it comes to efficiently perform their duties and obligations. They trust one another to collaborate, brainstorm, and iterate off one another. Encourage cross-team jobs. Lead with clear communication and transparency in emails or Slack chats, and you’ll see others following the same.

This way, they'll be able to work much better together, which can significantly improve their productivity and the bottom-line results that they can produce for your business.

#9 Give Everyone the Opportunity to Contribute During Meetings

Employees, be it remote workers or in-house personnel, tend to feel more connected to their company and peers when they're comfortable sharing their opinions and insights about work-related matters.

An ideal way to allow them to do this is during video conferences, chat sessions, face-to-face meetings, and team-building activities.

Basically, adopt an open door policy where your remote staff can contact you at any time and share their concerns or ideas. And respond in a timely fashion.

This can also help your executives, managers, and supervisors to feel more comfortable providing constructive criticism to their co-workers and agents.

Company culture and culture fit hiring have become a key factor when bringing new members on board, and it can also be done in remote work settings.

From an open-door policy to healthy work-life balance, you can help preserve company culture with remote employees too.

Guest writer Ashley Wilson is a digital nomad writing about business and tech. She currently creates content for Solvusoft, a Microsoft partner company. In her spare time, she enjoys baking homemade treats for her husband and their two felines, Lady and Gaga. Get in touch with Ashley via Twitter.

How to Preserve Your Company Culture After Hiring Remote Employees