About a month ago, I met with a friend who happens to be an HR practitioner too. We had some catch-up over coffee and cakes. I was not surprised when she said, Is it really a pandemic? I’m losing many of my best employees. What do you think about this surge in staff attrition?
Frankly, I cannot give her any concrete answer. So many factors lead to this “Great Resignation” of top talents. So I just replied to her with a smile, and bounced back with a question, What’s your plan to keep your remaining staff?
Indeed, business organizations are in a race to create an engaging virtual work culture for their teams. Most of them utilize collaboration platforms like Slack, Zoom, Google Meet, and others to engage their remote staff. However, is that enough to “humanize” virtual connections?
Most remote employees today experience burnout due to a lack of physical interaction and emotional support at work. Here are some ways to keep your employees excited and engaged. They’ll not entertain new job offers when you do these things.
Run Virtual Retreats and Surprises
Businesses are not built overnight. It takes time, effort, and nurturing clients and, more importantly, your employees. There are many ways to engage people, but what works for others may not work for your organization.
Create ways that will allow your remote staff to participate in building your unique organizational culture. It will give them a sense of belonging to the group. Facilitate the team in nurturing and refining your core values. For example, most companies celebrate international holidays. Some align them with local traditional holidays. Pick one or both. Other companies do weekly theme contests and games. This serves as a great connection strategy even though they work remotely. As they always say, you will not get old if you don’t lose the fun.
Use Side Projects Collaboration and Connection
Connecting with employees requires acknowledging that employees are individuals with diverse experiences, interests, and perspectives. Establish boundaries or break them. See what works for your team. What is essential is to be able to find common ground to connect and improve work collaboration.
While most connections do not come naturally, managers need to take the lead in establishing an environment where the team can share best practices and innovative ideas that would bring value to the organization. Hence, allowing your distributed teams to collaborate on side projects fosters business growth. Some organizations allow their remote workforce to work on new projects at a given time every day.
Give A Little Pat on the Shoulder, Good Job!
If speaking kindly to plants can help them grow, imagine what speaking kindly to your remote staff can do.
Employees, of course, want to be acknowledged and complimented for their work. A simple thank you or genuine remark may go a long way toward expressing gratitude.
Workers who feel valued are more likely to go the extra mile and beyond the expectations of their jobs.
Support Career Growth Opportunities
At the beginning of the pandemic, many employees had to self-manage and multitask while working from home. Some assignments became overwhelming. Hence, it tested the leadership abilities of many managers.
When your remote team performs well, you need to develop and groom them to be future leaders of the organization. Leadership training is one area in which a mentor may help.
But not many organizations can focus on employee development. They are still stuck in improving payroll and other HR and administrative duties. These are things that an employer of record provider can help you with. Employ can facilitate global employer services, international payroll services, and visa and immigration. We have local partners in the Asia Pacific region as well in America, Europe, and Africa. Reach us today and discover more about our EOR Services.
Olivia Yu has decades of experience in the Human Resources industry. She’s the Regional Director for Asia Pacific of a famous international HR company. Olivia’s international experience inspires her to write articles about human resources and global staffing.
