Feel like you need to learn how to make your remote team achieve their potential?
Many of us do.
Remote work can unintentionally end up affecting the trust level between team members and leaders. It’s very easy for a team to feel undervalued lose the sense of belonging, which changes the trust equation.
No one wants to make that happen. But as of now, there’s no safer alternative to remote work, so we should invest in making it work. Building trust is a great first step.
In this post, find five true-and-tested strategies to build trust in remote teams. Use them to create and maintain trust to move work more positively and smoothly.
1. Communicate Frequently and Casually
It goes without saying that frequent communication is a must for remote teams. Still, this is where many team leaders fail to deliver.
The most common communication mistakes are:
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Keeping communication work-centric. If all conversations are related to work, you’re preventing your team members from getting to know each other on a more casual level
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Having long, infrequent contact points. It means having one long meeting in a few days instead of several short ones. This frequency creates a broken sense of connection.
The result is a team that’s likely to engage in conflict. These mistakes make team members don’t quite feel like a part of a group.
To build trust:
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Try more casual communication. Start non-work-related conversations at the beginning and end of every week to know what your team members are up to
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Check in often with a video. Have at least one conversation with each team member in two days - such frequency will help to create a sense of an ongoing conversation.
Related: Hot List of 10 Best Tools For Remote Teams (Video Conferencing Apps Included!)
2. Collect Feedback with Weekly Surveys
Weekly employee surveys are a great way to recognize potential issues and concerns and collect ideas to improve work for the team. For remote teams, they’re even more important due to a lack of face-to-face communication.
Create employee surveys to evaluate their job satisfaction and find ways to help in any way. There’s a bunch of survey tools out there to make it easier. This one, for example, comes from the Officevibe app.
To build trust with employee surveys, ask these questions:
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“Do you feel like you have autonomy at work?”
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“How do you rate your job satisfaction/relationship with manager/peers?”
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“Do you feel like you’re given enough freedom for creativity?”
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“Is your workflow reasonable?”
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“Do you think that your team helps you with your goals?”
Try to put questions in categories like job satisfaction, team culture, and work convenience. Also, limit every survey to five questions to make filling out the survey quicker and easier.
Related: The Connection Between Employee Satisfaction and Retention in Tech
3. Create a Chat for Non-Work Conversations
How about creating a Slack channel (or several) just to talk about news, events, food, interests - anything non-work related? It would be a perfect place for your team to connect and build that much-needed trust in one another.
Here are a few ideas:
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#chitchat - for anything, really
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#playlist - for music recommendations; for work, focus, etc.
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#homeoffice - for sharing remote work habits, best practices, and ideas
Be sure to ask your team for channel ideas, too.
4. Support Team Wellbeing
Working from home could be hard. Some people end up working more compared to in-office counterparts, which affects their performance and wellbeing. In fact, many biggest struggles with remote work are related to wellbeing.
Buffer’s research found those to be loneliness, inability to relax and “unplug” after work, and a lack of communication.
Source: State of Remote Report 2020, Buffer
As a leader, you should take steps to fight these issues and support the team. By doing so, you’ll also increase trust within your unit.
Consider these strategies:
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Regular one-on-one meetings. This type of meeting is great because it gives team members space and time to openly share their thoughts. Dedicate a part of your one-on-one meeting to discuss things like adjustments to remote work, stress, life-work balance, job satisfaction, etc.
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Take interest in the team's wellbeing. Encourage them to take breaks. Don’t message outside the working hours. Ask about their interests. This shows that you care about them as individuals, not just workers
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Provide all tools they need. Remote workers might have a hard time accessing information or lack apps or equipment. By staying on top of these needs and giving your team what it needs, you can build trust and increase job satisfaction
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Give credit. Remote workers often feel isolated and undervalued, especially those unfamiliar with this work setting. To support them, be sure to provide positive feedback for successfully completed tasks.
5. Improve Remote Onboarding Process
The best way to build trust is from the start. From a remote team member’s perspective, a sloppy start with a team and a leader who doesn't invest enough in building the relationship is a good red flag.
Onboarding tips to build trust:
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Start with a video meeting. Many companies have onboarding guides and even chatbots, but they should be a secondary tool. Nothing beats a conversation where you can give the new employee a good idea of your culture. That’s why try starting the onboarding process with an onboarding video meeting
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Keep the team informed. A new employee coming to the team shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. Tell them about the new hire to keep them in the loop. In this case, you’ll avoid having the new employee being surprised that no one knows they’re coming
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Have a one-on-one after the first week. Onboarding can be overwhelming, so the new hire might have a bunch of questions after the first week. To address these questions and potential resulting issues, have a one-on-one session on the last day of their first week.
Remember that trust is always about the relationship between the existing team members and the new ones. By doing your best to build a positive and trustworthy relationship from the very beginning, you’ll be able to send the right signal to newcomers.
How to Build Trust with Employees Who Work Remotely: Final Thoughts
Regardless of industry, business size, or leadership style, trust is a defining feature of companies that achieve success. We’re still adjusting to remote work, obviously, but trust is something no company should disregard.
Any remote employee will tell you that they prefer to work with team leaders and colleagues who understand the value of trust. Hopefully, this post helped you understand how to build this kind of culture in your company. Use these tips and see those employee satisfaction scores and KPIs go up.