Whether you were always working remotely or scrambled home amid the COVID-19 pandemic, working from home is a trend that’s here to stay. Major companies like Google are keeping their employees out of the office until the summer of 2021! Since you’re most likely in a similar situation, here are some creative ways to keep your virtual team engaged.
1. Weekly Standup Meetings
Weekly standup meetings can be beneficial to both employees and managers. For employees, they ensure visibility, make everyone feel like part of the team, and keep everyone on the same page for upcoming projects. These more intimate meetings are also an opportunity for a shy person to ask a teammate or manager for assistance. For managers, these meetings are a way to gauge your employees’ engagement levels. During this time, ask them about their work to ensure efficiency and productivity.
2. Water Cooler Conversations
Despite the distance, try your best to foster personal connections. Employees are still humans with a life outside of work. Scheduling a time for more casual conversations allows employees to share news like celebrations and general life updates as they would while chatting at the water cooler. Try randomly assigning small groups into Zoom meetings, with a moderator, to foster relationships between employees that otherwise wouldn’t have had the opportunity to meet.
3. Happy Hour with a Purpose
Get your creative juices flowing in addition to your drinks. For your next team happy hour, insert an activity into the plan.
Consider the following ideas:
- A cooking contest where everyone makes a dish and then share a picture and recipe
- Wine tasting with bonus points if you send them the different wines as a gift before the happy hour
- Game night with virtual trivia and bingo
4. Diarying your Productivity Activity
Working remotely can be a new and sometimes difficult change for your employees. Diarying their productivity can help them to understand the unique ebbs and flows throughout their day. Suggest they observe their actions every hour to see how their productivity evolves by noting things such as wake up time, when they feel distracted, or have productive spirts. Every individual is different depending on body chemistry, eating patterns, and job tasks. Taking note of their actions can give them the information they need to optimize their day.
5. Casual Slack/Skype/Teams Channel Chat
Another way to keep employees engaged is to ask them to show off their new office digs, aka their at-home work stations. Give bonus points for employees who include their dogs in the picture. Offer incentives such as a Snack Care Package for creating the most creative office space. Free snacks will put a smile on their faces and be a throwback to free food that came with actually going into an office.
6. Positivity Challenge
Again, COVID-19 has brought on a lot of change, and employees might be bummed with the new “live at work” lifestyle. In response, start a positivity challenge where each day a member of the team can post a piece of motivational positivity. This can include a quote, a short video, an article, or anything they think will brighten the day of the team. That person can nominate the next team member to pick up the torch for the following day, and so on.
Now that your employees have been working from home, have you done anything creative to keep them engaged? We hope you find that some of these ideas help to keep your team productive, happy, and healthy.
