Having held executive level roles including the CIO of a large insurance company, with a fully distributed workforce, I’m often asked – what’s the secret to leading highly engaged and productive remote teams?

Over the last few years, we’ve hit our aggressive transformation initiatives and rolled several new capabilities successfully. This happens due to a focus on understanding the organizations priorities, but more importantly build high performing teams. Our engineering, product and customer support teams collaborate seamlessly to drive innovation and results – all while working from home offices spanning multiple time zones.

So what does it take to stand up, motivate and retain world-class remote talent? Here are my top tips:

Promote Flexibility and Trust

Micromanaging is a productivity killer. Instead, provide teams autonomy on when and how they work. Focus performance metrics on outcomes rather than hours logged or physical presence. Offer flexible schedules to accommodate employees’ personal needs. Trust your staff to own their work. Empowerment drives engagement and is only possible when there is trust. However, if you don’t establish trust, you can’t earn your employees trust either. This is a two-way street, believe it or not, nowadays more than ever especially with the commonality of hybrid working environments. Realize and embrace that people will end up taking care of non-work related tasks when they are remote, but also know that if they know their boss trusts them to take care of what needs to be done for work, they will do right by them and thereby the organization. Don’t ignore the bad apples – if your gut and your performance metrics portray a picture that jeopardizes trust, it needs to be addressed and managers need to have an honest conversation to get to a mutually agreeable understanding with their employee.

Invest in Remote Collaboration Technology

Technology helps to level the playing field for remote workers. Ensure everyone has access to tools like Slack, Teams, Zoom, Miro, etc. to bridge physical distances as much as possible. Dedicate time for training, if that’s needed. Consider electronic whiteboards like Vibe, Armer Smart Board, etc. at the office that make the meetings that require interaction a little more easier. Talk about norms around response times and video etiquette, but avoid making these hard policies. You should approach them as behavioral norms that are put in place to be respectful of peers. When implemented effectively, collaboration tools connect distributed teams and help build engagement among teams.

Encourage Water Cooler Moments

Informal social connections motivate teams. Schedule regular video hangouts for non-work banter. Send care packages to employees’ homes to spark smiles. Organize virtual coffee breaks, happy hours and other social events to foster relationships. A little fun goes a long way, even remotely. Make time for casual chats before meetings or to catch up one-on-one. When team members connect virtually, share and encourage personal updates—it sets a welcoming tone. If your team members only rarely gather in person, clear your calendar on the days that they do to spend time with the employees who are there. Ask about their lives, families and hobbies. Be intentional in making the conversations organic, not forced, to build camaraderie.

Spotlight Remote Workers

Actively include remote staff in all-hands meetings, brainstorm sessions, demos and team celebrations by over-indexing on their participation. Empower distributed team members to represent teams in key forums. Visibility keeps remote workers engaged and there by motivated to contribute. Encourage your teams to also reach out and engage with their counterparts in other parts of the organization. The rapport builds a sense of ownership and increases engagement of remote workers with company initiatives.

Be in-person when there’s a need

There are situations where being in-person is just more efficient. Brainstorming sessions, interactive engagement to work through issues, solutions, etc. are more efficient in-person. Building camaraderie even is more efficient when done in-person. For those in-person sessions, define the objective to be met and encourage the needed focus to achieve the objective.

The shift to remote work isn’t simple, but with flexibility, technology and an intentional focus on relationships, companies can unlock hidden talents and supercharge productivity. Organizations that have taken the leap to being fully remote do so because the leadership team is intentional in the the effort and the focus on keeping staff engaged and motivated. Establishing a company culture with hybrid and remote team members is by no means impossible, however it is different than pre-pandemic or in-office organizations. However, it’s just that – different, not harder. Since it is different it can be perceived as being harder.

What do you think? Does this capture the essence of standing up exceptional remote teams? Let me know if you have any other suggestions for the post!

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