How To Retain Talents In A Virtual Organisation

What Are The Typical Challenges

• Distractions at home
• Not enough face-to-face contact with managers
• Lack of information: Employees might be disturbed by the fact that they need to make an extra effort to locate the information they need
• Social isolation where they might lose the sense of belonging to the team
• There is no inspiring office atmosphere: no personal brainstorming and chat with colleagues, no spontaneous exchange of ideas

Provide Belonging And Connections

One of the hardest parts about working remotely is the loss of shared habits and rituals. Any team lead should encourage social interactions and contacts. It is a crucial part of his job and strengthen the sense of belonging to the organisation. Here are some tips how to do it:

• Help your people stay connected to your corporate culture and to one another by finding rituals, such as digital 1:1, daily video conferences, virtual coffee breaks, cocktail / beer / office parties
• One of the easiest ways is to begin your team meetings with some informal talk about private matters to keep each other close
• Do an activity together to start or end the day
• Showing others some private photos in team channels
• Implement Monday morning challenges for fun
• Share latest life-hacks with each other
• Find ways to celebrate milestones, birthdays and anniversaries in a virtual environment
• Create channels to share “good news of the day”

Ensure Effective Communication

The key to remote management and work is an open, active and transparent communication by the c-suite. Don’t wait for your employees to be the ones to start the conversation about challenges they’re facing during home office and virtual work.

Speak with one voice to your employees and therefore agree with other managers on your communication messages. Discuss your communication strategy with them, reflect, track and review your communication on a regular base to ensure that your employees really understand you and feel comfortable in the current situation.

You should also make an engagement policy, and define when the work-related communication happens, as well as which tools to use for what purposes. Have regular check-in chats, get actively in touch with your employees and discuss openly issues and urgent business topics with them.

Create an atmosphere of belonging and mutual connection among your employees to ensure job satisfaction, engagement and performance. This requires empathy on all sides, efficient and respectful communication, and trust, helpfulness and friendly interaction to retain talent in a virtual working world.

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