Keeping remote employees motivated and engaged can sometimes be a challenging task when you don't get the value of face-to-face interaction. Employee engagement and satisfaction are top concerns for remote team managers. This challenge applies both to companies where everyone is remote, and for those with hybrid teams (both in office and remote employees).

Here is the good news though -- remote employees are eager and excited to find creative ways to enhance the company culture and be part of the team. They care just as deeply about the vision, goals, and company growth as anyone. It's up to remote team managers to be cognizant of the unique challenges presented by working remotely and to actively work to minimize friction for their employees to help them succeed at work.

To keep your team engaged, especially your remote staff, you need to consider ways in which you can regularly communicate with them and foster productivity and growth without leaving employees high and dry or micromanaging their work. Here are some ideas we've seen really help bring teams together -- no matter where employees are working from.

1. Learn how to communicate with employees.

If you've ever worked with remote employees before, you'll likely remember that how you communicated with those colleagues really didn't vary from how you collaborate with other team members. We live in a world of instant connectivity and a thousand mediums in which to do so. From Slack to email, your remote team is only a few clicks away.

The greater focus will be remembering to stay regularly in touch with team members who you don't see five days a week and therefore may not interact with on a regular basis. Because you can't always pop over to a remote employee's desk or catch up with them in the kitchen, you'll want to be efficient and clear when communicating with a remote employee. This can be done through:

• Setting clear goals and expectations
• Providing regular and unambiguous feedback
• Celebrating achievements
• Offering solutions to failures
  
  

2. Use different types of communication.

As a lot of us Slack users know, #general chat is an easy way to bring everyone together. Basically it's just one shared chat group that everyone in the company is part of. The openness is great and should be encouraged, but there are so many other ways to leverage whatever chat platform you are using.

Some ideas to try are:

• Do an AMA with different members of the company and leadership team
• Have team leads host office hours to answer any cross-company questions
• Create sub-channels for people with a common interests (just in time for those summer book clubs)
• Finding similarities amongst your team members and cultivating that online conversation is key to having the remote team feel more involved.

One of the best ways you can regularly stay engaged with your remote team is to have a weekly video call. While some remote employees will prefer a quick email or Slack message, others crave face-to-face interaction. It creates a different level of involvement and connection. Phone and video calls also account for tone and limit the potential for miscommunications or misunderstandings. Ninety-three percent of working folks agree -- video communication improves the connectedness of remote employees.

Equipping your office with reliable HD video conferencing cameras provides the closest thing to an in-person meeting for remote teams.

Something we've also seen work well for companies with distributed teams is requiring everyone's cameras to be on in meetings ranging from company-wide meetings to 1:1s. With the limited opportunity for face-to-face time with remote employees, screen-to-screen can really help bridge the gap.

Beyond just getting to know people better, you can more easily gauge their reactions when you see their face. If 55% of communication is body language -- you can see how half of the intent of the conversation is missed without the camera on.

3. Set up shared dashboards and goals.

When you aren't in the office with your co-workers every day, it is harder to understand what they are working on and how they are tracking toward their goals. This can lead to confusion and misconceptions of what is actually being done. Especially when the concept of being remote is new to a company or team, people tend to think, "well what is Joe doing all day if we can't see him?"

Creating a place to not only share goals and how you are tracking towards them can provide multiple benefits throughout your company. Not only is it good business practice to have shared goals for accountability and focus, but you get the benefit of understanding what everyone is working on no matter where they are in the world. Cross-company objectives should also be readily available to help them feel more part of the broader team.

A product team member might have a good idea of how they are doing, but might want to learn more about marketing. Having a common solution and shared space is critical to creating that unified accountability.

There are dozens of product management tools out there for you to leverage, but also try not to overcomplicate it. It can be as easy as opening up a shared Google Sheet with goals and targets, along with action items that people update on a daily or weekly basis. Don't let coming up with the process get in the way of the point: shared, digital accountability.

This could also be a great opportunity for people in your company looking to take on a special project and more responsibility. The list of priorities leadership is focused on seems never ending, so encourage team members both in office and remote to come together and present an idea to the company. Encourage them to be part of the solution to enhance your remote culture.

4. Extend employee perks to remote team members.

For a remote team member, seeing "office happy hour" on the company calendar is always a little defeating because they know that is a time they are missing the social connection between colleagues. Our State of Remote Work study showed that employees miss conversations and celebrations most when working remotely.

Although it is perfectly fine to have events that remote teams won't be able to participate in, trying to find unique ways to include them is also very important to keeping remote employees motivated and engaged.

If you are providing lunch for an all hands meeting, maybe send a gift card for GrubHub to your remote team so they can participate in the meeting, while also feeling like they get a similar benefit to being in the office. Recognizing them during these meetings is also important. Even if you have your shared goals like stated above, really using this time to highlight great work from remote team members that might have otherwise gone under the radar will go a long way in making them feel more part of the company.

Getting together as a team might also be something your company considers as part of their annual or quarterly meeting cadence. But don't just bring the remote team in and stop there. This really is a great opportunity when you have everyone together to really build camaraderie. Some things you should plan are:

• An after hours company event or celebration
• Schedule a lunch with the leadership team or co-founders
• Cross-functional activities and meetings
  
  

Your focus needs to be on activities that encourage collaboration and shared work while together.

5. Create a culture that supports remote workers.

Out of sight, out of mind. This is the biggest detriment to remote employee engagement - the thought that just because someone is not in the office can somehow translate into being less a part of the team. This carelessness can have companies missing out on seriously talented remote candidates from around the world. If you plan to take on remote workers, be sure that you establish these key support pillars for remote employees:

1. Training/onboarding materials:There is nothing worse than joining a new team and feeling like you have to constantly ask questions to figure everything out. By providing the necessary training materials and general lore for the company, you can ensure your remote employees hit the ground running for a successful and lasting placement within your organization (both culturally and professionally!)
2. A thorough and organized knowledge base: After the initial onboarding, having a company-wide resource dump, filled with all of the necessary information your employees need to thrive within your team is essential.
3. Establish touchpoints for a variety of support needs: From the go-to HR person to the main touchpoints on other teams, the longer an employee hangs around, the more inevitable it is that they will collaborate with other facets of your organization than just their initial workload. By creating a clear chain of communication or org chart for your entire company, all of your employees will have a clear understanding of who to go to with their questions. This can save hours of time each week across your company and avoid employee disengagement or isolation.
   
   
   

6. Offer growth opportunities to everyone.

If there are big projects that need a lead or new roles that have become available, open up the option to employees both in the office and remote to "apply for" these roles -- everyone must have a fair shot. To take it a step further, you could try creating a special project that only becomes available for the remote team members.

However you approach it, creating leadership opportunities for every member of the company is a great way to keep employees engaged. It can be projects big and small. There will always be someone ready to take on the challenge.

Leveraging these tactics can help boost not only your company culture, but will enhance the environment for your distributed team. Finding time to focus on ways to keep your remote employees engaged in your company will truly make them feel part of the company vision and motivated to do the best work possible.

Looking for more? Check out these tips for fostering inclusivity on your team next.