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At first, when the need to implement remote teams arose, some people began to feel relieved that they had kept their jobs. Other people began to experience the unparalleled comfort of being able to complete tasks in a relaxed environment without having to wear smart attire, maintain traditional work schedules, and so on.

After some time, this favorable solution showed its disadvantages. Business leaders and department heads began to notice that their subordinates were no longer as sociable and engaged in working with the team in a virtual environment. Companies that have both employees working in the office and remote teams whose members live in different parts of the globe notice even more shortcomings.

If at first, this began to negatively affect only internal communication between colleagues, then after some time it began to affect performance indicators. Collaborative work has begun to deteriorate, which cannot but affect business success. Employees began to feel that their work went unnoticed and that they felt shy when communicating with other colleagues.

If business leaders and department heads continue to sit idle, it will ultimately cause businesses to lose their competitive advantage. Thus, it is necessary to start looking for ways to motivate subordinates to communicate in a virtual environment. This applies to both interpersonal communication and corporate communication.

Fortunately, you can always find a way out if you try to put yourself in the shoes of an employee who works far outside the office. If you start to notice a deterioration in the communication of your remote teams, you need to start implementing effective methods. We’ll talk about what initiatives you can implement to revitalize constructive communication.

What do the numbers say?
Before moving on to looking for methods to solve this problem, it is necessary to understand what picture emerges in general. You can glean a lot of information from statistical data, including finding the root of the problem, and why remote teams stop losing interest in communicating in a virtual environment.

Here’s what the statistics say according to GoCO:

• About 40% of those who work outside the office have difficulty connecting with their colleagues;
• Fifty percent of remote workers who belong to Zoomers find it difficult to communicate with other employees;
• Also, fifty percent of remote workers say it has become more challenging for them to uphold their company’s values;
• Loneliness and isolation reduce the productivity of subordinates by more than 20%.

If no action is taken, companies will see a complete disconnect in the communication of their subordinates. Employees will simply carry out their tasks, but they will not be involved in the corporate culture and values, and they will also lose all motivation for their work. In addition, many employees begin to experience loneliness. Company management forgets about incentives, as well as verbal support and gratitude for the efforts of their employees. This further affects the decrease in motivation.

Common challenges
When faced with a problem, regardless of its content, it is always important to understand why it arises. You need to understand all the cause-and-effect relationships, because if you do not understand them, then you will not be able to select the methods for increasing engagement that are suitable specifically for your remote teams. Let’s take a look at the most common challenges that contribute to poor engagement.

• Lack of productivity tracking. When managers start managing remote teams, it becomes much more difficult for them to keep up with the productivity of their subordinates. Because of this, the work done by many people simply goes unnoticed. Employees feel like no one notices how much they contribute to the success of the business. Companies are introducing a variety of advanced programs, such as CRM systems for customer management, high-end phone services for convenient communication with customers, software for tracking business metrics, and much more. Similar to such programs, companies can implement solutions that will help monitor the productivity of all employees and monitor their progress;
• Various time zones. This challenge is the most disorganizing because everyone is active at varying times. Because of this, employees simply cannot find time to communicate in a virtual environment. Messages and requests remain unanswered for long hours, and internal communication slowly dies;
• Lack of interpersonal communication. Companies can create a variety of virtual chat rooms where employees can communicate about work-related issues. In many teams, communication is limited to work-related issues, leaving employees unable to connect interpersonally with their colleagues. Communication should also go beyond work issues so that employees find a common language and do not hesitate to initiate communication.

What can you do to enhance engagement?
By looking at the most common challenges, you can make your assessment of what is causing the difficulty. In addition, you can also conduct surveys among your subordinates to find out why they are less engaged in a virtual team. The main thing to remember is that these surveys must be anonymous, otherwise, you will never receive eloquent and honest feedback.

Here are some ways you can use to maximize engagement:

Take care of the physical and emotional health of your employees
When communicating with your employees through gadget screens, you can hardly understand their state of mind and physical health. You can’t predict whether your employees are experiencing burnout or whether their physical health is not okay.

Thus, you need to initiate care for your people. This is the only way you can ensure that their productivity does not drop and their motivation to work remains at a high level. Offer your employees free sports and gym memberships. Give your people a day off sometimes if you see their morale dropping. Daily small talk with employees both in general chat and in private messages will help you monitor their well-being.

Communicate more via video calling
Remote groups’ lives have become more dependent on interaction via video. Companies arrange calls to quickly find out about work issues, hold meetings, and solve all pressing business matters. However, you can use video communication not only for communication on company issues.

Popular platforms do not limit the duration of your meetings, so you can plan regular calls where you will talk about everyday things, find out how your subordinates feel, and plan uplifting activities.

If your workers rarely see each other in the offline world, this is a good alternative to buddy up. Additionally, when you hire new members of your team, it’s important to hold video meetings so that new people can e-meet those who have been with you for a long time. It is much more difficult for newcomers to adapt to a new company, especially when they work remotely. That is why this method will help them stop feeling shy.

Notice all the successes of your employees
When you are miles away from your employees, you may completely forget about the hard work they do to benefit your business. Many workers report that they are becoming invisible to their managers. Why will they exert themselves to the utmost extent to reach new heights when no one notices?

Although department managers may have a lot of work to do, monitoring employee progress should be an integral task for them. Every new height must be noticed. Additionally, you must reward your people.

Performance monitoring may not always mean that you will only notice successes. You may also notice drops in performance. However, if you want to talk about why your employee’s productivity is decreasing, you should do so in a personal chat or one-on-one video call.

If you want to thank your workers for their work, you can do this in group chats, so that other colleagues can join in the congratulations. Also, you should not forget about simple congratulations on birthdays and other holidays.

Be open for communication
Remote workers understand that their managers can be especially busy during office hours. They may hesitate to ask for help or talk about other issues. This can make communication difficult because they won’t know when to contact you.

You should make it clear when your people can communicate with you so that they are heard. No one wants to send messages and wait for days for a response. If you have a certain time when you are free, you should inform your employees about this.

Invest in virtual training
In addition to the activities you can do online to build your team, you may also want to consider investing in virtual training. All people are interested in achieving new heights, but not everyone may have enough motivation and time to engage in self-training outside of work hours.

Improving the qualifications of your subordinates is also your interest. Having a team of professionals, and not just good people, your business will only grow over the years. That’s why, if you can’t get all your remote employees together for training, you can do it virtually.

All employees don’t need to attend the video call. You can offer different modern training to different teams. You can invite speakers who will conduct training decks for your marketing or sales team. These could be webinars on cybersecurity, online courses to improve customer service, and much more.

Collect feedback regularly
Once you start implementing different methods to increase engagement, you need to know if they work. Of course, if you see tremendous motivation awakening among your employees, you will know that you are on the right track. However, it is important for you to also hear from all your subordinates.

Some people may be willing and open to talk about how they feel and their likes and dislikes. On the other hand, not all employees are so eloquent. This is why you can conduct anonymous surveys.

Contribute to constructive communication within a virtual team
Despite all the convenience that employees receive when they start working remotely, communication within the company quickly begins to falter. Communication in a virtual environment will never compare to how it happens in real life, but if you do not encourage it, you will soon notice that there is no harmony in your team.

Many challenges prevent your employees from feeling more motivated to communicate in a virtual environment. This is why it is important for you to first understand what the root of the problem is. After this, you can resort to a variety of ways that will arouse your employees’ interest in communicating with other team members.