The way we work has massively changed since the notorious pandemic. Thus, the demand for employees who quickly adapt to the everchanging work environments and remote work communication has increased.
Thankfully, technological advancements have been preparing us for these changes for decades.
Remote work with all its unique challenges is not the future already, it’s the present! One of those challenges is poor employee engagement during remote work communication.
A Gallup study found that companies with highly engaged employees are 21% more profitable. It makes sense to delve deeper and learn how to improve engagement, right?
Our research presents the primary roots of engagement and offers the most practicable solutions suitable for you and your business. Let’s have a look!
Understanding the Psychology of Engagement in Remote Work Communication
It’s easy to forget that we’re social beings in the remote-first setting. Well, it’s natural since many of us work from a home office since we love to work in silence. It sometimes feels quite isolated. No matter how long you’ve been working remotely, you’ve definitely felt the need to socialize after days spent focusing on work on your laptop.
People who feel connected to others are more likely to be engaged and invested in what they are doing.
That’s the basic understanding you should maintain when thinking about tweaking strategies for better remote work communication for your team. But there is also a more precise definition for ‘employee engagement’ in psychology, which is: an individual employee’s cognitive, emotional, and behavioral state directed toward desirable organizational objectives.
A high-performing organization must manage employee engagement since it is a vital component of overall company success.
So when it comes to understanding the psychology of engagement in digital communication, you should know that engagement commonly depends on the following:
- Trust
Teamwork starts with trust, and remote work relationships are built on trust too. Trust between team members increases engagement and collaboration.
- Sense of belonging
People want to feel like their efforts matter. It’s predictable that remote workers might feel separated from the team and corporate mission. In this case, virtual happy hours, team-building activities, and casual check-ins may help.
- Collaboration
Working together requires an open line of communication, an agreement on how goals will be achieved, and a willingness to adapt and compromise. Working remotely might make you feel alone, therefore it’s crucial to make your team feel like a community somehow.
- Small achievements
Finally, one of the biggest factors of employee engagement is a celebration of small accomplishments. People are more motivated to work toward future goals if they are rewarded for their efforts along the road. For this to happen, an employee must have clear goals, considerate deadlines, room for growth and failure, as well as the necessary tools for work.
Employees won’t feel recognized overnight, after a raise, or after a really cool corporate party: a real sense of recognition comes with time. Thus, employers or managers must build it over and over to obtain long-term outcomes.
At lucky Carrot, recognition is the priority which results in greater employee engagement and thus, greater organizational benefit.
Unique Challenges of Remote Work Communication
Remote work communication can be challenging due to various reasons. Some of the most common challenges are:
- Poor internet connection (technological problems)
- Poor management
- Different time zones
- Language barriers
A more direct challenge is the lack of face-to-face emotional interaction. As we saw in the psychological definition of ‘employee engagement’ earlier, emotions matter.
In remote jobs, nonverbal communication is a significant issue, since as we know, in-person communication relies heavily on nonverbal cues.
Nonverbal communication is a big part of how people talk to each other in person. But it can be hard to understand tone, body language, and facial expressions when you’re communicating while working remotely.
This can cause misunderstandings and bad communication, which can hurt the team’s work in the long run. Especially, for example, in a ZOOM call, where some co-workers simply can’t or won’t turn on the camera and all you get from them is voice. Well, in its turn, it makes other employees even less invested in those meetings.
How to Make Zoom Meetings More Engaging and How can Lucky Carrot Help?
When developing our product at Lucky Carrot, we thought about the above challenge and realized how badly it can influence employee engagement in remote work communications. Therefore we teamed up with ZOOM to answer the question ‘how to make Zoom meetings more engaging?’ Now we have a definite answer: with the help of carrots.
The lucky Carrot app for Zoom is for individuals and teams who want to increase appreciation during remote communications resulting in more engagement. In our collaborative platform, employees can express appreciation to the meeting participants or co-workers by sending virtual carrots during a Zoom meeting. After they collect several carrots, they can redeem them for many different gift cards and fun experiences.
Keeping in touch no matter the location will help your employees come closer to in-person meetings. Zoom meetings are part of our lives as remote workers, so why not spice them up a bit? It’s a unique opportunity for remote teams to actively participate and make meetings engaging with a few simple clicks. Learn more about it here.
There are 3 additional steps you can take to make Zoom meetings more interactive as well.
1. Create an agenda and instructions beforehand.
It’s okay to show up without turning the camera on, life happens. However, if you’re planning a meeting for employees and want that meeting to be an engaging one, provide instructions. They have the right to know when a meeting is an important one and when they have to prepare for it.
Besides, you should list 3-4 key topics that the meeting will revolve around and put them in the calendar invite or a quick slack message. This will help participants to get their reports ready more accurately.
2. Only invite the necessary people to the meeting.
To make your Zoom meetings more interesting, don’t invite everyone you know. There is no guarantee that the meeting will be more interesting if everyone is invited. Most likely, the opposite is true. Having someone join the Zoom meeting purely to sit in the background is a waste of their time, and can be distracting for those who are talking.
3. Recommend employees to take meeting notes.
The team agrees on significant procedures and strategies for the company in meetings, which may make or break long-term success. If meeting notes are more detailed and clear, every bit of information and action item is more likely to be captured.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many companies have adopted remote work, which has emphasized the need to communicate effectively while working remotely.
Communicating while working remotely can be challenging. But by utilizing the above practices, remote employees can reduce isolation and improve collaboration, leading to better outcomes for individuals and organizations.
After all, all we need in communication during remote work is a little more active listening and empathy.
