Keeping engagement high in the workforce has its challenges. But making sure employees are invested, productive and happy at work becomes that little bit harder when you’re managing a team that is dispersed.
With the current COVID-19 pandemic meaning that more people than ever are working from home, this is a challenge currently faced by many business leaders.
With that said, it can—and needs to—be done. In this blog post, StaffConnect, a mobile employee app designed to give employees a voice and boost engagement, shares its insight to offer top tips for boosting engagement in your dispersed team.
Dispersed teams: The challenges
A dispersed team is just like any other, right? Wrong. Every team is different, but dispersed teams in particular have their own, unique challenges.
A dispersed team, often also referred to as virtual, distributed and remote, is one which is spread over many geographical locations. As such, normal face-to-face interaction that happens in an office environment isn’t possible for dispersed workforces, who often rely solely on virtual comms, such as email and desktop messengers.
This has its obvious challenges, such as building relationships and maintaining a flow of communication, but there’s some other common issues faced by this kind of workforce, including:
- Sense of loneliness
- Lack of teamwork
- No company culture
- Reduced employee engagement
As a manager of a dispersed team, it’s your job to ensure you don’t fall victim to the potentially detrimental issues which are more common in these workforces. With the current global crisis forcing people apart, it’s important that managers are doing all that they can to bring their employees closer together. But what exactly can you do to encourage a boost in engagement and maintain this long-term?
Constructive comms channels
It might seem obvious for dispersed teams to have their communication down to a T, but this is something which often goes neglected even in teams that use it constantly!
Just because your dispersed team is using a comms channel to an acceptable standard, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the best option available. With a workforce who rely so heavily on communication channels for everything from midday updates to questions about their work, ensuring you’re utilising it to its maximum is key to keeping employees happy and productive in their work.
The better the communication in a team, the better they work together—fact. If you manage a dispersed team, don’t rely on the old-school comms that have seen you this far to keep up with your business as it progresses into the future. Although things like email aren’t redundant, they definitely aren’t always the best way for team members to communicate in a quick and easy way.
As such, explore all the options to find the one that works best for your team. From instant chat and messaging platforms to task management software, think outside the box when it comes to your dispersed team’s communication and you could see a massive difference to everything from the volume of communication to the overall daily productivity of your team.
Share the vision
If your team is dispersed, the chances are that they’re rarely—if ever—unable to be in the same room. Not only does this mean that they seldom see each other, it also means that they hardly ever see you and other business leaders.
This might not seem like an issue—and most of the time it isn’t—but it can lead to a breakdown between them and the company vision. If your team is never in the office to hear the outcome or boardroom meetings, constantly be exposed to new mottos and goals, they can’t be expected to simply find out for themselves.
If you’re looking to boost the engagement of your dispersed team, turning straight to the vision of your business is a good start. Sharing executive communications with your employees on the targets you want to reach and how they can play their part will increase their sense of individual value to the overall mission of your business and help keep their engagement up.
Build a team
Your employees are people, not numbers. If you want to see a rise in engagement, you need to make sure they feel like individual people who have a unique impact on the success of your company.
When your staff aren’t in the office, it can be difficult to always put a face to a name. But there are ways to improve this in dispersed teams, including:
- Video comms – platforms such as skype allow you to talk face-to-face, wherever you’re stationed.
- Know your team – invest time in getting to know your employees. From their family and pets to hobbies and ambitions.
- Share – From pictures and videos to stories, creating a team who share information about themselves will help foster stronger relationships.
Taking these tips on board might seem like small and insignificant changes, but these are proven ways to raise engagement. So, what are you waiting for? If you manage a dispersed team who could use an engagement boost, start implementing these ideas now.
BIO: This blog post was contributed by StaffConnect, a mobile employee app designed to give employees a voice and bridge the gap between deskless and office-based workers.
