The first Teamy Talks took place the last Thursday of February in Lisbon. We had the chance to learn about the importance of having a well built and engaged team.
The second edition of Teamy Talk was held online which gave us the opportunity to invite speakers from different countries. Since the topic was Team Engagement for Remote Teams, we invited professionals that have experience working remote and, specifically, managing remote teams.
From The Netherlands, Angelique Slob is the CEO of Hello Monday, which is a boutique consultancy agency working for a global client base. They support tech companies with or without an office with building virtual workplaces.
Also the country of tulips, Lova Kremer is the founder of Startup Funding Event. This startup aims to bring inspiring startups and world-class founders on one stage, all competing for our Innovation Funding Award worth 42,000€ with no strings attached.
Completing our panel of speakers, Susana Cigano is from Portugal and is the Customer Support Manager at Loom. Loom is a new kind of work communication tool, already helping millions of people get their message across through instantly shareable videos.
The panel was hosted by João Figueirinhas Costa, CEO of Humaniaks, a small consulting company in Lisbon that helps grow startups and grow teams sustainably.
Remote work seemed like climbing the Everest a few months ago. It was a reality for many new companies, down the road for others and a no-go for the majority. Now it has become a “forced” reality for many employees and it could be interesting to run a study and find out which option they like better and if they’d like to keep this flexibility once the situation goes back to normal.
One of the challenges that remote work faces is team engagement, and even more in the companies that don’t have this perk implemented and had to send their employees to work from home without all the needed resources.
Here are 10 things that we learnt at Teamy Talks Digital: Team engagement for remote teams.
Communication is the most important factor of any remote team. Having an open communication with your manager and team will be determinant since there is no face-to-face interaction. Team engagement not only makes for a better work environment, but also helps the company in results. An engaged team is likely to perform better, refer the company and speak highly of it.
Sometimes it’s hard to invest in something which doesn’t have a clear return on investment. Team engagement goes beyond spending some budget on a fun team activity, it’s about making sure that your team is okay, they feel comfortable and are connected to the company's mission.
It’s important to hire people that fit into the culture of the company, that have the same mindset and are able to understand the mission of the company. In the long term, investing in the culture of the company pays off.
Hiring naturally engaged people doesn’t mean that they will keep engaged until the end of time. Making sure that your team is engaged falls on the manager, that’s why it’s important that aside from being the head of the team, they take time to listen to what they have to say and then transmit their comments, doubts and worries to the leadership tam.
This connects to the precious point. When working remotely, communication has to be constant since there is no face-to-face interaction. A manager that doesn’t listen runs the risk of having its team members become disengaged and potentially leave the company. This, at the end translates, with higher costs for the company than if the manager had done its job correctly.
We talked about the importance of human interaction. When someone applies to a remote job, they know that they will have the freedom to work from anywhere in the world, but as a company it’s also great to have a homebase opened to your employees if they ever need to use it.
Office workers get free coffee, snacks, sometimes even breakfast. Aside from that they also have workshops, masterclasses, comfy chairs and the overall perks of being in an office. Remote workers accept to not have access to all of that, but as employees it’s important to treat them equally. Aside from making sure that they have access to everything they need, it could be a nice gesture to offer a small learning budget for workshops or masterclasses that could help develop skills beneficial for their day to day work-life.
Of course getting to see your teammates once or twice a year translates to having fun, but at the end it’s more than that. It’s the chance to work together and get to know each other on a more personal level.
Don’t let distance come between having a good time. You and your teammates have accomplished something or closed an important deal? Shipping snacks to their home is just a few clicks away with apps like Uber Eats, Glovo or Deliveroo. Not only will their tummies be happy, but they will be as well. Team engagement the digital way can be very creative.
Before the panemy, remote work was something that we knew existed but it seemed far away. Now that most employees have been “forced” to work from home, we have come to realise that of course it’s a tough transition but it’s not an impossible one. It gives people flexibility and balances their personal and professional life better.
Now that most people have a bit of experience in remote work, we can agree that communication is the centre of everything. Since there is no face-to-face interaction it all comes down to speaking and listening. What are your thoughts on remote work? Would you like to work remotely forever or are you more of an office worm? Maybe 50-50? I would sign for 50-50, to be honest.
We want to thank our speakers again for their time and insights in the world of remote work.
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