How to Protect Your Remote Workforce from Becoming Unengaged

Is remote work becoming the new normal?

According to The State of the Remote Job Marketplace report by FlexJobs, 3.9 million U.S. employees, or 2.9 percent of the total U.S. workforce, work from home at least half of the time—and that number is rising. With the remote workforce expanding each year, employers are looking to develop proactive strategies to help them organize a remote workforce and ensure those employees stay engaged.

For many organizations, maintaining employee engagement is a top priority—the benefits just speak for themselves. Overall, engaged employees are happier, more productive, and much less likely to jump ship. Knowing this, it’s no surprise that employers are recognizing the value of engaged employees and looking to improve engagement as a result.

With that said, it can be challenging to protect your remote workforce from becoming unengaged. How can you ensure remote employees are staying engaged when you don’t physically see them every day? We’ll share a few ways you can improve and maintain remote employee engagement at your organization.

Touch Base with Remote Employees Often

One of the best ways you can prevent your remote employees from becoming unengaged is by checking in with them often. You may not see your remote employees in person every day, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be present and in regular contact. Make it a point to touch base with remote workers on a regular basis—and not just to ask for an update on deliverables.

You can embrace communication tools to help you stay in touch with your remote workforce. For example, with a collaboration tool like Slack, you can create a digital space that allows remote employees to interact, ask questions, and share files. Video conferencing tools, such as Zoom and Skype, are also especially helpful for engaging your remote workforce. This allows remote employees a chance to have face-to-face interactions with their team members—even if it’s from a distance.

Arm Remote Employees with Helpful Resources

Another way you can prevent your remote workforce from becoming disengaged is by arming employees with helpful resources. For example, by sharing a live org chart, you can help provide a positive employee experience no matter where your team members are located.

Unlike traditional org charts from the past, live org chart software is highly interactive. It allows employees to build their own personal profiles, where they can share everything from photos and fun facts to contact information. This helps employees build relationships and put faces to names—something that’s especially useful for remote workers. Easy-to-access contact information also makes it much easier for remote employees to get in touch with others on the team, encouraging collaboration and improving communication across the board.

A live org chart is also an excellent resource to help remote employees learn more about the organization: how it’s structured, whom to go to for specific information, and ultimately where they fit in. This is helpful for onboarding new hires—especially the remote new hires whom you can’t have lunch with on day one!

While keeping your remote workforce happy and engaged is certainly not without its challenges, it’s definitely not impossible. There are many different tools and techniques you can utilize to improve remote employee engagement and prevent the engagement drop-off that you dread.

Are you looking for ways to protect your remote workforce from becoming unengaged? Live org chart software is an excellent resource to help increase engagement—not to mention many other built-in benefits. Download 4 Ways to Find Out If Modern Org Chart Software Makes Sense to learn more about org chart software and to determine if it’s a fit for your organization.