For many employers, the ability to work remotely has long been offered as part of an employee recognition or benefits program. For others, remote employees are a circumstance of COVID-19. While some employers hoped for a quick return to normal, other employers have seen advantages to remote employees and are now reconsidering whether or not bringing employees back into the office is the best long-term strategy.
Regardless of whether your remote employees are temporarily remote or permanently, remote workers can get accidentally neglected when it comes to employer recognition programs, team experiences, and office perks. It’s important to adjust managerial styles and intentionally include and recognize remote workers.
1. Send a Handwritten Note to Their Home
Take the time to write a note and mail it to your employee. A handwritten note still carries an air of nostalgia and class from an age before emails, chat, and remote employees. It doesn’t take a lot of time to write a note or mail it. Because it’s not instant, electronic, or likely to be buried under a hundred newer emails, a handwritten note has power.
You don’t have to write a long letter, simply tell your employee thank you and acknowledge the work, dedication, or another part of their contribution. Focus on their effort and not on the outcome. For example:
“John, thank you for the energy, effort, and persistence you give to every prospective customer” is a lot more effective as recognition than; “John, I really appreciate you landing XYZ company as a new client”
It’s more effective because John’s energy, effort, and persistence is something he contributed and can control. But, even with energy, effort, and persistence, he can’t control whether or not he wins the account of XYZ company.
If you don’t know where to start, recognize employees for common struggles that remote employees face. “Thank you for your consistent hard work amidst all the distractions that can come with working from home!” or “Thank you for making such an effort to maintain good communication even though the team is a lot farther than across the aisle.”
A handwritten note comes in the mail unexpectedly and can become a memento that an employee reads multiple times and can keep for future reference. If you are looking for other ideas, check out 13 written ways to show employees appreciation.
2. Give Your Employees Extra Time
One of the biggest challenges that everyone faces is a lack of time. Remote employees report facing the challenge of time constraints even more. Most remote employees report a difficulty disconnecting from work when working from home.
Remote working parents face the challenge of being home, but at work, and the feeling that they should be meeting both sets of commitments. Some parents may also be facing childcare challenges or kids getting home from school before the workday is over.
You can recognize your employees by giving them an extra hour of free time, in appreciation of the hard work they put in. Send out a survey to your team. Ask them what they would do with an extra hour in a day. Give them choices.
Then, call a meeting. Make sure you schedule it at a time when employees aren’t going to be swamped with appointments, conferences, demos or other appointments as part of their job. Go over the results of the survey and announce to your team that they have the next hour to do whatever they want, but they cannot spend their time on “work” items!
If you had an extra hour of free time, what would you do with it?
- Talk to or spend time with a friend of family member
- Relax, sleep, read, or watch tv.
- Catch up on personal errands or chores
- Self care, exercise, go outside, or reconnect
- It’s a surprise! I haven’t had free time in so long, I’m just not sure.
3. Call Only to Say “Thank You!”
Call your employee for the sole purpose of saying “Thank You!” It can be tempting to call, thank your employee, and then move onto other business. But, resist the urge. Chances are, most of the times you call, it’s to discuss business, make assignments, or discuss priorities.
It becomes even more difficult to stick with only recognizing employees when they are working remotely and you may not get to communicate as frequently with them as you do when you pass by their desk numerous times a day.
Put off the urge to “multitask” by covering other business, assigning new projects, or correcting them. Just call, acknowledge their contribution and the impact it made, and get off the phone. Even if you have to call back in an hour to discuss other things, make sure that your appreciation phone call is just that: recognition and gratitude for their contribution.
4. Encourage Peer Recognition
Remote employees report feeling isolated more frequently than other employees. When employees are used to working in a team, feelings of isolation can be magnified. Encourage your employees to give peer recognition as part of their work day.
Peer recognition carries a powerful impact for employees and can often be more impactful than any other type of recognition. Encourage employees to take the time to recognize each other. Provide employees with the resources to do this. In Thanks, employees can chat, send ecards, or award points to a colleague without manager approval.
As your employees make the effort to connect and continue to keep the team together, recognize employees who take the time to show recognition. Recognizing employees who recognize others will help to show that peer recognition is a value that’s important. If you only recognize employees for hard work or other task related efforts, then peer recognition will be delegated to the list of “one-more-thing-to-get-done, but-never-will” that employees subconsciously write.
5. Be Extra Flexible with Remote Employees
Remote employees often struggle with burnout. They report feeling like they have to show they are working just as hard as employees in the office, although studies actually show that remote employees often accomplish more than office employees. Often there is the perception that remote employees are really at home, just lounging about.
But, at the same time, working remotely does bring its own set of challenges. Often remote employees feel like they should be available all the time, even when they are off the clock. They feel the pressure to be logged in when the first office employee gets in, and to still be clocked in and working when the last employee leaves for the day. Taking a lunch hour is often a distant memory.
You can show your trust and appreciation for all your remote employees do by giving them added flexibility. Make it clear that you don’t expect them to always be available and that you want them to clock out for lunch. Demonstrate your understanding of the challenges your remote staff faces by providing additional flexibility to their schedules. Even if you need your employees available for the bulk of the business day, or for a particular shift, allow them flexibility to clock in or out up to an hour early or late. Let them log in 20 minutes later on a hectic morning without the expectation that they are now “late for work.”
The added trust that flexibility shows employees speaks more about how much you appreciate and recognize their contributions than you can say in a speak. You may also consider giving on-site employees a little more flexibility because, let’s face it, flexibility is something most employees would love, remote or not!
6. A Video is Worth A Million Words
Recognize an employee by sending them a video compilation of “thank you’s” from their colleagues and company leadership. And, it doesn’t have to be complicated!
Call a virtual meeting and have each employee record a 30 second message for the employee being recognized. Compile the videos and send them. For remote employees, a video provides a chance for employees to connect over distance and feel appreciated even though they aren’t in the office.
Thanks users can use the video feature, where colleagues can send written messages, record a message, or share a photo with their message. Videos are automatically compiled and can be created on work anniversaries or other important events.
7. Send an Unexpected Gift As a Thank You!
Remote employees often miss out on the tangible perks that office employees enjoy. Things like free bagels, a catered lunch, or extra swag are often only given to present employees. Show remote employees that they are just as critical to the business and that their contribution matters by gifting them with a gift card they can redeem locally.
When you provide lunch to your office employees, send a gift card or have lunch delivered to your remote employees also!
Saying “thank you!” through an unexpected gift has great power in helping an employee to feel appreciated and valued. Recognizing employees through gifts can help to propel engagement and motivation, but it can also have the opposite effect if done incorrectly. Make sure not to use gifts as bribery, to force behavior, or “reward” employees. Instead, gifts should be given after a job well done without the expectation of a gift.
Conclusion
Recognizing remote employees can take extra effort in the midst of a busy day. It may need to be more intentional. But taking the time to recognize remote employees, you will ensure that they continue to feel and be a part of the team.
About Thanks
Thanks is a leading provider of a recognition-based platform that increases communication, builds teamwork, and makes recognition a part of company culture. Fast, easy and simple Thanks makes it easy to bring data-driven employee recognition to your entire organization. O.C. Tanner purchased the Thanks platform in 2019 to fulfill the recognition needs of smaller businesses.
Thanks customers benefit from the same decades of research in employee motivation and company culture that O.C. Tanner enterprise clients enjoy, but in a product that is geared for fast, easy and simple deployment. Whether you’re starting a recognition program or improving and expanding on what you already have, Thanks has everything you need to engage your people with effective, scalable recognition.