EPISODE 95 OF THE MARKETING SOLUTIONS PODCAST: REMOTE TEAMS: HOT TO CONNECT AND FOSTER A STRONG TEAM CULTURE

Sonya:
With more and more businesses opting for a remote work model, it's not uncommon for some employees to never meet face to face. And while operating remotely has its definite advantages, fostering a strong team culture is something that you can't leave to chance. In this episode, I'm going to take you through some of the many things we do within our agency to make sure every team member feels valued and included, and a few things you may want to consider when you're trying to build team culture.

Sonya:
Welcome to the Boom Your Biz podcast, a podcast for the movers, the shakers, and even bigger action takers in business. I'm your host on Sonya McIntyre Reed and each week I'll be exploring the question of what really makes businesses and organizations thrive? I'm on a mission to educate, empower and inspire business owners and myself along the way.

Sonya:
While office workers generally bond over Friday night drinks or long lunches, when you have a fully remote team, like we do the opportunities to get the whole team together are few and far between. Building a remote team gives you the opportunity to work with the best of the best, but it does create the potential for individual team members to feel isolated or excluded from the rest of the team, but not on my watch.

Sonya:
As our team grew, I thought team building exercises and virtual social catch ups would be the key to building a team. What I learned was that you need to really get to know your team, to be able to connect with them on an individual level and then connect them as a group. Case in point, I learned that my team is not a Friday-night-games kind of crew. It might come as a surprise that most of my team is quite introverted. And although it's great from a professional perspective because they thrive when they're working closely one on one with our clients, I'm pretty sure that forcing them to play charades over Zoom would do very little for morale.

Sonya:
So how do you build a strong team culture when your team is scattered across the country? Let's cover the basics first. Number one, get to know your team from coffee orders, to their favorite cocktail or mocktail, knowing the little things about your team can make a huge difference to your team culture. Do they have a favorite footy team? Play in a band? Have unique hobbies? What do they nerd out over? Nothing makes people feel more special than when you remember something small they mentioned in passing, keep notes if you have to. In our employee database, we'll write down things like their hobbies if they've mentioned something they want to do see, or try or even their dislikes. It makes our conversations a little more meaningful. Not to mention it makes it so much easier when Christmas or a birthday rolls around.

Sonya:
Which brings me to my second point, be generous with your team. We make sure that everyone in our team gets a birthday and Christmas gift every year, and no generic one-size-fits-all gift either. Something that shows we listen and remember what they like. This is important. Imagine if someone on your team didn't drink and you sent them a bottle of wine. That sends a very clear message that you haven't taken the time to scratch beyond the surface. I go so far as to say it's better not to get someone to gift at all if you're not going to put some thought into it.

Sonya:
One of our team members is an Android girl and mentioned wanting to get some Bluetooth headphones. Imagine if we didn't know this about her and we send her some AirPods, you may be thinking that's no biggie Sonya, she could just sell them then buy the one she wants. But getting things almost but not quite right, is not the kind of the leader or the kind of person I want to be.

Sonya:
I want to know when someone's going through a tough time so I can send them flowers. I want to know if someone loves getting a massage so I can send them a voucher to reward them for a job well done with something I know they'll use and appreciate. Enlist other team members to gather intel if you have to, or just ask questions randomly throughout the year to get a read on what your team do and don't like. Thoughtful gift giving is a real skill and a great way to build rapport. Plus who doesn't love Santa? Can you tell one of my love languages is gifts? If you're not gifting thoughtfully or even worse, you don't even know your team's birthdays, that's a good place to start.

Sonya:
Calendar reminders set a week in advance, as well as on the day will become your new best friends. We're also generous when it comes to the tools and training our team need to do their job better. For remote workers that feeling of isolation can be even worse if you feel stuck in a job like you don't have opportunities to advance or progress in your career. We hold quarterly professional development meetings with each of our team where we discuss their goals, what support they need to achieve them and where they want to go next. If there's a course they want to do, we'll usually foot the bill or find them a similar training we've already gone through ourselves. If they're working with a slow old dinosaur of a computer, the business will buy them a new one. Invest in your team and you'll get that investment back tenfold.

Sonya:
Remember that you are the boss though. I like to think that I am an approachable person, but I remember being 22 doing my first grown up job out of uni and feeling very intimidated by my bosses. Sometimes I forget that I'm the boss and that some members on my team are still in their early to mid twenties. If this is you, you need to find and utilize the big brother or sister on your team. You know the one, they've been working with you a little longer than others, they know where to find pretty much everything, they know your client's quirks, and they usually know the quickest and easiest way to do things. Give that team member the time and space to develop relationships with the rest of the team, almost in an unofficial mentor role. You may have a few of these people or one in each department.

Sonya:
If you are lucky, they're the type of the person that won't break anyone's confidence, but will let you know if someone needs a little extra help or is going through a hard time. If you, like me, built your business as a sole operator and then grew a team, it can be tough to come to terms with the separation that naturally occurs between the team and the boss. But it's up to you to determine how wide that separation grows.

Sonya:
Which brings me to my next point, regular contact, both individually as departments and as a whole team. I'm never going to be like the Wizard of Oz, never seen, but heard. I believe that good business owners have their finger on the pulse, but also give their team space to do their work. Micromanaging is exhausting for everyone involved, but you do need to be aware of how your team is progressing with their work and their broader career goals.

Sonya:
We have two weekly full team meetings, one on a Monday morning and one on a Thursday afternoon. We check in to see how everyone is going, what they're excited about outside of work and where they're at with their work projects. And while you may not have a NAMS to give you a weekly dad joke, I'm willing to bet that even one weekly team meeting will boost morale and strengthen relationships.

Sonya:
We also have department meetings throughout the week so that we can get down to the nitty gritty of the work each department does, which without wasting other departments' time. Something, I only recently discovered that makes me so happy is that my team often jumps on calls or sends each other messages on Slack just to check in or to see if they can help each other. I've never asked them to do that, it's something they've done on their own, and it's something that confirms to me that we've made some pretty awesome hiring decisions.

Sonya:
It would be very easy for our organic team and paid ads team to work completely separately from each other, or to just focus on their own client work. But we've been really selective about who we bring on board, and I think we've really struck a good balance. For me personally, I also make sure that I'm regularly checking in with each team member individually via the method they prefer. Some of our team like a quick chat over Slack, others love a chat on the phone, and I'm lucky enough to work in person with Isabel a few days a week. These one-on-one check-ins are important, because they allow me to get a sense of how happy my team is, both at work and outside of it and from a work only perspective, if they're overwhelmed with their workload, bored with their tasks or need more training in a particular area.

Sonya:
Finally don't stretch your team so far they break. It's crazy to think that two years ago I had no full-timers just a couple of contractors and now I have a whole team. And as we bring on more team members, each role becomes clearer and more defined. I'm really blessed to have people on my team who can do a lot of things. The challenge for me has been to recognize that just because people can do a lot of things doesn't mean they should be doing all the things. And just like I invest in my team to learn and grow, I've had to invest in my business. We've just hired three new team members who have just started with us. And although it's scary for me as a business owner to be bringing on more staff, I know that when the team has a bit more breathing room to be creative to implement their ideas, we're going to do some really great things for our clients.

Sonya:
So there you have it. Know your team, be generous, support their growth, enlist helpers, have regular contact with the whole team, each department and individual team members and recognize when it's time to grow. Virtual teams seem to be the way of the future. So if that's the way your business is heading, it might be helpful to keep these points in mind as you grow.

Sonya:
I'd love to hear what you do to connect your virtual team and foster a good team culture. Join the Boom Your Biz group over on Facebook to connect with other business owners and keep the conversation going. Just search Boom Your Biz on Facebook.