Ever since the pandemic, we are getting further and further away from the “traditional workplace” and by now most companies are already implementing remote, hybrid, or flexible work models.
I bet you already know all the benefits that implementing a hybrid or flexible workplace can bring to your business, from your employees spending less time and money on commuting to being able to hire international talent, we have already covered the benefits of hybrid workplaces in previous articles. However, the fact that these work models can bring many benefits to your team and organization, doesn’t mean that they are free of disadvantages.
One clear disadvantage that’s the result of remote and hybrid workplaces is the increased disconnection between coworkers. Workplace connection, something that happened naturally and spontaneously during the workday, via hallway conversations, lunch, or while grabbing a coffee became challenging to recreate in remote or hybrid environments, leading to an increased rate of employee disconnection from the company.
Said employee disconnection is one of the main drivers of voluntary turnovers, even causing employees to lower their productivity, miss more days at work, and lower the quality of their work whereas employees who experience high levels of belonging have a drop in turnover risk, an increase in job performance, a reduction in sick days, and an increase in employer promoter score, bringing important benefits and cost-savings to organizations.
Considering how important connection and retention is, managers need to take a more proactive approach to foster relations among employees. Meaningful relationships at work are proven to improve job satisfaction and engagement. Employees with a best friend at work are more likely to engage customers, produce better work, have higher well-being, and are less likely to get injured on the job.
These are plenty of good reasons why you should start to care about building connections in your hybrid workplace, but in case you are still not convinced…
Why Connections are Important in Remote & Hybrid Workplaces
Building connections between your coworkers doesn’t mean that your organization has to be a family. It is about relating to people, ideas, objectives, perspectives, backgrounds, and values. If you can help your team to relate to each other and to understand each other even a little bit better, you’re already on your way to creating a more connected workplace.
Although building these connections can be complicated, it’s totally worth it. When an employee feels connected to what they do for a living —aligning themselves with your company’s values, mission, and vision— and to their coworkers, they care about doing great work. These are the type of people that can exceed their roles and become great assets to your organization.
Ultimately, creating these connections will allow your organization to:
- Increase employee happiness. Relationships are crucial to happiness. One of the ways we can make ourselves happy and feel more fulfilled in our workplaces is to build friendships with the people that work with us, work for us, and even with our boss.
- Lower stress. No employee performs his or her best when dealing with chronic stress or burnout, and by helping employees foster social connections at work, employers can help reduce some workplace stress.
- Increase engagement and loyalty. Employees with friends or social connections at work tend to be more engaged and loyal workers. This is because quality work relationships help build a strong company culture that emphasizes respect, loyalty, and trust.
- Help employees have healthier lives. Employees with strong social connections are generally healthier. Adults with strong social support have a reduced risk of many significant health problems, including depression, high blood pressure, and an unhealthy body mass index (BMI).
- Connect departments. Sometimes it’s difficult for employees to socialize at work. By simply taking the time to introduce teammates from different departments, employers can provide an opportunity for social connection.
- Encourage team building. Fun team-building exercises can be a great way to bring colleagues together. Practical team-building exercises help colleagues unwind, have some fun, and build connections.
- Inspire positivity. Creating a positive work environment will help employees feel more comfortable around one another.
At the end of the day, connecting with team members is important to the success of any business. Remember that creating connections where there are none takes time, and it also has to be a group effort. Keep that in mind as you encourage your team to interact with one another while respecting boundaries and preferences!
So, what can you do to start building these connections in a hybrid environment? These are the 7 tips you need to implement right now to start building connections in your workplace.
How to Build Connections in a Hybrid Workplace
Connection within teams will look different for each organization, it will highly depend on your company’s culture, and your actual aim. However, if you don’t know where to start, here are a few takeaways that might help you:
1. Create workplace connection events
Random conversations in hallways, at the water cooler, or while having coffee, for all this time, workplace connection has been thought of as sometimes that “just happens” but in a hybrid or remote environment these types of spontaneous moments of human connection don’t “just happen”, we have to make them happen.
The fact that your company is moving to a more hybrid or remote approach doesn’t mean that workplace relationships are off the table, it just means that we have to think about different strategies to implement in order to make them happen.
Creating regular online events where your employees can share their thoughts, opinions, or just something cool that happened to them recently is key. Create consistent events that offer praise and appreciation on an ongoing basis. Events where employees get together and share a bit about their lives, what they are grateful for, something funny that happened, something interesting that they did on the weekend, or whatever.
The key is to let people share their experiences without being judged and if one employee relates to another, a workplace friendship can grow from there. So, if you are thinking of moving to a more remote or hybrid workplace environment, creating events that break the ice between employees and help them to get to know each other is key to having a healthy work environment.
2. Encourage in-person interactions when possible
Part of being a hybrid workplace is that not everything is done online, whether it’s for an office event or an important meeting, your employees will have to go to the office from time to time. This is your chance, as a manager, to break the ice between your employees and put a topic on the table that everyone can comment on.
And since the more chances you have for your employees to connect the better, it’s a great idea to have a monthly event, reunion, workshop, or party — whatever you want to call it— to look back at all the changes, updates, and important events that happened on the month, and you could even congratulate the employee of the month!
We have one ourselves every month and we call it, The Freelancer of the Month event (FOM for shorts), and it’s a great way for our remote employees to hop on the office, unwind, meet other coworkers, and maybe even relax at our pool. We’ve been seeing great results, so we fully advise you to try implementing something similar!
If you are finding it hard to think of ways for your employees to connect, the best advice I can give you is to start with just one person. Take things slowly and steadily, and try to connect with someone that you think you have something in common with. Slowly and steadily, your energy will reflect on the other employees, and in the future, everyone will be able to get along better with one another.
3. The “Get To Know Me” doc
Whenever we bring a new hire, we ask them to fill out a document called “All about you” with questions relating to what they like, what they dislike, their hobbies, their most important values, etc. This document is then shared with our other Freelancers so that they can have a head start on the ice-breaking topic when they first meet each other.
It’s always something along the lines of “Hey, I also love that movie” or “I also want to start jogging on the weekends, can I go with you?” that gets our freelancers to relate and get along with one another.
These types of documents are an easy way to start a conversation, and you can even add to the questions something like “how do you prefer to receive feedback” or “how do you best communicate” to understand more the mind of your new hire and create a supportive environment where everyone helps each other to do their best work.
4. Fun Competitions
Not all the messages on slack have to be about work. You can encourage playful encounters like hosting a “most unique selfie” contest in Slack, or playing a game of “wrong answers only”, and maybe even some trivia questions.
These small competitions create teamwork and camaraderie, and you can even reward the winners with a gift card, or company points! (It’s now your turn to think about what those company points can be exchanged for).
5. Interest-Based Channels
Keep making use of those slack channels by creating dedicated channels for specific interests. Channels about hobbies, memes, random facts, or sharing what they did on the weekend are a good way for your company not only to work but also to connect through slack.
So go and get feedback from your team and try implementing some fun channels where people can go to connect and be inspired!
Some examples of cool channels are #InterestingArticles , #ListeningNow , and #MemeoftheDay
6. Establish strong communication channels
Slack, Zoom calls, Microsoft Teams, Emails. From the beginning, each of your employees should know which communication channels your organization uses and how. They should know what’s the best way to communicate with their coworkers and superiors, where to leave a message that should be read the following day, and what’s the best way to ask for advice and support in case of doubts or in the case anything happens.
Communication within an organization is extremely important, and much more when your company is fully remote or hybrid. Since you are not seeing each other face to face, your employees need to be 100% aware of when and where they can reach out to each other to not break any boundaries and communicate as efficiently as possible.
Not breaking communication boundaries is one way to get on the good side of your coworkers, showing that you respect and understand each other will help to ease the stress of work and allow for more friendly conversation to pop out spontaneously, even more so if they have daily meetings to discuss certain topics.
When employees start getting comfortable around each other, they will start to care more about the other person and their growth, giving themselves tips and supporting each other. That’s how you start to build a culture where friendship can thrive.
7. Care about work-life balance
Employee health is a serious matter, and extremely important to have into consideration if you are looking to have better employee connections and friendships in your organization. Take into consideration having good family leave policies, child care and elder care, access to mental health services, time off renewal, and even PTOs so employees can recharge by spending more time with family and friends.
Employees are happier and less lonely when they can “leave work at work”. An employee that is happy with their work-life balance is an employee that’s happy to work, and when in happy mood employees are more likely to spend more time with their sharing with their colleagues, create deeper relationships, and improve collaboration.
In today’s lonely world, human connection is everyone’s job.
So I’m glad that you are putting your part by building a great place to work, where your employees not only feel fulfilled with what they’re doing but also can create meaningful work and personal relationships.
Get comfortable being uncomfortable
At the end of the day, when building relationships you —and everyone involved— have to show at least a little bit of vulnerability, to talk about their hobbies, their tastes, etc. And we shouldn’t run away from this vulnerability but embrace it.
To create a bond with someone you need to be proud of who you are and not be afraid to show it to the world —or well, just your coworkers—. To allow these connections to happen you, as a manager or CEO, need to put your part too by creating a workplace of equity and inclusion because, with the right communication, no one should be afraid to express their thoughts and feelings to their boss or their coworkers.
That kind of healthy communication is part of your organizational culture, and the way your organization works will highly depend on what kind of culture you want to implement.
Good luck on your way to creating stronger and trustier relationships!
