Keeping the trend of remote teams and tools for increasing engagement, eNPS and EVP in the company
We at Wind4Tune are an international HR service for working with remote teams, organizing corporate events for companies all over the world including USA, Ireland, Egypt, Latvia, Africa, India, Budapest, and other countries. Due to our specifics, we constantly keep finger on the pulse and follow the trends of remote work and the development of distributed teams.
In this article we want to:
● share our thoughts on the prerequisites for keeping the trend of remote teams.
● talk about tools for increasing engagement, eNPS and EVP.
Prerequisites for keeping the trend of distributed teams
- Prerequisite № 1 — habit, comfort, and economic viability for employees.
According to telecommuting statistics 2018, there are 4.3 million remote workers in the USA, which makes up 3.2% of the entire workforce. But due to the COVID-19 situation trend on distributed teams as early as 2020 began to gain unseen revs. According to a Stanford study, as early as mid-2020, 42 percent of the U.S. labor force now working from home full-time. The long practice of working remotely will certainly not go away, people will develop new habits and many will find it difficult to return fully to the office. Benefits for employees working from home:
a) Freedom and flexibility;
b) Cost savings;
c) Save time;
d) Comfortable environment etc.
Link to an article detailing Advantages of Remote Working.
2) Prerequisite № 2 — economic viability for business
With the trend of working remotely, not only employees, but companies as well, are getting benefits such as:
a) Expanding the talent market and retention.
In a recent FlexJobs survey, 65% of respondents want to become full-time remote employees post-pandemic, while 31% would prefer a hybrid work arrangement.
b) Increasing employee productivity.
According to the CNN BUSINESS survey, 94% of employers surveyed view changes positively:
- 67% of companies said their productivity was actually the same;
- 27% of companies said their productivity was higher than it was before the pandemic.
c) Optimizing office costs
Link to an article detailing the benefits.
3) Prerequisite № 3 — infrastructure development
a) Expanding of the pool of countries that provide long-stay visas for people with remote jobs. Here is a link to the article with 16 countries which have long term visa options for digital nomads.
b) Companies provide employees with workspace at home: desks, chairs, equipment, and office supplies.
c) New technology tools for tracking remote employees, such as:
- Performetric — an AI to control the condition and effectiveness of indirect indicators.
- HelthHero — health monitoring based on indirect behavioral indicators with a focus on health (not only mental, but also physical). It can also analyze data in all basic messengers, compatible with slack.
- Range — a tracking tool for the level of engagement and tasks completion in small teams. Perfect for starting work remotely, especially for managers.
d) New tools to increase engagement, eNPS and EVP of remote teams. Here we suggest looking into research and feedback from companies in detail.
Engagement tools, eNPS and EVP
Shawn Anchor, a world-renowned expert on workplace happiness and author of the book “The Happiness Advantage” claimed that happiness is a harbinger of organizational success
The results of the research confirmed Shawn Anchor’s claims that with increased employee happiness:
- Sales increase by 37%
- Productivity improves by 31%
- Tasks completion accuracy improves by 19%
- as well as a myriad of health and quality of life improvements.
Previously, we have analyzed international research on the effectiveness of Teamwork and its impact on the company’s metrics (eNPS, staff turnover reduction, increased sales) by increasing employee engagement and productivity.
Kenexa Research Institute has researched the relationship between employee engagement and important business performance metrics.
The analyses reveal that organizations with highly engaged employees:
- achieve twice the annual net income of organizations whose employees lag behind on engagement (see Figure 1);
- achieve seven times greater 5-year TSR than organizations whose employees are less engaged (see Figure 2).
Interestingly, these studies produce correlations between employee engagement and important business performance metrics.
(for detailed descriptions and links to the articles please visit Wind4Tune website)
As a result of our research on engagement studies, eNPS, EVP, and interviews with HR specialists in internal communications, we have created the TOP 4 tools for remote teams to increase productivity, work satisfaction, and engagement.
Tool 1: Online Travel
Online Travel in live streaming format perfectly suits for boosting your team’s energy and positive emotions. You benefit from:
• Communication with a guide throughout your tour;
• Influencing the travel process by voting;
• Entertainment activities (quizzes) with gifts for the winners (postcards, souvenirs);
• Additional photo-video content, which makes your live travel experience even more entertaining.
Online travel helps:
• boost your team’s positive emotions, energy;
• form stronger bonds with people at work;
• reduce workplace stress;
- strengthen the culture of the remote team.
“We are always looking for new ideas and suggestions for our team. So, in the autumn we have our first online trip — Tokyo. It was incredible! The colleagues from Wind4tune have offered us to do an online tour for the whole local team and we discussed it pretty quickly accepted the offer:) We had a choice of several locations. Each of them was very interesting, but we immediately have chosen Tokyo because the main office- Rakuten is located there. It was a great opportunity for us to see everything with our own eyes. The team was thrilled and remembered the journey for a long time. An hour and a half passed by. We were asking questions to the guide. He showed us interesting places and told us about the traditions and life of the Japanese. We also took part in a quiz that the organizers prepared for us. We would love to go somewhere else to see new places together, as a team, even if it’s online for now.”
Mila Rogulina, PR Director CIS
Rakuten Viber“It was a very interesting experience and practically the only opportunity for our Team consisting of 24 countries to hold corporate events under current restrictions. Curious, unusual and very relevant to the motivation and inspiration of the team format of Team Building”
Katerina Timofeeva
Tool 2: IceBreaker Quiz
IceBreaker is a game where employees try to answer questions about each other correctly.
Shakespeare used the term “break the ice” in The Taming of the Shrew to capture how a few social niceties can melt even difficult individuals.
“And if you carry it off and break the ice — win the older and make the younger accessible to us — whoever winds up with her will not be such a boor as to be ungrateful, I’m sure.”
“IceBreaker” helps:
• know more about your remote team;
• form stronger bonds among the participants;
• improve the culture in your remote team;
- boost collaboration among remote employees;
- inspire laughter and communication.
Тool 3: Online Mafia
Mafia is a great tool to bring the team together. The game takes place in a relaxed, fun, exciting atmosphere.
You will acquire and master useful skills that you can apply not only at work, but also in everyday life!
Online Mafia helps:
• develop public speaking skills;
• work with your team effectively;
• develop flexibility and adaptation;
• Learn and practice to deal with objections;
- develop leadership.
Surprisingly, it was much cooler than we expected. With different professions and superpowers, everyone in the team revealed themselves in their own way. The mafia guys showed off sudden acting abilities that we didn’t even know about and would hardly know at work. We learned a little more about each other and it increased trust . The more trust, the easier it is for us to share feedback and ideas during work processes. Fun and jokes helped to feel comfortable despite miles of distance between us. We encourage you to try it too :)
Polina Parshakova
Tool 4: Time Machine and My Own Game team-building games
One of the most popular tools for team building. All participants are divided into teams of 6–8 people and must score points by answering as many questions as possible.
Time Machine and My Own Game help:
• create friendships and strengthen bonds among employees;
• develop team skills;
- optimize decision-making;
- increase the productivity and involvement of employees.
“If one of the efficiency metrics of the event was the time when unfamiliar to each other people can communicate without the moderator, our metrics in Time Machine and My Own Game with Wind4Tune would have exceeded all targets. The game was very active. Discussion of tasks after the game smoothly flowed into communication among employees, which means that we have created the atmosphere we missed so much after switching to work from home.”
Victoria Zukova
This set of tools allows you to maintain and increase the level of productivity, satisfaction and involvement of employees within the company, and as a result, a positive impact on business performance metrics.
Remote teams in the future
The prerequisites listed earlier make it clear to us that, with the end of the pandemic, not all companies will go back to the previous format of work, many will retain a remote or hybrid format.
According to Upwork, the number of remote workers in the next five years is expected to be nearly double what it was before COVID-19: By 2025, 36.2 million Americans will be remote, an increase of 16.8 million people from pre-pandemic rates.
It is safe to assume that as the trend of remote work continues, more and more new solutions for distributed teams will appear on the market. And Wind4Tune team will take an active part in the development of this direction!
