The 5 Best Tips for Keeping Your Virtual Team Motivated

Employee motivation is a crucial part of a company’s success. Without it, organizations can experience low productivity and minimal output. These can lead to companies falling short of reaching their goals.

Since keeping employees motivated is important in any workplace, choosing and implementing the right morale-boosting strategies is crucial. This is already challenging when you run a physical office since people have different views and sources of motivation.

It can even be doubly difficult when you manage a virtual team.

Taking up an employee motivation training course can help you select the right strategies for keeping your team motivated and productive, allowing your organization to reap various benefits.

A good training program can help you understand the importance of employee motivation and the different strategies you can implement in your physical and virtual workplace.

During the course, you will also learn how to identify the personality types of your employees, set goals, and choose methods that work for everyone.

Boosting the Morale of Your Remote Team

If you are looking for ways to motivate your virtual team, here are some of the most effective ways to do so:

1. Prioritize communication

Physical workplaces are full of social interactions. With employees working side by side and the presence of water coolers and pantries, everyone can easily talk about anything regarding work and their personal lives.

Employees who are in a virtual work setting may miss these opportunities and end up feeling isolated. And based on a study, it can affect their performance and engagement.  

Ensuring your team can communicate with you and each other can reduce their loneliness and its negative effects on various business processes.  

Start by choosing the right communication tools for your team to use. Select apps and platforms that allow you and everyone to check in often.

Tools such as Slack and Zoom allow you to collaborate and stay connected with your remote team and all the members with each other.

Use video conferences regularly as well during meetings. Encourage all participants to turn on their cameras since seeing each other’s faces help members feel like they are still part of a team. Additionally, it helps maintain their attention.

When your team has and uses the right communication tools, you are off to a good start to keeping them motivated.

2. Let your team know you trust them

Trust is one of the important foundations of motivation. People are often more inspired and eager to produce better results when they like and trust their leaders.

When employees do not trust you or the company, you can’t expect them to be committed to their work.

The best way to build trust within a virtual team is to set up regular meetings. Try to do this at least once a week or at the beginning of a job or project through video conferencing.

You should also hold a company-wide meeting at least once every six months, although once every three to four months might yield better results.

Checking in with your team and discussing tasks online via video conversation might not replace in-person meetings, but it is better than nothing. It is still a great way to build trust, keep them motivated, and stay updated regarding everything happening in your company.

3. Schedule only necessary meetings

Although it is essential that you touch base with your employees regularly, you don’t want them to start viewing these meetings as inconvenient and unnecessary that they don’t want to join them.

This means scheduling meetings that are only of utmost importance and avoiding arranging ones that are not too essential. And try to keep these phone and video calls as short and concise as possible.

Additionally, sending emails, texts, and direct messages too often is not only distracting; it can also be seen as a sign by your employees that you don’t trust them or respect their valuable time.

Because of this, reserve these instant messages for crucial matters as well. Contacting them too much is distracting.

Keep in mind that some people feel that talking about the same topics repeatedly lowers their motivation. They know they can do something more productive instead of listening to the same subjects over and over.

4. Start a recognition program

Workplaces with a culture of recognition have a reliable way of retaining top talent, improving engagement, and encouraging better performance.

If you want to start a recognition program that will motivate your virtual team, follow these tips:

• Determine the behaviors that you want to reinforce.
• Choose the type of award you want to hand out.
• Think about how often you should recognize and hand out awards.
• Create a checklist for selecting candidates and determine who are eligible for rewards.

Once you have all the details, inform your team about the program through a group email or meeting. Ask for their feedback and incorporate those into your plan so that your team will have an additional source of motivation that can drive them to perform better.

5. Invest in employee training and development programs.

Aside from creating or improving your recognition program, you can boost the motivation of your virtual team by giving them opportunities for upskilling and reskilling.

Look for different ways to help your employees improve and learn new skills. These include providing mentorship, training, and coaching programs.

If some of your employees are open to providing training or talks about their areas of specialization, choose a schedule that works for everyone and use the right platform to ensure all your team members can join and benefit from those.

If you want to make your training stand out and interesting, consider using a virtual event platform. This tech tool comes with various features, such as customizable avatars and 3D background, that help make the event unique, memorable, and fun.

Several learning centers, colleges, and universities offer online courses that allow learners to earn credits or certificates that would be valuable add-ons to their CVs. Find out what qualifications your employees are interested in getting and which provider you can work with to help them obtain these.

Also, share websites, webinars, and other resources that allow your employees to learn and broaden their knowledge.

Lastly, talk to your team members about areas where they want to grow or learn on the job. You may find opportunities to get employees cross-trained to prepare them better for the future demands of your workplace.

Even if you are managing your team from afar, there are ways for you to keep them motivated. Start by following these tips and expect a better, happier, more productive, and efficient team.

AUTHOR BIO:

Jerrin Samuel is the Executive Director at Regional Educational Institute (REI) in Abu Dhabi. Since 1995, REI has been at the forefront of education by delivering quality corporate training courses in the UAE, helping many businesses and organizations achieve greater productivity and higher customer satisfaction levels.