Social wellbeing for remote workers is a significant challenge: A recent loneliness at work survey found remote workers reported feeling lonely 98% more than on-site workers and 179% more lonely than hybrid workers. Almost half of remote workers report that they feel less of a sense of belonging to the organisation they work for. Maintaining a sense of connection and collaboration even in a remote team is crucial for an organisation as it supports employee engagement, creativity and wellbeing.
Here are some tips on how to support the social wellbeing of remote workers:
- Create a sense of belonging for remote workers- by explaining your vision as an organisation and the role they have to play within it. Events such as staff award ceremonies can help foster belonging.
- Video calls- these can foster connection and collaboration in remote teams so use them for team meetings as well as casual chats and catchups. You could use video calls more creatively for brainstorming activities, team building and lunch breaks.
- Team collaboration tools- these help encourage communication and task collaboration, tools include Slack, Asana, or Trello.
- Team building activities- try online activities such as games such as bingo, quizzes or icebreaker activities to encourage connections to grow within your team.
- Tackle loneliness for remote workers- There are two main ways to do this: try and spot signs of loneliness and create opportunities for staff to social and connect. Do this by checking in with employees and giving them the space to share how they are feeling and use some of the ideas above for social activities.
- Encourage employees to set and keep boundaries between work and personal life. Empower your employees to set their work hours and confidently communicate them with their colleagues. Suggestions include setting specific times for meetings, collaboration, focus and personal time within your calendar. Keep an eye out for communications from employees outside their normal hours so you can reassure them and support them.
- Monitor workloads and burnout risks- Managers need to keep an eye out for signs of burnout. Signs include spikes in working hours or low engagement this can be easier to spot with workforce analytics apps like ActivTrak.
You can find out more about supporting the wellbeing of remote workers using these resources:
