5 Ways to Keep Your Remote Employees Connected

 A Harvard Business Review study found out that remote employees are more likely to feel excluded by their teammates. Feelings of alienation can crop up while operating from a remote workspace. This causes negative emotions within the remote employees and hampers their ability to deliver their work efficiently. Further, this can cause disruptions withing the macro workflow of the organization, and affect other employees, too. 

There are a few different ways you can connect remote employees when working with multiple clients:  

1. Use Project Management Tools: It is important to stay connected over long distances in order to collaborate on projects. If you are trying to make a remote team work on an assignment, effective communication is absolutely imperative. However, you also do not want to micromanage and make your employees feel overwhelmed by constantly asking for updates. In such a scenario, online project management software can come in handy. 
   There are many tools available that allow you to manage projects and collaborate with team members in real-time. Some popular options include Asana, Trello, and Basecamp.  
   
   
   
2. Use Video Conferencing Software: With remote work on the rise, remote employees are reporting a record high of feelings of isolation. Even while preferring working virtually over other work modes, workers complain about losing out on in-office experiences. It then becomes important to make them feel connected beyond the formal experience of working, to compensate for experiences like catching up with co-workers over their desks, and so on. 
   Video conferencing software like Zoom, Skype, and Google Meet allows you to have face-to-face meetings with team members and clients no matter where they are located. 
3. Use Messaging and Chat Tools: It is not feasible to exchange e-mails for every little communication. Semi-formal or informal conversations between teammates, which help build trust and foster feelings of camaraderie, need to be fun. E-mail does not cut out quite the grammar for that communication. That is where instant messaging tools come to the rescue. They also offer flexibility to be customized for formal updates. 
   Tools like Slack, Microsoft Teams, and HipChat allow you to communicate with team members and clients in real-time, share files and documents, and collaborate on projects.  
   
   
   
4. Use Virtual Whiteboard Tools: Whiteboarding is a great way to keep a remote team connected. From the beginning of the workflow till its end, team members can communicate through it. In the form of illustrating drafts of their end results, planning their projects, understanding and explaining information, remote worker teams could optimize their approaches using this centralized platform. 
   Virtual whiteboard tools like Miro, Realtime Board, and Conceptboard allow you to collaborate with team members and clients in real-time and share ideas visually. 
5. Use Mentor Programs: Assigning an internal mentor to remote employees, especially new hires, could go a long way in fostering the company culture within them and bringing them up to speed, technically. Not only does it help employees pick up skills fast from seasoned industry experts, but it also helps the mentor, within the organization, to update themselves with latest trends and tech. 

Online mentoring program platforms like Together, Chronus, Qooper and 10 Thousand Coffees allow you to steer virtual networking and mentoring initiatives within businesses.  

  

Ultimately, the best way to connect remote employees will depend on your specific needs and the preferences of your team and clients. It might be helpful to try out a few different tools to see which one works best for you.