8 tools for building a positive remote culture

The COVID-19 pandemic has made remote work both more necessary and more popular. In fact, you may find yourself managing a fully remote team for the first time.

There are plenty of challenges that come along with a distributed team — like building a positive remote culture. If you’re used to a face-to-face work environment and you’ve carefully honed your company culture, you’ll quickly discover a remote environment requires a slightly different approach.

The following tools will not only help you keep your team members well connected, but they’ll foster a positive remote culture.

1. Slack

Slack supports collaboration among remote workers and serves as a central platform for communication, workflow tracking, and more. You can create different Slack channels for topics, projects, and teams to keep everything organized and everyone on task. In addition, Slack features a searchable history, so you can find older conversations that bring context to any current project or assignment you discussed in the past.

This platform also offers multiple communication tools. Video and voice calls help keep virtual teams connected, and messaging keeps everyone up to date. Slack integrates with services like Google Drive, Office 365, and Jotform.

2. Zoom

Face-to-face engagement is an important element of building and maintaining a positive remote work culture. Zoom can facilitate those interactions.

Zoom’s videoconferencing supports video webinars and online team meetings and chats. This platform offers straightforward pricing and is very easy to use, so even new employees can quickly learn to operate it.

Zoom is a great fit for individual or team check-ins, and it’s an ideal option for virtual happy hour gatherings. These video meetups can even help build camaraderie among employees at a remote company.

3. Jotform

Jotform can help you increase collaboration and communication among your team members. Jotform’s table templates include everything from project management to marketing templates, so teams can coordinate tasks and updates via a centralized team workspace.

Jotform also offers an array of form templates, including feedback and evaluation forms. You can use these forms internally to evaluate the success of projects, the effectiveness of training programs, and more. Plus, you can customize any of the templates or create a form or table to meet the unique needs of your business.

Jotform also integrates with other remote team tools — like Zoom — further streamlining your work.

4. Nectar

Nectar gives everyone — from managers to team members — the ability to recognize and reward others on the team, which encourages relationship and team building between individuals and among the larger team. The platform is fun to use and allows employees to celebrate a job well done with digital gift cards and company swag.

5. Fond

Fond can help foster coworker connections and a strong culture even when teams are located in different time zones. This team-building tool gives you a platform to publicly acknowledge employees’ achievements. It helps boost morale and keep team members engaged.

With Fond, you can design custom service award catalogs for employees, allowing them to choose just what they want for anniversaries and recognitions.

6. The Go Game

Every team needs some downtime, and some of the most important team bonding occurs during events after the workday ends. The Go Game helps facilitate these virtual events. The platform offers virtual happy hours, game shows, and conferences that provide remote team-building benefits. Your employees can interact and have fun — and build those important connections that create a happy and effective team.

7. Blink

When employees are working remotely, it’s easy for them to miss out on important updates. That’s what Blink works to prevent. This app facilitates communication among remote teams with features like a news feed, discussion boards, and an employee directory.

With Blink’s Micro-apps, your business can create everything from automated timesheets to absence management tools. Blink serves as a centralized communication platform for remote workplaces.

8. Let’s Roam

Let’s Roam takes the burden of remote event planning off of your shoulders. The platform’s event coordinators will create and host an event for your team, regardless of size.

These web-based events feature team games designed to draw your employees together, no matter how far apart they actually are. Games like trivia, Emoji Decoder, and Let’s Draw are entertaining and can serve as icebreakers or ways to reconnect your virtual team.

Developing the remote culture

Just like developing an in-office work culture, developing a remote culture takes time. The above tools can help build employee relationships and communication, and they provide valuable workflow management benefits. Implementing these tools is a first step in building a positive culture, but it’s important for business owners and team leaders to stay involved and active in the culture development process.