The remote work model has gone from the exception to the rule. As more employees work remotely, it is essential to keep a positive work environment and value your team members.

However, for distributed teams to work well together, they need tools that will help bridge the physical distance between them. This article will cover some essential tools to help improve your remote workplace experience.

Why Building a Positive Remote Work Culture Is Important

Here are some of the key benefits of building a remote work culture that works for everyone:

• A positive remote work culture helps to strengthen employee morale and boost productivity.
• It helps build a sense of camaraderie with their team members.
• It promotes knowledge-sharing and collaboration.
• It builds loyalty in your company, since employees feel recognized and valued.
• It improves employee retention rates, which reduces recruitment costs.

With this in mind, let's take a look at some of the digital solutions that can set you on the right path:

1. BambooHR

Building a positive office culture starts with improving your onboarding process. New employees should join your company with all the tools and information they need to succeed. You can use your onboarding process to introduce new recruits to the company's ethos. It should help them adjust to the new work environment and start doing their best work immediately.

BambooHR is an all-in-one HR software solution designed to help you manage employee onboarding, performance evaluations, compensations and create a company culture that allows your employees to feel supported.

You can use this software solution to redefine work policies in a way that helps you overcome some challenges of remote work. For example, you can re-evaluate work schedules to empower your people to set clear boundaries and maintain a healthy work-life balance. In addition, you can use BambooHR to reinforce core values that will help your employees thrive, and your business succeed.

2. Bonusly

Build on your onboarding process by establishing an environment where hard work is recognized and rewarded. This becomes more relevant when you have employees working in different parts of the globe, as it helps build a sense of belonging when they know how vital their roles are to the organization.

But, how can you do this when your team members are physically separated? You can use employee recognition tools like Bonusly. It is an employee engagement software solution that can help you create a culture of appreciation.

This platform allows your employees to recognize and reward their colleagues for a job well done. You can use this tool to highlight successful results, celebrate work anniversaries, birthdays, and other milestones. What's more, Bonusly integrates seamlessly with tools like Microsoft Teams, Google Hangouts Chat, Zapier, and more, making it easier to share recognition across different platforms.

These positive interactions will help build a stronger sense of belonging, translating into improved performance in the long run.

3. Officevibe

It is vital that you create opportunities for your people to talk about their challenges from time to time. For example, remote team members might feel stressed due to work overload. But most times, employees need a safe space to voice their concerns. The good news is that you can get a sense of the challenges your remote team faces by creating a space that allows them to speak up.

Officevibe is an employee engagement software solution that will help you build a culture where your employees feel safe to share their frustrations. This tool collects anonymous feedback that helps identify areas where you can do better and take actions to improve them.

You can also use the app to create surveys, review results, respond to feedback, and brainstorm solutions with your employees to grow as a team.

Furthermore, you can leverage Officevibe to track important metrics that you can use to understand your people and have honest, anonymous conversations with them. This way, you can create a line of communication that empowers employees to speak up about their challenges.

4. Slack

Effective communication is vital in any workplace environment, especially when people work together across different time zones. Lack of communication can lead to confusion and misunderstandings, increasing the overall turnaround time of projects. In the worst of cases, it can create a toxic work environment that will result in high staff turnover.

There are several internal communication tools on the market, but Slack is one of the most popular. This tool goes beyond instant messaging to offer your team the ability to create channels for specific purposes, send direct messages to individuals or groups, and share different types of files.

What's more, you can add some games and fun integrations to your Slack channels to spice up your remote workplace. This will help you create stronger connections between your team members and improve the overall health of your company.

Slack also integrates with third-party tools like Google Drive, Trello, Asana, and more to make collaboration easier.

5. Donut

One of the main downsides of remote work is social isolation. This is due in part to the fact that there's a lack of water-cooler chats that are popular in physical workplaces, which can make it difficult for remote team members to develop strong work relationships with their colleagues.

Thankfully, you can create a virtual water cooler in your remote workplace to solve this problem. A platform like Donut will enable your employees to connect meaningfully through random, casual conversations.

Adding Donut to your Slack workspace will allow you to pair remote colleagues for virtual coffees to introduce new hires to the team, pair them with onboarding buddies, and connect employees seeking new skills with mentors.

Donut helps you create opportunities for your employees to develop strong relationships, a significant step towards building a thriving remote work culture.

Developing the Remote Work Culture That Improves Productivity

Developing a positive remote work culture requires effort, time, and the right tools. But in the end, your investment will pay off when you see happier, more productive workers who are proud to be part of your team.