How to foster cohesion between remote employees

Since the pandemic, remote work has climbed up the ladder from a rare arrangement to a commonplace throughout a majority of organisations, which can complicate fostering team cohesion.

Building cohesion in a working environment that is more locationally separated than ever is a tall task, even for the best leaders. HR Leader recently spoke to Nirit Peled-Muntz, chief people officer at HiBob, about the challenges that can arise in the contemporary working environment and what leaders can do to combat them.

Peled-Muntz first expressed that she believes it’s crucial for colleagues who work remotely to meet each other face-to-face at least once – especially if it’s a manager-employee relationship.

“It’s a lot of the dynamic changes, even the fact that you can suddenly see the nature of the environment that they work in, or what their office looks like. It really [makes] an impact, and I think it’s so important that managers also travel between [offices] and make sure that things are going in parallel on the site. [Doing so] allows this flow of information, processes, in the other sites as well,” Peled-Muntz said.

“And I think it has a great impact also on the culture when people meet and have this live conversation.”

Peled-Muntz believes that the responsibility falls upon the manager to ensure that those in-person connections are made. However, when the colleagues meet each other – there is an onus on the employees to make a fair attempt at fostering a relationship.

“If we create those in-person meetings, the manager should create the agenda, and they should think: what are the areas that they want to cover with the team, what is better to handle when they are in person, [and] what they can do over Zoom,” Peled-Muntz said.

“So I think this responsibility still sits with the managers, but the manager can also delegate to their employees and involve them more and understand what is needed. There is also an aspect of accountability and responsibility for the employees to build that relationship.

“It’s the managers’ responsibility to go to the more introverted employees and give them the confidence to foster those relationships and encourage them to also take a step and meet more people.”

Overall, if remote work is the mainstay working arrangement for one’s organisation, then it’s crucial that leaders make the effort to create those connections between employees. If they fail to do so, then productivity and business outcomes may take a dive.