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Everyone knows that our world of work has forever changed. The massive pivot to remote working a year ago has shown business owners that employees are as productive when they are working from home as when they were in an office. In fact, according to a Great Place to Work study, remote work productivity was stable or increased when working remotely from home, according to a 2-year study of 800,000 employees.

So it’s no surprise then, that according to a study by Enterprise Technology Research, the percentage of workers who are permanently working from home is expected to double this year. Clearly, remote work is here to stay, which means that platforms and tools that facilitate communication, collaboration, and community are more important than ever.

Now, with great platforms come great capabilities - but only if you know how best to leverage them towards supporting your remote workforce. So first, it’s important to identify the ways in which your employees need to be supported.

Research shows that working from home has its own set of challenges for workers. For instance, being always accessible by technology has led to the blurring of work and home life, which contributes to burnout. Or a lack of face-to-face interaction with colleagues can contribute to a feeling of isolation, which can negatively affect collaboration and motivation.

What’s needed to deal with these challenges are clear: empathy, support, communication, rapport . And to this end, virtual platforms can help. Here’s how:‍

Hold interactive sessions with employees‍

When you don’t have any in-person office parties, coffee breaks, watercooler hangouts to bring employees together, virtual event platforms can come to the rescue - in a way that tools like Slack cannot.

In a Medium post, software programmer Alicia Liu wrote last year about how the ease of using Slack can actually result in lower quality communication. She comments, “[it’s] far too easy for everyone to default to using Slack for communicating, even for all the myriad things that don’t make sense to use Slack to communicate…” So by defaulting to dropping a message onto Slack channels, and responding via emojis, all the work you would otherwise put into building cohesion and trust with your colleagues when you were in an office, disappears. 

That’s  why virtual platforms like Zuddl are so important. With platforms like these,  you can host virtual events, as well as create a virtual office space.  Within this virtual workspace, you can set up areas for different interactive  employee engagement activities, and build interpersonal relationships.

The best thing about Rooms is how versatile they are. You can use them to hold different sorts of fun, interactive activities with employees. For example:

• Virtual watercoolers
• Brainstorming sessions
• Project discussions
• Daily standups
• Movie nights
• Trivia nights
• Coffee-break hangouts
• Or even for karaoke session!

But remember, a helpful virtual event platform is only one part. It’ll take dedication from leaders in the organization to bring everyone together to overcome distance, both physical and figurative.‍

Recognize and appreciate a job well done‍

It feels great when your manager or colleagues appreciate your effort and hard work in reaching a target or goal, right?

Not only do you feel encouraged and motivated, but also more connected to your team. In fact, a lack of recognition at work can lead to increased stress and anxiety, and can lead employees to quit. 

Case in point: a whopping 44% of employees switched jobs because they didn’t receive any recognition or reward, according to this Achievers study. And in another study, it was found that 40% of employees said they would put more energy into their work if they were appreciated more often.

That’s where a virtual engagement platform comes in. Virtual appreciation makes your remote workers feel seen, and valued - and you can do this in a variety of ways on a platform:

• Host a virtual party to celebrate birthdays or work anniversaries
• Plan an employee appreciation day, and use the virtual event platform to make the celebration special, by for instance setting up an Expo Booth celebrating Employees of the Month, or creating small videos thanking an employee for their effort.
  

A little appreciation can go a long way!

Make your employee onboarding amazing

Employee engagement platforms can make the onboarding process an easy and fun one. Instead of walking an employee around the office and introducing them to countless people as you would pre-pandemic, you can now host a mass onboarding event. This may sound impersonal, but it’s actually not. 

With a virtual event platform, you can 

• Easily set up a meeting Room for new joinees and hold an intro and Q&A session for them.
• Direct them to meetings with their teams held in adjacent Rooms.
• Set up a branded expo booth that presents the company’s story, values, norms, and team achievements 
• Set up another expo booth that acts as a repository for information or documents that are important to new and current employees alike, and can be downloaded, such as a holiday list, procedure documents, reimbursement format sheets etc.
• Or set up a photo gallery booth to give employees a trip down memory lane with videos of photos of events, team building activities, conferences, CSR activities, etc. conducted throughout the year
  

Don’t squander the opportunity to make a great impression that will stay with new employees for the duration of their careers.

Use gamification to make even mundane meetings fun 

Remember pre-pandemic meetings? We’re guessing that half of your colleagues felt that the meetings held were a waste of time, while the other half felt that they were anxiety-inducing. Remote working has helped a little on this front. Now, asynchronous and synchronous communication has cut down the need for many, many meetings, and people who do attend meetings can do so with their mics and videos off, speaking only when they need to. 

While that’s all well and good, it does raise the question of how effective virtual meetings held among remote workforces are. With everyone now hiding behind their screens, it makes it difficult to know whether or not they’re actually “attending” the meeting.

With virtual engagement platforms like Zuddl, you can use Gamification to make meetings actually fun to participate in. Gamification lets you add game mechanics to the virtual meeting, allowing you to award points to colleagues for completing tasks, such as asking questions, answering a team poll, doing quick research tasks, ie. actively participating in the meeting. You can award the top three on the virtual leader board with gift coupons or something of the sort. After all, everyone is happy to have their efforts recognized.

Make it easy for employees to get to know each other

Using AI-powered matchmaking, companies can organize inter-company smart networking events. This is a fun and easy way for employees to meet colleagues they normally would have not had the opportunity to meet in person. And it helps every one to get to know each other just a little bit better beyond just their work roles. This can help build trust amongst teams, and across the organization. Win-win.

And what’s work without a little play

Everyone needs to take a break in between tasks, so give your remote workforce ways to relax and re-energize.

For instance, you can set up a gaming zone on your virtual meeting platform. Employees can let off some steam by playing games before refocusing on tasks.

Or keep energy high by using Stages to host a variety of entertainment, whether that’s performances by musicians, speeches by leaders in the field, quiz nights, movie nights, and more.

In conclusion…

As  the workplace itself continues to be redefined, companies need to be a  support system for their remote workforce as they navigate uncertainty. To  this end, employers and managers can use virtual platforms like Zuddl to keep  remote employees in sync and motivated. Talk to one of our experts  today on how you can use our platform to improve employee well-being, improve attendee engagement and  perform better as team members and collaborators.

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Zuddl is a unified platform for events and webinars that helps event marketers plan and execute events that drive growth. The platform has clients across the globe, such as the United Nations, Kellogg’s, Microsoft, HSBC, VMware, Google, StackCommerce and Cipla amongst others. In January 2022, Zuddl announced that it closed $13.35 mn in Series A funding.