It’s important for every workplace to feel like a community, but even more so if that workplace is online. Traditions make everyone feel like they’re a part of something bigger. When your workplace is a computer screen, you need that sense of community and tradition to keep away those feelings of isolation.
These traditions can be big or small. It’s all about making a tradition of communication and community.
Here are some tips and ideas on creating traditions for a remote workplace!
The End of the Week Traditions
It can be great to have end of the week traditions for your team, such as sharing the things that made your week every Friday or some other way of checking in. It’s a way for everyone to get to know each other better as well as giving people a space and opportunity to share things they’re proud of. Turning that sharing into a tradition makes people feel a lot more welcome to do so as well as giving them a little something to look forward to.
“Adding traditions to your company can make employees feel like they’re members of a community and keep them engaged. Get your team synced on a weekly basis to share professional and personal achievements.” – Like A Voss
These kinds of traditions are neither hard nor costly to implement and have huge benefits for your team. It’s especially effective in building a sense of connectedness and, when you’re not in a physical office building able to chat in passing, this is more important than ever.
It’s also important to create end of the week traditions for yourself to reward yourself for a job well done and create that transition from work to weekend when you’re not leaving an office to do so. This can be something like treating yourself to Starbucks on Friday, or going out for drinks with friends every Friday after work.
The Beginning of the Week Traditions
Similarly to end of the week traditions, traditions at the beginning of the week help to make people feel connected to their work and team members again even if they’re sitting in the same room they were in all weekend. This can take the form of a virtual team meeting, which is important for every remote workplace to host.
“Start of the week tradition: Something that jump starts people’s attitudes or reminds them of the biggest priority of the week.” – Mike Kerr
In a remote workplace, traditions are built around communication. Finding a weekly tradition that encourages open communication at the beginning of the week will help make sure that everyone is on the same page. It’ll also help to motivate people and give them a sense of routine to get them back into the swing of things that they don’t necessarily get when working from home.
The Daily Traditions
Daily traditions take the place of physically going to work and saying your good mornings to everyone on the team. Instead, make a tradition out of digital hellos so everyone knows who’s there. If you can’t physically see the person, a tradition will help make that needed virtual hello a habit.
“Ongoing communication will light the path forward, ease tension, eliminate gossip and help the team focus on driving results for the business.” – Forbes
The word ‘traditions’ inherently sounds like it needs to be something big for something big. That isn’t true. A tradition can be something as small as a daily hello to the work group chat as long as everyone does it.
Encourage your team to make daily personal traditions as well. When working remotely, people need to find little ways to take care of themselves when working at home. This could be taking a daily walk at lunch or eating a cookie when the work day is over.
Traditions don’t have to be huge things dedicated for holidays—though those are great, too. Remote workplaces need smaller traditions, ones that encourage communication. When everything is virtual, traditions can be the thing that makes a bunch of usernames and instant messages into a community.
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