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A Guide to Building Workplace Culture in Virtual Environments

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A Guide to Building Workplace Culture in Virtual Environments


Organizations face a significant challenge in building a strong workplace culture for remote employees. Here’s a guide for building a workplace culture in virtual environments.

What is a ‘ Virtual Workplace‘? What are their special needs?

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Simply speaking, virtual workspaces can be defined as a digital environment where employees of an organization interact and work together. They are not co-located physically.

However, employees who work remotely must integrate into the organizational culture.

So, it can ensure that these employees share the common values of the organization and are appropriately engaged.

What are the Challenges in Building a Workplace Culture in Virtual Environments?

It is a well-acknowledged fact that an organization’s culture plays a critical role in enhancing its success.

Most organizations have developed a well-defined organizational culture within their physical workspaces.

However, its integration into the newly developed virtual work environment is still a long journey.

Work from Home Employees

There are several critical challenges faced by organizations to extend their culture into the digital work environment:

– A lack of proper communication among employees and between employees and their managers is one of the biggest challenges.

– Traditional culture-building initiatives in virtual environments might be ineffective in digital workspaces.

– In fact, cultural and ideological differences between employees are difficult to address in a virtual environment

– Also, most organizations lack the skills for managing remote employees effectively and building a virtual organizational culture effectively

What are the Best Practices for Building a Strong Culture in Virtual Workplaces?

Organizations must recognize that their virtual teams have needs that are similar to those of their physical teams.

However, the key difference lies in how these things are provided to them.

This fact can help them pave the way for building a solid organizational culture in a virtual environment.

Here are a few crucial guidelines that can be helpful for organizations in this context:

A Guide to Building Workplace Culture in Virtual Environments

1. Provide the Right Infrastructure

Personalization

As with physical teams, virtual employees should have the right infrastructure such as computers, furniture, and networks to work effectively.

Hence, organizations must provide this to their virtual teams.

If the organization cannot provide the infrastructure, it should finance the employees’ arrangements.

2. Establish and Communicate Work Policies and Expectations

Mentoring

Also, organizations need to establish and communicate their work policies and expectations to their virtual teams.

Hence, organizations should ensure that these policies and expectations align with the business’s operating philosophies.

So, the culture would reflect the corporate values of the organization.

It would also ensure that the virtual teams are integral to the organization.

3. Create a Virtual Culture Statement

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Organizations often fail to provide remote working teams with a clear virtual culture statement.

However, such a statement helps virtual teams to relate to their work environment and keep them engaged and motivated.

Therefore, such a statement should include the organization’s core values and explain how remote employees can align their actions and behaviors accordingly.

4. Set Up an Events Calendar

Event-based Employee Recognition

Additionally, an events calendar featuring virtual meetups, recognition events, happy hours, brainstorming sessions, and more is essential for fostering a strong culture.

Such an events calendar provides the virtual teams with a firm sense of time and connectivity with their team members.

Hence, it provides them with the opportunity to meet and interact with team members virtually, thereby eliminating the sense of isolation.

5. Establish Unique Traditions 

Virtual-Party

Just like physical workspaces, the culture of virtual office environments should be defined by some unique traditions.

Such traditions enable virtual team members to interact freely, work flexibly, or set aside time for informal discussions.

6. Plan for Career Growth and Development of Remote Workers

Work from Home

Personal growth and development of remote-working employees are among their significant areas of concern.

Hence, organizations need to plan for the career growth and development of members of their virtual teams.

Therefore, they need to invest in the skill development and professional growth of these remote employees, aligning it with their career objectives.

Our Final Perspective

As the demand for digital workspaces continues to grow, organizations can benefit greatly by considering this guide for building workplace culture in virtual environments to enhance their profitability and business success.

Sagar Chaudhuri

Lead author: Sagar Chaudhuri, the Co-Founder and CEO of HiFives. He is an HR Tech Evangelist with over 25 years of experience in both corporate and entrepreneurial settings. Previously, Sagar has held leadership roles with companies such as Genpact, Infosys, and ICICI Bank. He has an engineering degree from IIT Kharagpur and an MBA from IIM Lucknow. Connect on LinkedIn

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HiFives is a global employee rewards, recognition and engagement SaaS platform that enables organizations to digitize, automate and transform their employee experience. It is used by 100+ large enterprises, small businesses and startups in manufacturing, retail, technology, financial services and media, across 25+ countries.