Remote appreciation is done right. How can you create a culture that rewards virtual or remote employees in your company?

Recognizing and appreciating remote workers is essential to maintain a positive work culture.

The shift from remote to in-person work has created new challenges for organizations in fostering employee appreciation. But taking an active approach to show your appreciation can significantly impact morale and productivity.

Recognizing and celebrating team and individual successes will motivate remote workers to perform at their best.

You can define virtual team goals using workflow background information and communication tools. Positive reinforcement and a distraction-free atmosphere will ensure that they are met.

Here are our top tips for cultivating appreciation in your virtual team while ensuring each member is recognized for their contributions.

Why Remote Appreciation Is Important

Remote appreciation is more important than ever in today’s virtual workplace. Thanking and recognizing team members who work from home has many benefits both for the employee and the company. It improves employee morale and fosters a positive culture within the company.

A recent study published in Forbes revealed that remote workers believed their mental health would be significantly improved by increased recognition and appreciation.

Making remote team members appreciate and feel valued will encourage them to be more engaged and productive. Recognizing these employees’ dedication and hard work can also increase loyalty and commitment to company goals. To build a healthy and happy remote team, it is essential to cultivate a culture of appreciation in the workplace.

How to Show Appreciation

You can show appreciation in many ways, including mentioning their efforts during meetings or personal messages.

Virtual Team Building Events

To keep your team members engaged, you could organize virtual events. You can make your team feel appreciated by sending thank-you gifts such as small tokens of gratitude or personalized notes. Online Examples

• Virtual sports, board games, and other games
• Crosswords and mind teasers are puzzles.
• Guess the emojis board
• Virtual pub crawl
• Virtual dance party

To recognize outstanding performance, you can also create an employee recognition award. Some companies go so far as to pay for trips for their top employees. Find out what works for your company.

No matter what method you use, be sure to consistently acknowledge and appreciate the hard work of your remote team members.

Best Practices in Remote Appreciation

Finding ways to express appreciation to coworkers who are not in the same office is crucial.

It’s essential to be thoughtful and specific when expressing your gratitude. It doesn’t matter if it is a personalized note or a small token; letting someone know you appreciate their efforts can go a long way to building productive and strong relationships.

Appreciation Initiatives

Team Building suggests incorporating virtual staff appreciation programs, ideas for remote employee appreciation programs, care packages, virtual parties, online award shows, social media shoutouts, digital gift cards, virtual birthday parties, remote lunches, and one-on-ones with your boss.

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It is essential to find ways to show colleagues your appreciation in the age of remote working. Many strategies and tools are available to foster a culture of gratitude in your virtual workspace.

Slack

Slack is one such tool that offers integrations to help you recognize and reward your coworkers’ hard work.

Integrating your efforts to show appreciation with your HR software can streamline your entire process. This will make it easier for your team members to be recognized and rewarded for their contributions.

Investing in these tools ensures that your virtual workplace is a supportive and positive environment where all employees feel valued and appreciated.

Managers’ most significant challenge is motivating and encouraging their team when they are not physically together.

There are several strategies that managers can use to create a sense of connectedness and support within their teams.

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To let your team know that their efforts are valued and to help them improve, it is important to give regular feedback to the team, both constructive and positive.

Scheduled Meetings

Also, regular 1-on-1 sessions can build rapport between employees and managers.

Plus, virtual social events and team meetings improve the company culture and friendliness. Meetings are also a great way to diffuse conflict and clarify misinformation.

These tips can help managers engage, support, and motivate their remote team members to contribute to success.

The conclusion of the article is:

You can easily get lost in a virtual workspace. We sometimes need to find out the names of our coworkers. This disconnect can cause stress and discouragement. To combat this, arrange virtual meetings or parties where employees can interact with each other.

To show your employees that you value them, it is crucial to create a program of employee recognition. You can do anything, from sending thank you notes to offering trips at a discounted rate. Good luck!

Finally got that business idea you have always been searching for, but afraid it will clash with your workload as a student? Running your dream business while at university, but feeling the pinch? There are many ways to balance your business with university, without compromising either or losing the motivation to study.

Put the hours in during the university holidays

There are many aspects of a business that can be automated and prepared in advance, leaving a lighter workload to be completed during the semester.

Schedule Social Media Posts and Newsletters

Social media and email newsletters are essential for all businesses to grow. They can be used as a free way to continually be relevant in a consumer’s mind, to showcase products and for social proof of value in the form of comments, likes and reviews. These assets can help build a brand, and find and maintain a loyal customer base.

Fortunately, social media posts and stories can be automated using the platform Later, developed for social media management. This service allows a company or individual to plan their posts months in advance, then automatically publishes it on the selected day and time. Images, captions and hashtags can all be saved. The platforms available for automation include Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest and many more.

A savvy student and business owner can pre plan an entire semester of social media content during their university holidays, and only reply to comments while studying.

There are many providers that enable email newsletters to be drafted in advance, and for a small cost, can be sent out remotely at a specified time and date. These include MailerLite and MailChimp. These companies also have great templates for email creation. The analytics available on email open rates, link click rates and subscriber engagement can all be processed during the university break.

Set Advertising Campaigns in advance

Paid adverts are another crucial marketing aspect for a business of any size. It reaches new audiences across a vast range of platforms, including those that cannot be targeted with social media activity alone. 

A few examples include:

• Amazon Ads – these typically show up in search results amd category pages
• Google Ads 
• Social media platforms – Facebook, Instagram or Pinterest

The marketing content for these kinds of ad campaigns can be set ahead of time, and switched on or off when they are needed. Analytics can be reviewed when time is found between university requirements or during holidays.

Managing stock for sale

You might ask, what producing or sourcing products for sale? 

If yours is a maker business, perhaps you sell polymer clay earrings or hand knit merino wool jumpers. Create the majority of your art during the semester holidays. This doesn’t mean you cannot continue to produce your stock or take up custom orders while you are also studying, but it can definitely help to take the pressure off. 

If you source products from china to sell through your local, online business, try to get ahead during the times that university pressure ease off, so you can cruise through the exam period without worrying about stock options.

Run a business that is relevant to your degree  

There are many ways you can save on time and energy, and effectively kill two birds with one stone, by aligning aspects of your business and studies. 

 

Align business campaigns with university assignments:

• Art students can design university assessments to be pieces that can later be sold
• Graphic Design and Web Design students could incorporate client orders into the university projects they will be marked on
• Photography students could include their professional work in their university portfolio

Use your university community

Take full advantage of the community on campus. It is a rich and niche resource to be tapped. 

Hire first year students 

If your business is expanding, but you still don’t have the returns to hire fully qualified staff, take on first-year students in a mentorship role. This is an arrangement that could benefit everyone, the student could get valuable work experience in their field and be paid at a lower, junior rate. This could work especially well if your business aligns with your degree.

Approach a lecturer as an unofficial business mentor

Mentorships can be incredibly beneficial for anyone starting or growing a business, but they also are extremely costly. University lecturers are veterans of their industry and have a wealth of knowledge that they are passionate about sharing. Bring your business to your teachers and you will get tailored advice for free.

Connect with other students as a client base

Put flyers about your business on community boards. Talk to other students and get them excited about your products, and you might recruit some enthusiastic customers and brand ambassadors.

A caution about burnout 

Put your physical and mental health first. Individually, growing a business and undertaking a university degree can be very taxing, put together it is a balancing act. Remember, you have paid a lot of money for the opportunity to study at university, and you want to get the most out of your education. If the combined workloads start to affect your mental health, it is ok to take a step back. Perhaps studying part time may suit you better, or running less adverts and selling less products, but also reducing the number of products you need to create, manage and package.