Struggling to Engage Your Work-At-Home employees? You Might Need New Strategies

Employee engagement is critical in a virtual/work-at-home environment. Deliberate employee engagement translates to greater employee performance and accountability. Some leaders in the work-at-home space continue to struggle on how to do this. New leadership strategies and skills need to be deliberately reengineered for this new virtual environment.

The first step is acknowledgment. Employees need to hear that their leaders understand they aren’t meeting the engagement level that employees need in a virtual work-at-home environment. Employees are looking for transparency. It’s OK if leaders don’t have all the answers. Employees don’t expect leadership to be perfect, but employees do expect transparency and honesty from their leaders.

The second step is to realize that “the people know the answer.” Employees know what they need and want—so ask them. Get personal with your employees. Have team meetings where the team delegates someone to bring their ideas to a focus group. Post all the ideas on a discussion board, highlighting the top 10. Employees understand that companies can’t do everything they suggest, but acknowledging the ideas—even the crazy ones, like giving everyone a $20,000 bonus—is important. This demonstrates that leadership is listening. Now you have the attention of the entire employee base.

The third step is to let the employees cultivate a few of those ideas and utilize a “pilot program” to see how the employees as a whole like them. Include a once-a-week survey or utilize a discussion board for comments on the “pilot program.” When employees own the process, they own the outcome. Don’t underestimate your employees. Remember, “the people know the answer”—so ask them.

The fourth step is over-the-top communication. Communicate everything so rumors don’t start. Communicate both the positive and negative. Communicate the “why.” Communicate multiple times a day using multiple channels. This may seem like a huge amount of communication, but people tend to gravitate to different channels. Again, this isn’t about forcing them to one channel; it’s about engaging them in the channel they prefer and explaining what’s going on. Leadership should consistently do this to build the trust of the employees.

Yes, this all takes time. Leaders will spend the time either way: By being strategic on the front end and making deliberate decisions on how to engage employees or on the back end doing damage control—more performance management, more verbal and written warnings, and more schedule changes. They will spend more time talking with employees to get them back on track again, reducing productivity. So taking the time to put together a new virtual communication strategy is critical to employee engagement and success. 

Companies are attempting to apply a brick-and-mortar structure to a new virtual work-at-home framework, but it doesn’t work. It never will. How leaders talk with, coach and engage with employees, and how employees interact in their new work environment all have to be reengineered. Leaders need new strategies and skills that not only work but thrive in a work-at-home environment.