How do you foster employee voice in a remote work culture?

1 Establish trust and psychological safety

Trust and psychological safety are essential for creating an environment where employees feel comfortable speaking up. To build trust and psychological safety in a remote team, you need to demonstrate respect, empathy, and transparency. This can be done by communicating frequently and consistently across all channels, sharing goals, expectations, and feedback, acknowledging mistakes and vulnerabilities, showing appreciation for team efforts, encouraging team members to share their perspectives and experiences, listening actively and attentively, supporting learning and development opportunities, and providing chances to grow and challenge themselves.

2 Create inclusive and diverse spaces

Inclusion and diversity are essential for employee voice, as they foster a sense of belonging and value for different identities, backgrounds, and viewpoints. To create inclusive and diverse spaces in your remote team, you need to recognize and celebrate the diversity present, provide equal access to participation, use inclusive language and behaviors, leverage the diverse perspectives and skills of your team members, and address any conflicts that may arise. This can be achieved by acknowledging potential biases or stereotypes that may affect interactions or decisions, adapting to cultural norms and preferences, avoiding jargon or slang, encouraging collaboration and learning from each other, and promoting a culture of respect and tolerance.

5 Cultivate a learning and innovation culture

Learning and innovation are essential outcomes of employee voice, as they promote your team’s growth, creativity, and adaptability. To cultivate a learning and innovation culture in your remote team, you should encourage them to explore new ideas and experiment with different possibilities. Make sure to provide your team with the time, space, and resources to learn new skills and apply them to their work. Help your team develop a growth mindset and embrace challenges, failures, and feedback as opportunities for learning and improvement. Additionally, share their learnings and innovations with the rest of the organization and get feedback from other teams. Lastly, recognize and reward your team's learnings and innovations to showcase their impact and value.