Building and Maintaining Trust and Camaraderie while working remotely

Recently I have recommenced my journey of learning and growth. After utilising Design Thinking over the years I have now started my accreditation process with IDEO and have also commenced a Masters in Leadership with Deakin University. The design challenge that I am working on as part of my IDEO course is - How might we build and maintain trust and camaraderie while working remotely. I would like to share the insights that I have gathered through observation, interviews, and immersive experiences to gain empathy. This is not a finalised solution, and I am actually of the belief that on this topic there will never be and should never be a final solution as this should always be something that leaders are striving to improve upon.

This challenge is quite personal for me, in March 2020 I started working full time from home and my 3 kids were learning from home as well. In Melbourne we had the toughest lockdown conditions in the world. In September 2020 my 17 year old son passed away very suddenly from SUDEP (Sudden Unexplained death due to Epilepsy). I immediately looked back on the previous 6 months and calculated that my wife and I got an extra 540 hours with our son that we would not have otherwise had. That time is absolutely gold and as precious as any other memory. I had gained 3 hours of my day back that I would normally have been commuting (90 minutes door to door each way). Do I wish to return to the office full-time, in simple terms the answer is no, a hybrid approach is right for me as I now know what that time with my wife and other two children is gold.

In a global survey conducted by Ipsos with over 200,000 respondents stated that 75% of people did not want to return to the office full time. This means that some will want to continue working from home full time, some will want to return to the office part time and a minority of people want to be back full time. People want flexibility and are prepared to leave their job if they don't receive it.

Not every person in this world is able to work from home, some jobs just require staff to be on site all of the time. Manufacturing can't be done from home, retail, hospitality the list goes on. However there is one undeniable truth that exists in the world at the moment, the jobs that can be done from home have been predominantly done so and done successfully since approximately March 2020 when the global Pandemic started to take a hold.

In this challenge I am not looking at the future of work per se, however one element that is a major question is how to build and maintain trust and camaraderie while working remotely. The three themes that I came up with are to do with the daily grind, the ongoing nature of a corporate environment and then the big one leadership that binds these two together. The 3 insights that I have am going to examine are: 1: People engage in online activities differently to when they were in the office. 2: Onboarding new staff and maintaining or continuing to build are intrinsically linked. 3: Managers are not necessarily up to the task, now is the time for true leaders to rise to the occasion.

1: People engage in online activities differently to when they were in the office?

In my observation activity I noticed that people do act differently when they are in online meetings, there are behaviours that are overt and others that are covert, and a number of these I can't imagine would have been utilised in a physical setting. Some of these behaviours include but are certainly not limited to:

* Not having a camera on:

* Turning the camera off for short periods of time.

* Leaving a meeting early without explanation.

* Viewing other content whilst in a meeting

* Clearly not paying attention to the person speaking

These behaviours do have a negative connotation however not all necessarily are, for instance is it now possible to be in a meeting and also be productive on another piece of work? Are people more respectful of others time? I don't propose to answer those questions or in fact assume the behaviour is positive or negative in this piece but it is interesting to ponder.

I noticed that people were more pronounced in their body language and in acknowledging the group, for instance people would strongly nod or shake their head, they would raise examples up in front of the camera, and they would also utilise technology to show their emotions with the use of emoticons, clapping or raising their hand etc.

Online activities must be more engaging than meetings were in the office. In a physical setting body language and eye contact were enough to keep people engaged, the conversations that happened just before or just after meetings were some aspects that bound a team together and grew relationships. Technology is coming along for the ride and is improving with each uptake of MS Teams, Zoom, Webex etc. and if you are facilitating a meeting then you need to take full advantage of these.

Whiteboard activities where team members can share their ideas, breakout rooms where smaller groups can have private conversations while in the broader meeting, and then content that is engaging and inspires people to deliver in these forums. Take advantage of what we have now and push technology providers to go further to increase team performance, team relationships and in the end contribute to building trust and camaraderie.

2: Onboarding new staff and maintaining or continuing to build trust and camaraderie are intrinsically linked.

Thinking back to pre-pandemic days, a new starter would have their first day, go through all of the HR requirements and then there would either be a morning tea or maybe even a lunch where team members would gather and get to know the new person on the team. Onboarding was probably an afterthought in the early days of the pandemic as companies scrambled to get a remote workforce happening at all. When interviewing and just having conversations with people who had been working remotely I realised that for some, the idea of working remotely had never been entertained prior to the pandemic and a feeling that it would only be temporary was the first thought.?

With the cost of replacing staff being equivalent to 50% of their wage, and the ability for new staff members to feel isolated and then leave if not onboarded correctly it is imperative that onboarding once again become an event. Old school thinking would involve bringing staff into a physical location for the day, however teams are now not just remote but they are now increasingly not even geographically located in the same town or city so this is not always possible. What about getting a small care package sent to each team member and conducting a virtual morning tea or lunch. What about getting together in breakout rooms where each person needs to share something personal about themselves. What about a welcome card signed by each member where they give a piece of advice on how to thrive in their role. The ideas are endless, but the onboarding process must adapt, it must bring people together and it absolutely must contribute to building trust and camaraderie.

3: Managers are not necessarily up to the task, now is the time for true leaders to rise to the occasion.

Most organisations that I have been involved in have been good or even great at training managers, people who could keep track of workloads and projects and deliver the HR type of result. Where companies have traditionally not performed well is bringing leaders to the front, people who might not even be interested in management per se, but could motivate a team, bring them together, get the most out of individuals and most importantly push them to higher office then the leader themselves hold. True leaders are what keeps an organisation together and they are not afraid of trying new things. True leaders are needed now more than ever.

In my immersive experience I learnt that trust and camaraderie in a virtual world aren't the sole domain of the organisation that people belong to. We have the ability to engage more than ever with people who we are geographically located with, whether that be in a locality or in an environment where people are running into similar people from other organisations. Staff are now more connected with their families and even their pets than they ever were in a remote environment. Where a manager is concerned about getting the job done, a leader will encourage people to embrace everyone and everything at their disposal to be at their best.

When I returned to work after a significant absence after my son passed away, my leader went into my diary and built in 3 extra breaks in the day that were labelled "Family Time - do not book over" This meant that I had more time in the day to engage with my family and when I was back at work my productivity increased. I also understood that this was not given to everyone so I didn't take advantage, when the time was right I started decreasing these to ensure I had sufficient time in my day dedicated to work.

In a world where shared resources, availability of content is abundant but the ability to connect on a human level with others is reduced it is only leaders who can ensure that they are taking every step possible to build and maintain trust and camaraderie within their team. Therefore it is abundantly clear that organisations have the ultimate responsibility to ensure they are building leaders, not just promoting managers.

Photo by?Simon Abrams?on?Unsplash