6 ways great remote companies are tackling employee loneliness

Summary 
A look at some interesting ways great remote companies are managing to tackle the struggles employees face when working remotely.

It is clear now that there are many positives for a company allowing employees to work remotely. No need for the big expensive office and bills that come along with it, and your team is likely happier and more productive (finder.com/uk/working-from-home-statistics).

However, there are naturally some struggles faced by employees who work remotely. Mainly around how to collaborate with colleagues when you are not in the same space, loneliness and not being able to unplug. Unplugging is effectively turning off from work, and being able to leave it until the following morning. 

Collaboration and communication can be better managed by technologies and ways of working, something Talkr has great experience in and can advise on, but for this we are going to focus on loneliness and the inability to unplug. These struggles are not new and the great remote companies have found some brilliant, and lets say interesting, ways to tackle these. 

 Here are some of our favourites.

Maintain human interaction:

InVision offers free and subsidised gym memberships to employees to keep them and their minds healthy. Nothing better to unplug from work than to hit the gym and lift the big weights

Buffer gives its employees an extra bit of money per month to use at coffee shops, where you are out of the house and in an environment with real people!

Atlassian has a budget for employee co-working spaces, effectively allowing their team to get out of the house and work from any office they choose

Putting trust in your team:

Doist, the productivity software company, has decided to remove core working hours and input a company-wide communication model that is asynchronous. This means it’s employees can work their 40 hours per week when it suits them best

Make sure it’s not all work:

 Learnably, the e-learning platform for employee development and Talkr client, has created various Slack channels including #fun-food-spiration, #fun-pets and #fun-spotify aimed at striking non-work related conversation. This allows their employees, whatever their hobby or interest, to have some fun and socialise digitally. 

 InVision again have created a Slack channel #InvBnB which is aimed at employees organising house swaps. This sparks conversation and allows their employees to see some pretty cool spots around the World!

As you can see from these examples there is no “one size fits all” way to tackle these struggles. That said, there are definitely some common themes with these examples listed that you as a company can take note of.

Specifically to encourage and facilitate human interaction, put trust in your remote workforce and promote non-work related communication with your team. This will therefore help build and maintain a healthy remote working culture, and make your remote employees feel part of your company from wherever they are based.