How to Build a Thriving Company Culture in a Fully Remote World

A typical corporate culture includes an office, shared lunch times, team-building activities, and social interactions within a workplace. However, corporate culture is not formed by an office. It is a set of experiences, attitudes, values, and relationships of people who work within a corporation.

Such things become essential when it comes to a remote company. In this case, employees might see each other very rarely or never at all. They might be located in different cities, countries, and even different time zones but still working in the same company. This means that employees might feel isolated and alienated not only from their colleagues but also from the company itself.

As a result, creating a healthy corporate culture in a remote company involves not just organizing virtual meetings once in a while. In this case, employees must feel connected, trusted, valued, included, and aligned with the purpose of the company.

The following steps will help to develop a thriving corporate culture in a fully remote company.

1. Define a Clear Remote Company Culture

First, it is essential to clarify what the company represents. Employees have to know its values and, more importantly, what these values mean in practice regarding remote work.

For example, if collaboration is one of the values, employees have to feel the atmosphere of collaboration through accessible information exchange, team support, and the opportunity to share thoughts. Autonomy implies that leaders have to show trust in employees and let them manage their tasks independently.

Corporate values should not exist only on the company's website or in the employee manual. They should define team collaboration, decision-making processes, recognition, and relationships between people.

Moreover, the behavior of leaders is crucial in this case. Employees can learn what the corporate culture is by looking at what leaders do and not at what they say.

2. Create Genuine Connection and Belonging

One of the difficulties of having a completely remote company is fostering true connection. Workers will be able to perform their duties but will remain disconnected from both other employees and the company itself.

Organizations will need to create opportunities for workers to make connections through informal communication, virtual coffee breaks, celebration events, groups according to common interests, and social activities.

However, connection should not be equated with a high number of mandatory virtual meetings, which can result in meeting fatigue instead.

Connection implies the creation of natural opportunities for employees to get to know each other. Cross-team communications are especially beneficial in this case since they will allow employees to create connections outside their immediate work teams.

If employees can know their co-workers as people instead of just seeing them as names on the screen, then they are more likely to develop a sense of belonging.

3. Build a Culture of Trust and Psychological Safety

One of the key components of a flourishing remote company culture is trust. Without the opportunity to see everything employees do in an office setting, the leader will need to trust them.

The culture of constant monitoring will make people believe that they are judged according to their activity in virtual space. The culture of trust is different from that.

Employees will be free to manage their work and at the same time understand what is expected of them. Such an approach shows trust in them and encourages them to take more responsibility for their job.

Psychological safety is equally important. People should be free to ask questions, share their concerns, express their opinions, and admit mistakes without fearing unnecessary embarrassment or punishment.

The leader plays a key role in fostering such an environment since careful listening, respectful responses, and a learning attitude towards mistakes are signs of a good leader.

In a psychologically safe environment, people tend to share their ideas and contribute to the company culture.

4. Make Recognition Part of the Remote Culture

In an office setting, achievements can sometimes become evident through chance conversations or seeing a group celebrating an achievement. In a fully remote company, achievements can often become overlooked.

This is why recognition plays such an important role in remote company culture.

The leaders should be consistent with recognizing valuable contributions, whether they relate to accomplishing a significant project, helping a colleague, solving a complicated issue, or embodying any of the company's values.

It will be most beneficial to be clear and specific with recognition. Instead of simply telling an employee that he/she/they has done a great job, one could say which actions deserved this recognition.

Peer-to-peer recognition can be a powerful tool for strengthening the remote culture. It encourages positive connections between employees and recognizes desired behavior.

Financial compensation is not necessarily required for proper recognition. An email, publicly expressed gratitude, or praise in front of other people can help the employee feel noticed.

5. Build an Inclusive Culture Across Locations

In a fully remote company, there can be employees from different cities, countries, and even time zones. This variety is a big advantage, but only if employees perceive the organization as inclusive.

Remote culture should not give preference to employees who work close to the leadership or in the same time zone.

For instance, if the majority of cultural activities happen at inconvenient times for some employees, they will feel excluded.

Leaders need to take the time difference into account when planning the events for the whole company and find alternative options when necessary.

It is essential to ensure equal distribution of information and opportunities among all employees. There should not be any necessity to physically be closer to the leadership to be noticed and involved in important discussions.

The real remote-first culture should make location irrelevant to the sense of inclusion. Everyone should feel equally important in the organization.

6. Create a Shared Sense of Purpose

Geographical distance makes the shared sense of organizational identity more difficult to cultivate. Workers may devote much of their time to completing individual assignments without realizing how those assignments help to advance the overall goals of the business.

This problem can be solved by making sure that individual efforts always relate to some higher purpose.

Workers need to know not only what they do but also why they do it and whose interests are advanced by doing their job well. Information about customers' results, company performance, team success, and other achievements may serve to emphasize the connection between individual contributions and the bigger picture.

Having a shared purpose provides remote workers with something that cannot be replaced by geographical proximity: a shared cause.

Knowing about the importance of their work and their involvement in a larger mission makes geographical distance irrelevant.

7. Make Remote Culture Visible in Everyday Employee Experiences

Organizational culture that works well cannot rely solely on one annual trip or sporadic virtual celebrations. It must show up in everyday employee experiences.

Organizational culture is embodied in how new workers are welcomed, how people communicate within teams, how leaders act, how results are celebrated, and how people treat each other in hard situations.

It means that organizations must consider whether their daily operations are in line with their professed values.

When a company says that it values flexibility but expects its employees to be permanently available, there is a cultural conflict. When it calls for cooperation and collaboration but restricts critical information to only a few people, it again shows a disconnect.

The best remote cultures are coherent. People see and hear the same values through leaders' actions, team behavior, recognition, and relationships.

In this way, the company's culture transforms from a purely theoretical notion into something tangible.

Conclusion

Creating a culture that thrives in an all-remote environment takes intentionality. Without the common physical workspace, companies will be unable to depend on proximity to foster connection, sense of belonging, and identity.

What they need to do, on the contrary, is build their company culture consciously by relying on values, connection, trust, psychological safety, recognition, inclusion, and purpose.

The best remote cultures are not formed with the help of additional video calls and corporate social events. They are formed with the help of the little moments when employees understand that they are trusted, valued, included, and connected to something bigger than themselves.

Physical distance does not necessarily mean cultural distance. If the right values are continuously emphasized and if connection opportunities are created and used effectively, an all-remote company can have its culture just as rich, engaging, and coherent as a traditional company's.

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