Building the right company culture is essential for any business looking to attract top talent and succeed in today’s world. Fail to get your company culture right, and you may have to deal with miscommunication, lower productivity levels, poor employee morale, high turnover rates, and more!
With the rise of remote work, companies face the challenge of building and maintaining their culture with an increasingly geographically dispersed workforce. But fear not! Building company culture with remote workers is possible. At Talewind, we have built our company culture with an entirely remote workforce. We’ve learnt a lot over the last few years (and made our fair share of mistakes), but we are proof that a thriving company culture can be created despite our team being dotted all over the UK!
What does a great remote culture look like?
The basics of a good work culture are the same, regardless of where employees sit.
These include:
Employee engagement
Team members are involved, enthusiastic and committed to the company. They might have an occasional bad day, but overall, they enjoy coming in (or logging in) to work.
Teamwork and collaboration
Teams operate smoothly with little drama. They communicate well and feel comfortable working cross-departmentally with other groups or individuals as needed.
Individual growth
Employees are recognised as individuals with their own strengths, weaknesses and personal goals. Every worker is on their own path with opportunities to grow and develop.
How to build a strong remote culture
Knowing how to recognise a strong remote culture is an important first step. But you need to take proactive steps to achieve it. Here’s what we’ve implemented and fostered at Talewind in recent years:
Team building:
Remote team building looks a little different, but it’s one of the best ways to boost company culture. Here are some regular activities that we host:
Virtual watercooler. Using a collaboration platform like Slack lets you create a separate channel for off-topic conversations. We use our #watercooler channel for fun posts, jumping on a huddle to catch up over a cup of tea or posting “getting to know you” conversation starters through the Donut app.
Film nights. We’ve found these to be a great way for our team to socialise outside of working hours. Team members vote on a movie to watch each week and we screen these virtually via Teleparty. It’s a great way for the team to feel connected without the pressure of having to get too involved!
Game nights. We all know that gaming is super effective for bonding! We take advantage of our team’s knowledge of gaming to host monthly film nights on Discord at the end of our working week.
Steps challenges. Introducing friendly competition is a great way to get your team engaged. We host monthly steps challenges to encourage our team to get up and away from their desks during their lunch breaks and down time. Incentivising these with a prize for the winning group or individual is even more encouragement for the team to get outdoors!
Morning workouts. We’re aware that working from home could mean rolling out of bed to your desk just before your first call of the day. So we host morning workouts for our team each Wednesday – whether that’s yoga for a slower, stretchier start to the day or a high intensity HIIT workout to really get the endorphins pumping!
Workshops. Bringing in experts to host workshops for your team will not only educate and inform them, but foster connections over shared experiences and interests. At Talewind, we’ve hosted many virtual workshops over the years around key EDI dates such as International Women’s Day, Pride or Black History Month, and also fun workshops like virtual Christmas wreath making or painting.
One thing we’ve learnt over the years is that there will never be a perfect day or time to host a social activity for your remote team. Just as in an office based environment, you’ll always have a drop off in attendees and struggle to get everybody involved for opt-in events. Lunch time activities rarely work for us, as the team uses this time to get out for a walk or away from their laptops. Don’t be afraid to admit when an activity isn’t working out – there have been plenty of ideas that haven’t succeeded for us but it’s all about the learning experience!
Feedback from employees:
The only way to know if your employees are happy is to ask them. We host quarterly wellbeing check ins with our team that dive into work issues, general happiness and mood, collaboration, relationships with management, and more. The constructive, candid feedback provided in these sessions helps ensure that we continue to create the best remote work environment possible.
Monthly or quarterly anonymous pulse surveys are another great way to gauge how well your company’s upholding its values – giving you a peek at what’s working and what needs work. They measure employee sentiments and may clue you into issues you had no idea even existed!
We have also created a ‘Culture Club at Talewind’, giving our team the opportunity to have their say on how we nurture and promote our remote team culture. Monthly drop-in meetings are hosted, where we discuss our company values, plan social events and share ideas. Originally, we set this up as a closed group for which people applied but after testing this out for 12 months, we opened up to the wider team to increase engagement and input.
Promoting wellbeing:
Promoting wellbeing for remote employees is essential to prevent burnout and maintain a healthy work-life balance. By encouraging regular breaks, time off, and offering mental health support, you can foster a remote work environment that supports employees’ wellbeing and contributes to a strong remote team culture.
Those working remotely can often face challenges in maintaining a clear boundary between work and personal life.
We offer the following support and resources to help our team maintain a healthy work-life balance:
Mental Health First Aiders. We have two qualified MHFA in our team who are on hand to listen and give advice when somebody needs them.
Wellbeing Wednesdays. Every Wednesday, we share wellbeing tips, resources or advice with our team via a dedicated Slack channel. This can range from highlighting the latest piece of news from Safe in Our World (the leading mental health charity for the gaming industry) to sharing healthy recipes. We also encourage the team to share what works for them when it comes to wellbeing habits and practices.
Anti-crunch policy. With the lines being blurred between home and office in the remote first world, it’s important to set boundaries for your team (and to encourage them to set their own personal boundaries too). Therefore, we’ve created an anti-crunch policy to prevent the team from working long hours and put clear instructions in place to avoid crunch.
Of course, this is not a comprehensive list and you’ll need to find out what works best for your team. Just remember to implement any new processes or initiatives one step at a time so as to not overwhelm your team!
Beginning and ending the week on a positive note:
There are two key actions you have to crack to create a positive remote culture: connection and recognition. Every Monday morning during our weekly kick off meeting, we ask everyone how their weekend was. It’s a great way to connect and get to know co-workers on a personal level, finding out more about their families, interests, and personal lives. If you have a larger size team, use a Slack bot to post the ‘How was your weekend?’ question every Monday morning, asking people to share a photo (or a few) from their weekend.
At the end of every week, we also encourage our team to share their ‘Tale-wins’ – providing them with the opportunity to shout out a teammate who has helped them on a project or recognise great work they have performed themselves that week. Giving the team this platform for these virtual pats on the back is a great way to boost morale and foster a sense of community among the group.
Hosting in person retreats:
Regularly gathering your team in person is one of the most important things you can do to build a great remote company culture. We host at least one company wide meetup per year (our last was at Wilderness Reserve in Suffolk) as an opportunity for everybody to come together face to face and have fun! In previous years, we’ve split our time evenly between 33% work & strategy, 33% personal connection, and 33% downtime & fun. However, for future get-togethers, we’d look to reduce the amount of time spent working and put more focus on the social time to allow employees to truly build relationships with one another. One of the biggest mistakes companies can make is trying to get too much work done on a retreat as connections get accelerated so much through great memories and shared experiences!
As our team is dotted all around the UK, we also encourage local meet ups for those who live in the same area. Alongside this, we host ‘informal meet ups’ every quarter which are optional and a contribution is made by the company towards an activity or lunch.
The tools that will help you on your way
Utilising the right tools and technology will set you up for success! Research what’s out there in the market and implement those that make the most sense for your organisation. The ones that work best for us are:
Slack: We’ve created multiple channels in Slack to give the team the opportunity to foster connections and instigate conversations throughout the week – from #whatareyouplaying (where favourite games are discussed) to #greenfingers (where we share our love for plants)!
Gather: This is a great platform for remote teams looking to replicate the office environment. You can create a virtual office where the team can work side by side at their virtual desks and stop by the virtual watercooler for a chat.
Google Meet: A go-to for us at Talewind for all team meetings. This platform offers features such as hand raising, polls and break out rooms which make our remote meetings as interactive as possible.
Discord: Used by gaming studios and gamers alike, we use Discord to host our gaming nights and any ad hoc social events.
Teleparty: A great way to host film nights or documentary screenings for your team.
In conclusion, building a strong remote team culture is vital in today’s ever-changing work environment. By establishing a remote-first mindset, fostering connection and collaboration, promoting work-life balance, and recognising and rewarding remote team members, you create a thriving remote work culture that benefits both your team members and your organisation!
We hope you found this article useful and if you’d like to explore the subject of remote working further, check out our ‘How A Remote First, 4 Day Week Works For Talewind’ article. If you work in a People or Operations role in the games or creative tech industry, we also encourage you to join our Slack Network here to connect with those in similar roles and share knowledge and best practices.
Bronwen Ellis (she/her)
Studio Operations Manager @ Talewind
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