My first encounter with remote work began in 2011, long before COVID and working from home felt normal. A family member was sick so my partner and I decided that when our lease was up, we would move from Boston to Nashville to join the other 53 million Americans who are caregivers for family over 50. They were a consultant so remote work was pretty standard. They got on a plane Monday morning and landed Thursday night with a visit to the office on Friday. Repeat. Where would that plane take off from? They didn’t care.
With their remote work policy set in stone, making the decision to move was easy. Communicating that I was moving to my managers? Not so much. I went in so confident that it would be fine. We worked with remote team members around the world almost daily. I was shocked when my manager simply said, “no.” She suggested that if I moved, I would either go to a part-time schedule or be leaving the team. She blamed team culture - that I wouldn’t really be part of the team if I was just dialing in. A few weeks later, I made the hard decision that I would leave that job I loved, but not before I locked down another full-time gig that offered remote work.
When I did secure that role, it said remote. However, the role wasn’t really remote at all. Their definition of remote work was that I could live in Nashville instead of the headquarters of Boston. The catch? I would be flying from Nashville to Boston every other week to live in a hotel room Monday through Thursday. (Not to mention I had to connect in Newark every time. #iykyk.) When I suggested we slow down the bi-weekly trips, they made the case again by suggesting I couldn’t contribute to the culture or keep my team engaged if I was actually remote. I had another hard decision to make. I moved across the country to help a sick family member, not quadruple my commute and time away from home.
Remote Work Myths Debunked
I left that job and got an actual remote job after that. One where there was no headquarters to even go to - just 5 people logging in around the same time every day. I haven’t worked in an office since and I’ve experienced some of the strongest team cultures in those years than I ever did showing up at an office every day. It’s unfortunate that these lies about “engaged employees” and “building culture” are only happening in the office - repeated all the way back then and still today - and carry with them so many of our society’s biases about remote work.
People love to say remote workers are just binge watching Netflix with their dogs while wearing sweatpants, but the data says otherwise. Remote workers are more productive. A 2023 Owl Labs report showed that 62% of workers feel more productive at home than in the office. As far as culture building, a 2023 Microsoft study found that fully remote teams feel more connected than their office-bound colleagues and have stronger relationships with their direct team than hybrid workers do.
Even with all of this data and a remote work revolution in 2020, the rejection of remote work and remote employee engagement based on these false principles is still wide-spread. Within the last quarter, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, Jamie Dimon, dismissed a petition for remote work options from 950 employees telling them, “don’t waste time on it.” There was more colorful language after that describing those same false beliefs that cut my time short with my old employers. He argued that in-office work improves collaboration, networking, and professional growth, then criticized remote workers for being distracted in virtual meetings. While I believe these return to office warriors just want the best for their companies, I wish they were asking a different question altogether - one more focused on the business outcome than “remote vs hybrid vs in office.”
What Drives Remote Employee Engagement?
I wish they were addressing the real question: what improves remote employee engagement? How can we actually improve collaboration, networking, and professional growth at work? The research shows it has very little to do with where people go to work. It’s about how companies intentionally create opportunities for connection, working collaboratively on projects, and career development.
On the most practical level, this level of employee engagement requires, well, engaging. So often our strategy is centered around time-stamped steps like the first 30 days after hire and annual anniversaries. While I can appreciate working around the benchmarks for the sake of standardization, there’s a lot of time between 1 and 30 days and again between 30 days and 365 days. Plus, how can you even remember how long it has been without a calendar reminder? I sure can’t.
We can’t leave it up to employees to find time to take on the task of building culture because they remember. Even the best managers with the best intentions can get overwhelmed and overloaded. Plus, let’s face it. When engagement and collaboration rely solely on individual managers remembering, you can almost guarantee it becomes inconsistent at best and nonexistent at worst. The cost? Lower retention, lower engagement, and unhappy employees.
Engaging Remote Employees: How to Keep Teams Connected Without Micromanaging
This is where tools like custom surveys, anonymous feedback, and peer-to-peer recognition can help managers consistently complete activities that actually influence culture. Tools like Officevibe by Workleap (full transparency: they sponsored this post and I’d love it if you book a demo here!) can reduce the burden on managers to manually drive culture-building communications with reminders plus tools that make it easier to know what to say and to whom.
These standardized engagement practices, like structured 1:1 templates, automated pulse surveys, and real-time collaboration dashboards, are the starting point of cultures that drive profitable outcomes. By leveraging technology instead of relying on people bumping into each other in the bathroom, companies don’t have to make managers solely responsible for creating a team culture where connection, feedback, and career development happen consistently. Plus they can get feedback from the team that helps them grow, too. Communication has to be two way, after all.
The data can help managers apply their energy more effectively by flagging employees at risk of disengagement. It can also nudge managers to recognize great work to ensure everyone gets the support they need when they need it. Culture relies on strong communication and these tools ensure that employees are supported in that way.
Building A Culture Takes More Than Happy Hours And An Office
It doesn’t take a trip every two weeks to keep remote employees engaged—even when some people are in the office. What it does take for remote employee engagement is a system that makes engagement part of how work happens, not an afterthought. Instead of relying on good intentions, businesses need to put tools in place that make engagement easy and automatic.
Professional growth and connection depend less on where we work and more on how companies design work. Whether an employee is in the office or fully remote, they need access to the same networking opportunities, feedback loops, and career development resources to ensure connection is happening across teams—not just within them.
But those things won’t happen by accident. The best cultures don’t happen because employees sit in the same building. They happen because companies make remote employee engagement like collaboration, networking, and career growth a core part of the employee experience—something that happens consistently, no matter where people log in. Rather than arguing about office vs remote, focus on creating systems that support how people actually work.
Meet My Post Sponsor
I'm thrilled to announce my partnership with Workleap. Workleap’s platform helps HR leaders and managers instantly drive top talent retention and team performance with simple tools for engagement, recognition, and performance management. It’s designed to help businesses grow efficiently by offering tools to manage talent, reduce turnover, and improve employee engagement—all without the need for complex systems.
Want to learn more? Book a demo here!
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