Supporting Employee Engagement: Leading Remote Teams

By Nermin Soyalp, Ph.D.

Two years into the pandemic, engagement surveys—unsurprisingly—report low morale and decreased engagement for many organizations. Organizations have been inviting employees back to their offices. However, with Covid19 surges and employees enjoying working at home, many balk at returning to the office full-time. Working remotely is here to stay, and managers face the challenge of creating and supporting an engaged remote work environment.

This article focuses on engagement: what it is, how it works, and the leader's role in increasing and maintaining employee engagement, especially when leading remotely. Barnes & Conti has redoubled our long-standing commitment to supporting organizations, their leaders, and team members as they develop and maintain engaged remote workplaces. This article will identify factors that contribute to high engagement and how we can create processes to address obstacles to engagement.

Definition: Employee engagement means that team members find meaning in their work and bring their full potential and energy to it. Organizations and teams with engaged employees demonstrate better performance, collaborative relationships, and committed participation. Organizational and team resilience requires a high level of engagement across the organization. Leaders need to understand how engagement works and how to increase the level of engagement by individuals and teams.

How do you know when employees are engaged?

Research suggests that engaged employees are more curious, dependable, enthusiastic, adaptive, cooperative, committed, confident, attentive, and resourceful. These traits are not static and may depend on employees' life circumstances and/or priorities. Less engaged team members may have lost interest or effectiveness, while more engaged team members showed a more adaptive and resourceful mindset – helping their team to respond productively during unprecedented times.

Four Key Components to Employee Engagement

My experience with employee engagement interventions demonstrates that engagement is an ongoing process which depends on an individual's interaction with four aspects of their job: the work itself, the team, the leadership, and the overall organization.

1: The Nature of Work

Work-related components include team members’ sense of:

• Autonomy 
• Dedication to work 
• Sufficient challenge
• Agreement on reasonable workload (avoiding potential burnout with too much or boredom with too little)
• Their own competence to do the work
• Meaning and purpose of the work
• Real progress toward achieving goals 

Working remotely presents technical challenges; e.g. poor connectivity, improper software or inadequate equipment. Frustrations arise when individuals are trying to find a document or reach a key team member for help. Leaders need to be aware of and encourage group norms and processes that enable employees to report their progress, issues, and obstacles to other team members frequently. Some groups find it helpful to have huddle meetings before they start their workdays. Others have meetings scheduled throughout the week for check-ins, and have back-up communications—e.g. text or chat—in the case of internet connectivity issues. Many use team software enabling them to connect and share information and resources.

Even with technology and process support, team members need to make more of an effort to communicate with colleagues and other employees, since spontaneous “water cooler” meetings or informal visits to one another’s physical workspace are no longer options...

The article continues on our Blog. Please follow this link to read and join the conversation. Also, see the questions below.

Reflection Questions

Please reflect on the following aspects of team engagement:

1. How engaged do you feel with these areas? (work, team, leadership, and organizational)
2. What keeps you engaged, and what would help you be more engaged?

If you are leading a team:

1. Thinking about your team members, how engaged do you think they are in each of these areas?
2. How can you help them to be more engaged?

Resources and Programs for Keeping Your Team Engaged

We at Barnes & Conti have always been involved with helping our customers drive engagement. However, in these past years, with both the shift to a remote workforce and the recent “Great Resignation,” employee engagement is more important than ever. We can help by:

• Teaching clients to lead more effective remote teams so that members’ contributions are valued and recognized, and team processes and results are optimized in remote and hybrid environments. Refer to our Leading Remote Teams through Influence and Leading World-Class Teams programs for more information. Please note that we are offering Leading Remote Teams through Influence as a public program this year (see below).
• Teaching leaders to exercise influence and negotiate for vital resources. Too often, people are frustrated by conflict, turf battles, project scope creep, and resource shortages. Please see our Exercising Influence, Constructive Negotiation, and Influential Negotiation programs.
• Promoting leadership effectiveness, which is the key to optimizing engagement. Most engaged employees report having a good relationship with their manager. The least engaged employees typically have significant conflicts with their manager or leaders. Leaders need to inspire those around them, provide feedback and coaching for continued career development, and acknowledge and address conflicts as they arise. Please see our programs Inspirational Leadership, COACH for Peak Performance, and Conflict: From Prevention to Resolution.
• Supporting teams to find clarity in their organization’s values, purpose, priorities and risks, and work on innovations and action plans that deliver results, thereby creating energy and a renewed sense of mission and commitment. Please see our Strategic Thinking, Managing Innovation, and Intelligent Risk-Taking programs.

Let us know how we can be of help to you by contacting Lauren Powers: lpowers@barnesconti.com/215-850-2882.

Barnes & Conti Virtual Catalog of Programs

Please check out our catalog with updated virtual offerings. All our programs are available either online/virtually or in person.

We hope you will find topics that resonate with your organization’s or team’s needs for 2022.

Please download the catalog here and feel free to contact Lauren Powers (lpowers@barnesconti.com)/215-850-2882 to discuss your needs and how we might partner to design a custom solution for your organization.

Reminder: Public Programs for 2022

All our public programs will be offered live and online, so you can participate virtually from the comfort of either your home or office.

Exercising Influence: Description and Schedule

• Introduction to Exercising Influence 3-hour virtual classroom
  In this session, participants will be introduced to the key concepts and the Exercising Influence behavior model.
  • October 6, 2022: Introduction, 1 session
    Cost: $495
• Exercising Influence Two 3-hour virtual classroom sessions
  In this two-session program, participants will learn and then go beyond the basics to dive deeper into the influence behavior model.
  • July 7 & July 14, 2022: Full Program, 2 sessions
    Cost: $925

Register online

Leading Remote Teams Through Influence

This is our first public offering of Leading Remote Teams Through Influence. This program, using skills and behaviors drawn from our Exercising Influence program, offers team leaders and members the skills to succeed, especially when working across boundaries of time, distance, and culture.

• April 27 & 28, 2022: Full Program, 2 sessions
  Cost: $495

Register online

All sessions begin at 9:00 am and run until 12:00 noon, Pacific Time

1:1 Leadership Coaching with Kim

Kim Barnes has resumed her practice of 1:1 leadership coaching. She draws on her extensive experience as a consultant and organization development practitioner as well as her thought leadership in areas such as influence, negotiation, innovation, and consulting. Her performance coaching approach combines content learning, skill practice, focused suggestions, application to upcoming leadership opportunities and rehearsal for those opportunities with rich feedback and challenging questions.

Each coaching session generates opportunities to practice skills and approaches in real life; outcomes and experiences are reviewed in the following session. Coaching can be a follow-up to virtual classroom experiences or stand-alone. Clients can book a series of four sessions, which can be renewed as desired.

Contact Lauren Powers, lpowers@barnesconti.com/215-850-2882 if you are interested in learning more and/or setting up an introductory meeting with Kim at no charge.

Recipe: Stir-Fried Eggs with Shrimp

Joel Kleinbaum, the Barnes & Conti website guy and newsletter editor, contributed this recipe. This is one of his favorite quick dishes for the Chinese New Year, except that Joel likes to make this with crab meat instead of shrimp. Unfortunately, on the West Coast, crab meat has been difficult to get, but shrimp works almost as well.

Ingredients:

• 6 large eggs, beaten
• 6 oz cooked shrimp (Joel likes to use the bay shrimp)
• 3-4 scallions, sliced into rings. Separate the white from the green.
• Scant 1/2 tsp minced ginger (optional)
• Pinch salt
• 1 tsp toasted sesame oil or to taste (optional)
• Oil for for stir frying (peanut, sunflower, etc.)

Marinade for Shrimp:

• 2 tsp. Shaoxing rice wine, sake, or dry sherry
• 2 slices ginger, about the size of a quarter, smashed with the side or handle of a knife

Method:

1. Marinate the shrimp with the marinade ingredients for at least 30 minutes. Discard the ginger
2. In a non-stick pan, heat the oil until it will sizzle a scallion ring on contact
3. Add the white scallion rings and the ginger and stir until fragrant (about 30 seconds)
4. Add the shrimp and the salt, and stir for about 30 seconds.
5. Add the beaten egg and any leftover rice wine from the marinade and let the bottom set for a few seconds. Stir until the eggs are light, fluffy, and done to your liking.
6. Remove from heat, stir in the green scallion rings, and drizzle with the sesame oil (if used).

Serves 3-4, as part of a Chinese meal, or with rice and perhaps a stir fry of vegetables.

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