11 tactics you need to build a happy and healthy remote team

Four years ago, the pandemic ushered in a sea change in the way we work, forcing corporations to adapt to remote work almost overnight. Currently, many corporations are still faced with the decision of whether to mandate a return to the office or adopt remote work as the latest normal. Companies like Disney, Tesla, JPMorgan Chase and, paradoxically, even Buzz issued a strict order for employees to return to offices, citing concerns about collaboration, creativity and productivity. Amazon recently made headlines horror their employees feel the need to return to the office five days a week from 2025.

Quantum Workplace Survey showed that fully remote employees have an engagement rate of 78%, while office employees have the lowest engagement rate (72%). This finding suggests that remote employees may experience higher levels of job satisfaction.

Remote work can even improve employees’ quality of life in other ways – for example, by eliminating the day by day commute. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2019, the average American employee commuted 27.6 minutes. How much higher would your life be if you had almost one hour back in your day to do something aside from drive?

For these and other reasons, we decided to work remotely in my company, Wildfire Systems. These are our principles for creating a productive, collaborative and satisfying work environment – even fully remote.

Remote work improves worker morale

Despite the conventional wisdom promoted by some corporate giants in favor of paperwork, fully remote corporations can actually attract and retain top talent while fostering a remote-first culture of trust, transparency and work-life balance.

Here are 11 tactics I like to recommend that may make remote work feel like work:

1. NO, Really melimit office: To level the playing field, make sure everyone is truly remote. I suggest, if possible, not maintaining a physical office, even for team members in the same city. The goal is to be sure that no one feels neglected and to prevent cliques from forming or “favorites” from emerging on your team.
2. Provide personal infrastructure: Invest in equipping your team with the tools they need to work productively from home, whether or not they are high-end computers, monitors, a good headset or specialized software. A small investment in worker comfort and happiness in the type of high-quality tools to help them do their job pays off hugely in increased productivity and satisfaction.
3. Use collaboration software: Platforms similar to Slack and Microsoft Teams enable fast communication and create a searchable knowledge base. Create channels for work, projects, and even easy conversations about drinking water to foster a sense of community. Within your organization, consider creating channels dedicated to team members’ interests outside of labor: things like music, food and recipes, great online deals, and, after all, animals.
4. Be a video-on company: Encourage the use of video in virtual meetings to create a more intimate and engaging communication environment. Seeing friendly faces from time to time really helps, especially if you work alone at home all day.
5. Organize frequent internal meetings: Conduct stand-ups for each functional area to keep everyone informed, make clear priorities and promote accountability. One suggestion that works is to hold 10-20-minute meetings with small teams almost every day to maintain constant contact between team members and provide short status updates or unlock key projects – even among executives.
6. Create virtual meeting rooms: Create everlasting virtual meeting spaces for impromptu discussions that may mimic the spontaneity of office interactions. Create a standing conference room so that individuals who need to have a quick conversation that is too long to explain in Slack or Teams can pop into one of those standing rooms and spend five minutes talking. Another tactic I like to recommend is to arrange one of those standing areas for a recurring “happy hour” for random, non-work-related conversations. Set it at a time that is not too late for people working in early time zones and not too early that it disrupts the workday for people working in later time zones. Be sure to tell everyone that they’ll (but don’t have to!) drop by and chat freely with anyone else who joins during this time.
7. Share calendars transparently: Enable and encourage team members (even management) to review each other’s calendars, providing context and enabling higher decision-making about breaks or scheduling.
8. Organize regular demo days: Regularly showcase the work of various teams throughout the company to generate respect, recognition and a shared sense of progress. Let each your development or production team and any business teams share significant progress with the entire team, similar to latest features developed, latest product launches, updates on latest partnerships, key metrics or milestones, or any other showcase of recent achievements. Demo days show everyone on your team that they are achieving success together.
9. Facilitating in-person meetings: While remote work is highly effective, periodic in-person retreats and off-site team trips can strengthen bonds and further enhance collaboration. Here are some examples from Wildfire: Once a 12 months, our entire company comes together for an all-expenses-paid retreat to unwind and bond with colleagues. Our engineering team gathers every 12 months for an off-site hackathon to develop latest ideas and proofs of concept that may turn into full-fledged features. Finally, smaller teams also meet throughout the 12 months. The cost of those personal trips is roughly equal to business rent, so the investment in team relationships is value it.
10. Encourage work-life balance: In a remote environment, the line between skilled and private time is easily blurred. Encourage teams to take day without work to manage their personal responsibilities with unlimited PTO policies. This demonstrates confidence in your team’s ability to manage their workload and hold themselves accountable.
11. Celebrate with gestures: Use your spending policy to send team members small gifts or tokens of gratitude to remind them of the human connections behind the virtual workplace. New baby? Child’s graduation? Death in the family? Send it yourself or give your team members a small annual budget that they’ll use as they see fit to show they’re considering about their colleagues.

By applying these principles, you can create an environment in which team members thrive, leading to increased productivity, collaboration, and job satisfaction. Instead of assuming that remote work is a “failed experiment,” successful leaders should recognize the changing landscape and adapt their strategies and processes to empower their people, build trust and drive innovation.

For corporations that are unable to implement a fully remote work environment, a hybrid approach is higher than requiring 100% in-office work. In fact, the 2023 Gallup Workplace Survey found that 34% of employees able to work remotely indicated they preferred fully remote work, and 59% preferred a hybrid approach.

In many corporations, the fully remote work model has proven to be a huge success, so I invite other entrepreneurs to build the way forward for work together.