May 1st is International Workers’ Day. Hooray! I don’t know about you, but I am so thankful and grateful for my overseas team members. They are the wheels that keep this company moving forward!
Now that that’s out of my system, let’s talk about you.
Whether you have remote international workers, or local workers who are remote or hybrid, this flexible work option can create some problems for your culture if not carefully managed. Luckily, my upcoming book, Navigating a Toxic Workplace For Dummies, due out June 26, 2025, has a whole chapter dedicated to remote and hybrid challenges and their solutions.
Remote-specific challenges and solutions
Here are three of them directly from the book. (Yes, you’ll need to order the book to get the rest of the list.)
Proximity bias
Proximity bias presents a challenge in that those people “near you” are the ones more likely to get noticed by you. You might favor onsite employees over remote workers for promotions or “good” projects because you can see them, for example.
If one of your core values is teamwork, collaboration or inclusivity, then remote workers you can’t see need to receive the same amount of attention. And you miss out on potentially better qualified people if you limit yourself geographically.
Your solution is to use objective, measurable goals and outcomes to evaluate performance so that opportunities are given based on defined criteria and results, not visibility. And provide as many opportunities as you can for remote employees to be visible virtually.
Overcommunication fatigue
When most or everyone is remote, communication tends to happen more often through messages, chats, texts, and emails – the amount of which can be overwhelming and make it hard to decipher what messages require attention or response.
Employees get burned out if they feel a constant need to pay attention and quickly respond to a multitude of messages coming from various people about various things. You can’t do anything 100% if you’re constantly distracted.
The solution is to create guidelines for messaging in partnership with your workforce, such as adding “action required” to relevant messages or ensuring mass messages are used with caution. And, trust your team to meet deadlines without checking in constantly.
Also ensure the workforce knows that once they clock out, they’re not expected to review or respond to messages.
Difficulty managing performance
It may be harder to manage the performance of someone you can’t see. Expectations for work hours, availability, and deliverables may be unclear, distrust or resentment can arise from the use of tracking tools to monitor productivity, or some people may attempt to micromanage others to get a sense of what they’re working on.
Consider that unclear expectations and lack of trust are alive and well in onsite workforces too, meaning all managers must get better at this. Constant check-ins or excessive monitoring tools indicate a lack of trust, causing anxiety and extra work, and a culture of micromanagement.
The solution is to ensure the workforce is measured on results and work product, not hours worked. If the deadline is Friday and the work is completed, the manager simply must trust that the employee is being productive. Managers should also get training on setting expectations for all aspects of work and coaching employees to help with accountability.
Don’t Let Distance Derail Your Culture
Just because your team isn’t sharing a physical space doesn’t mean you can’t build a strong, connected, and positive culture. It does mean, however, that you’ll need to be thoughtful, consistent, and a little creative.
Remote work isn’t the problem – lack of intention and attention is. So take a step back, assess what your remote and hybrid team really needs to thrive, and get to work.
Don’t forget to pre-order Navigating a Toxic Workplace For Dummies to get more tips on correcting and preventing the challenges that come with a remote and hybrid workplace.
And you’ll get access to our virtual book launch party on July 9th – a fun, interactive event where we’ll talk about the book and how to create lasting change (with a few surprises thrown in!).
