# Workplace Surgery: Fostering culture in a remote team - **Episode:** [134](https://agents.truthliesandwork.com/episodes/134.md) (2024-10-08) - **Type:** workplace-surgery - **Tags:** remote-work, culture, team-building, remote-team - **Time:** 43:17–48:11 (start 2597s) - **Listen:** [https://truthliesandwork.com/134?t=2597](https://truthliesandwork.com/134?t=2597) --- [43:17] Al Elliott: Okay, so question number 3, Lee, I think is right up your street, and you'll see why in a second. I run an online marketplace for handmade goods that's grown from a side hustle to a team of 40 over the past 3 years. We— I know we've had some, we've had some big dogs on today. We've embraced remote work from the start, so our team members are spread across 4 continents and 6 time zones. While this setup has allowed us to tap into global talent pool, I'm struggling to maintain a cohesive company culture, mainly worried that everyone doesn't feel connected. We've tried various tools for virtual collaboration. We do host a weekly all-hands video call, but engagement is kind of patchy, inconsistent. Some team members speak up, but I'm worried about silos forming between departments. How can I foster a sense of belonging and shared purpose in a team that never meets face to face? I thought this would be right up your street because Because you used to— Roddick used to do the consultancy and the culture for a business like this [44:09] Leanne Elliott: I did, I did. And I also managed a team that was 100% remote based across 4 continents. Uh, do you know what, in the same— refer to previous answers in exactly the same way as you build a culture in the office. And that's what really frustrates me about this whole RTO anyway, not, not your question. Um, it's, it's, you know, Remote is a context. It comes with a slightly— it takes slightly more intention, but it's the same things you need to do. So again, my questions are going to be, because I don't know from your questions, what data points are you currently using to measure engagement and how engaged people are? Are you going off gut or anecdotes? That might not be the best way to do it. At this point, you might be starting to look at putting in team leaders or managers that might be able to kind of help that more hands-on day-to-day interaction happen with a smaller number of people. 4 is quite a lot. Um, so it might be worth looking at the manager and supervisor roles within your business. Um, being honest, one of the, one of the things that really helped us as a, um, or really helped that remote company to kind of, kind of fuse together is we had a, um, Yeah. We had actually a face-to-face meetup with key members of the leadership team. And I'm not sure kind of what, um, kind of structure your business that you've got, but sometimes having these kind of face-to-faces can be useful, whether you're— and not very often, like every couple of years, and just with the key members of staff with a very clear intention of what that meetup is, is to do, whether it's about strategy, whether it's about operations, culture, etc. Um, so that's always worth looking at as well. My, my The point is always going to be, where's your data in terms of how things are right now? Um, because if you, if you don't have kind of hard data through some kind of culture audit, then you're not going to know. You're just guessing. So until that, it's really hard to offer any kind of practical advice really. But that would be the general things. Gather some data if you don't have any already. Maybe start to invest in supervisory team leadership roles to help reduce silos and keep that culture cohesive and potentially look at some face-to-face meetups with key members of staff, um, to discuss all this and, and set an action plan agenda for, for how you'll manage culture going forward [46:28] Al Elliott: Um, generally speaking, something you did, Leanne, when in another organization, something you implemented was a, um, was a weekly— I think it was a weekly face-to-face over Zoom or something equivalent with every member of staff. So you spoke to, spoke to someone At least once a month, I think it was. Um, and you just made notes on what was bothering them at the time. And it was just that weekly check-in, which obviously took a lot of your week, but it was so worth it because, you know, the people who did work remotely felt like you actually cared and you've got time for them. Um, I think one of the concerns about having a face-to-face with just a select number of people is you create divisions. So you have to manage that very, very carefully if you're are thinking of doing that, Leanne's got some experience in that. Uh, you'll see her email in the show notes. Drop her email. I'm sure that she will, she will, she will continue that, that conversation with you. But just be a little bit careful with that [47:19] Leanne Elliott: Just to, just to correct that very slightly, you're absolutely right, that more formal one-to-one was once a month, right? Um, but I was checking in every day with people, not in a micromanagement way, but just if I knew there was something coming up that they were worried about that was happening that day, I'd give them a call and go, how did that go? Um, Or, and equally, they'd end up calling me quite frequently if they had their questions or just wanted to share some good news. Um, so yeah, there, yeah, there's some, some ideas for you [47:44] Al Elliott: Skip back to episode, I want to say 129, with, um, uh, with MAP. Uh, this is with Paul Barnes and Amanda. Um, they have an element of their, um, of their team who work in, I think it's the Philippines. Um, and they've done some really cool things. So go listen to that episode. Because they talk about how they help, how they bring in apprentices, but also they have this remote element and they really, really do look after them and people love them. Have we got anything to add, my love, before we say goodbye?