Friendships at work are important for employee satisfaction and engagement, but remote and hybrid work environments have made building office relationships more challenging. Writing for the Harvard Business Review, Clara Shih, CEO of Service Cloud at Salesforce, offers five suggestions to help managers keep team members engaged.

Managers are the key to employee engagement—but they also need support

According to Shih, friendships at work are important for employee engagement. And once Covid happened, "employees who do go into the office may find it empty or populated by coworkers they barely know due to hoteling or hot-desk arrangements."

People feel isolated and burned out working from home, yet they don't want to give up the flexibility of not having to physically go into the office ever day, Shih writes. So, managers must initiate and facilitate personal relationships with each member of their team—but they need help doing it.

According to a Gallup study, workers in management positions take a larger hit to their mental health than individual employees. In particular, many newly promoted managers have been overwhelmed by the task of suddenly managing a team of remote or hybrid workers who have faced a variety of personal challenges over the last two years.

While managers are in the best position to address the needs of their team members, many of them need additional support from company leaders and HR teams.

5 ways mangers can boost engagement in a hybrid or remote environment

"Once managers have the support they need, they can take steps to foster emotional connection, team bonding, and fun to compensate for the loss of proximity in the office," Shih writes.

According to Shih, there are several ways managers can engage team members in a hybrid or remote environment, including by:

1. Establishing shared goals and expectations

In high-trust relationships and high-performing teams, each team member makes a commitment to do what is expected of them so that others can effectively "support, amplify, and help hold them accountable," Shih writes.

In remote settings, this includes team members' preferences on where, when, and how they work.

2. Scheduling regular check-ins

In remote and hybrid settings, managers can no longer pick up "tidbits of life news and body language." In the absence of physical proximity, managers need to set time aside for team members to share life updates. 

"Bring the team together to decide what kinds of updates, requests, and sharing should happen over email or Slack versus in real time over the phone or on video," Shih recommends.

3. Holding in-person meetings

Managers should also plan regular in-person meetings to give employees something to look forward to. If possible, Shih recommends saving "contentious debates and collaboration-heavy work" for in-person meetings.

"Leaders should invest the time in sharing best practices as well as providing input, feedback, and encouragement," she adds.

4. Expressing appreciation

In the office, team members regularly give praise through verbal and nonverbal cues. In remote and hybrid settings, managers and team members must be more deliberate when expressing appreciation.

When Shih stepped into a new role in late 2020, she didn't meet any of her coworkers in person for over six months due to pandemic restrictions. "At one point, one of the highest-performing VPs in my organization asked me during a one-on-one whether I thought he was doing a good job," Shih recalled. "He was (and is) doing an incredible job, and I told him so, but I was taken aback by the question. I realized then how little he must have felt he knew me and what I think, especially in contrast to if we'd been in the office together day-in and day-out."

"Thanks to this experience, I try to be much more deliberate now about giving out recognition frequently, celebrating the small wins, and encouraging all the managers across my organization to do the same," she added.

5. Finding ways to connect

"Shared context bonds people together," Shih writes, "and Covid has forced us to take a fresh and creative approach to team building."

According to Shih, one of the most enjoyable evenings she had during the pandemic was a virtual Italian dinner with her colleagues. While the 12 attendees lived in seven different cities, they were all able to share the same bottle of wine and menu at the same time. "It was almost as good as being together in person and something we can do much more frequently than flying everyone to the same location," Shih writes.

Ultimately, with the increased prevalence of remote and hybrid work, company leaders must implement new methods to address employees' social and emotional needs.

"Providing employees with space, flexibility, and psychological safety isn't enough—companies need to go beyond these table stakes to offer today's remote and hybrid workers experiences that address their human need for the authentic connection, team bonding, and fun that used to come with in-person proximity at the office," she adds. (Shih, Harvard Business Review, 8/11)