Optimizing Your Remote Workplace: Best Practices

Remote workplaces and virtual teams are more prevalent than ever. At Juna, we’ve perfected a blend of employee engagement, tech advancements, and inclusive culture to create a highly effective remote workplace.To ensure your business thrives in this modern environment, we’re sharing our top strategies for remote work success. 

Creating a Sense of Belonging in Your Virtual Team

Onboarding in the Remote Era

Every new team member at Juna is welcomed with the book, “How to Thrive in a Virtual Workplace,” by Robert Glazer, the founder & Chief Executive Officer of Acceleration Partners. As this review in Entrepreneur notes, “Glazer shares the perspectives from remote employees, managers, and other executives. He teaches leaders how to avoid burnout, how to lead a virtual team of remote employees, and how to build a gold standard organization in the virtual working world.” It’s a valuable book that tells each employee that they matter. 

To ensure our new employees are set up for success, we assign them an “onboarding buddy,” that is, a peer who can guide them in our workplace practices and function as both a resource and mentor.This practice fosters a strong sense of belonging from day one.

Face-to-Face Interaction in a Virtual World

When the pandemic sent everyone home and companies were scrambling to figure out how to function as a remote workplace, we were operating business as usual. Juna employees are now spread over eight states and have flourished in a fully remote environment. We’ve really tried to develop and maintain a culture where employees feel like they’re part of the team and we all strive to collaborate. Still, we recognize face-to-face meetings are important. Our management team meets quarterly, and we plan full-company gatherings to facilitate personal connections that enhance our virtual teamwork.

Social Interaction: The Heartbeat of Remote Workplaces

We use Slack to create spaces for employees to share personal experiences, fostering a sense of community within our virtual team. We have channels for travel photos, a book club and kudos, where we acknowledge team members who have exhibited Juna’s core values. As an alternative to the water cooler conversations, our ‘Donut‘ Slack plug-in even encourages virtual coffee chats!

Celebrate Virtually

We think creatively about ways to engage our team members throughout the year, but especially during special times, such as the holiday season. Each year, during our holiday “White Elephant” gift swap (also known as a “Yankee Swap” by some), we  choose a theme. One year we exchanged books and another year we purchased gifts from local vendors such as a coffee shop, gift shop, and a chocolate shop. It’s always a lot of fun – and we share endless laughs throughout the event.

Continuous Learning: The Key to Remote Work Success

Stay Informed

We pride ourselves on staying up to date on trends and issues facing our clients. We routinely hold “lunch and learns” via Zoom, where employees gain new insights into accounting practices and other topics. For example, we recently gathered as a team to learn about a new security known as a Simple Agreement for Future Equity (SAFE), which many clients had been asking about. Our tutorial focused on the definition of SAFEs and the newly resulting accounting issues for reporting them on balance sheets. In a separate session, employees learned about the latest trends in cybersecurity. This continuous learning approach ensures we continue to deliver top-notch services to our clients.

Check-In Regularly

Employee engagement surveys help us gauge the pulse of our remote team, allowing us to make necessary adjustments to maintain a healthy work environment. We recently conducted a 10-question employee engagement survey, asking questions such as why staff chose to work at Juna, how they would describe Juna in three words, and assessments of their own professional development. We were pleased that the responses were overwhelmingly positive, with employees noting the “collaborative” nature of a workplace that was “respectful” and “friendly.” Knowing there is always room for improvement and learning from our team, we pay attention to every response and are continually looking for ways to enhance the workplace. The survey is also a way of keeping the promise of professional development real in a virtual environment.

Tech Advancements: Driving Efficiency in Remote Workplaces

Invest in the Right Tech

At Juna, we use a number of tools to enable us to work effectively as a remote organization, including Slack, a collaboration platform; and Asana, a web and mobile work management platform. These tools, and others, have allowed us to work efficiently across the organization while keeping us on task. We are always on the look-out for tech advancements!

Secure Your Virtual Workspace

Data security is ingrained in everything we do. For example, sensitive information such as financial statements or payroll data are never sent via email. Instead, we use ShareFile, a secure content collaboration, file sharing and sync software. We also have a subscription to a password manager that stores encrypted passwords online. We require all employees to use a hotspot if they are in a public space and we use multi-factor authentication everywhere.

Stay Ahead with New Apps

We recently formed an “App Committee” that examines the latest software apps that could help us be more efficient and streamline processes for our clients  . We stay on top of the latest in our industry, and we encourage all our employees to bring their app suggestions to us, and we evaluate each of them on their own merits.

Web Etiquette in the Remote Workplace

Whether companies use Zoom, Microsoft Teams, GoogleMeet, or some other web platform for meetings, it’s important to maintain a level of etiquette on internal and external calls. Juna’s policy requires that employees dress appropriately, keep their video on during meetings, and limit the number of external distractions. No doubt this can be challenging, but think of your time on the platform as you being at work in person. After all, you wouldn’t wear a rock concert T-shirt while holding your puppy and eating barbecue ribs during an all-staff meeting.

There you have it. In this ever changing work world, these practices have served us well in our remote workplace. We hope you, too, have found some innovative ideas here to keep your business on track and your employees engaged.