The physical office has made a comeback, but remote work is now a normal part of company culture. One challenge of remote work is building team cohesion. Team-building games and icebreakers can’t shoulder all of that burden!
Businesses thrive when employees understand current priorities and how their individual work contributes to big-picture goals. In person, coworkers more easily share a mission and mutual responsibility, and asking for support or negotiating process improvements can be spontaneous and casual.
Intentional goal-setting to promote cohesion can be done strategically online using Zoom meetings and spreadsheets. One model for using company-wide SMART goals (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound) remotely is to make a spreadsheet with those goals listed at the top.
Either synchronously in breakout rooms or in separate asynchronous meetings, each department should draft goals that will expedite or support those company-wide goals and post the drafts to the company spreadsheet for other departments to review. Goal-setting should be collaborative because teams may not realize how they impact one another, especially when they are working remotely.
For example, a healthcare company managing remote medical providers may set a SMART goal to serve 100 more patients per month on average than the previous quarter. To support that, human resources might aim to hire five new providers within the quarter. HR would rely on marketing to advertise the job openings, but it first must provide marketing with the necessary information. Marketing might then request that HR add a goal to deliver that information within two weeks.
Exploring these “supply chains” of information, fleshing out timelines, and refining goals based on interdepartmental responsibilities helps employees see both their own value and that of others. It also prevents resentment that can stem from misunderstandings of others’ needs and priorities. A spreadsheet visible to everyone and updated weekly with brief progress reports enables teams to monitor one another, spot stalled progress, and collaborate proactively to stay on track.
Karen Langer Little is Class Coordinator and Database Administrator with the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning, a nonprofit educational center offering seasonal writing, publishing, and language classes, among other community programming. For more info, visit CarnegieCenterLex.org.