How MGA Keeps Our Award-Winning Culture Alive While Working from Home

Thanks to modern technology, working from home can be just as productive as working in the office. However, new challenges arise with distance, like how to keep your company culture alive. Connection and collaboration are vital to building a great company culture. They are also two significant hurdles of remote work.

As of now, our team has completed nearly ten weeks of working remotely due to the coronavirus outbreak. From day one, we’ve worked hard to keep morale up and some semblance of the office social life as part of our day-to-day. We thought it would be an excellent time to share what has worked for us.

3 Tips for Keeping Your Company Culture Alive When All Your People Are Remote

One way that we have kept our team members connected during this time is by sharing daily team-engaging activities and topics via our Microsoft Teams group chat. This allows us to communicate as individuals around fun topics, rather than our typical work-related conversations.

Below are seven ideas that were a hit among our team.

• Throwback Thursday — share a picture of yourself as a teenager
• Share a picture of your best craft / DIY project during the quarantine
• Guess how many jelly beans are in the jar for a chance at a cash prize
• Meme Monday — let your best accountant / busy season / quarantine memes fly
• Google your first name + glamour shot and share the first picture that comes up
• Share a picture of your work-from-home-office employee of the month
• Travel Tuesday — share one of your favorite vacation pictures

When working from home, especially during a pandemic, company communication is critical.

As a manager, it’s essential to be transparent about your expectations. By setting clear and explicit expectations, you can ensure that deadlines, roles, and projects aren’t overlooked or missed. This ultimately leads to a happier team on both ends. Team members are able to deliver to those expectations, and management can rest assured that nothing is falling through the cracks.

We can attest first hand to how vital video chat is in keeping the connection and collaboration alive between you and teammates while working remote. In fact, research shows that over half of human connection is nonverbal. We recommend switching your calls or chats to video whenever possible, to stay connected with your remote team.

It’s also important to see each other outside of the work setting, too, just like in “normal times.” We have done this by hosting virtual happy hours and virtual family pizza nights by providing everyone with a dominos gift card and even lunch hangouts where there may or may not have been a pushup challenge or two.

Don’t be afraid to mix things up and get creative. Ask your team members what sounds fun to them, and do those things if you can.

Want to Learn More about Creating an Award-Winning Company Culture?

For the past several years, MGA has been consistently named as a best company to work for through many platforms. To be the very best we can for our clients, we have to continue to invest in ourselves and our team. We have found that to be a critical factor in our success.

There is no one size fits all for building a positive working environment. What works for us may not work for you. We are happy to share the things that we do as a firm to attract and retain our exceptional talent to help you do the same, and we are happy to think with you in terms of YOUR own company.

Whether you are working remotely or are in an office, we can help. We have found success in both areas and would love to help you do the same.

Let’s talk!