Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
If you run a business, you might have gone to a remote work model these days. Maybe you’re doing a hybrid work model instead. That means you have some individuals working from home while others work at a central location.
You might also have a hybrid work model where you allow your employees to work from home some of the time, but you want them to be at a central location as well. Maybe you let them work from home three days out of the week while they come in two days. Your central work location might be an office building or storefront you own or one you rent.
Whatever the case, your employees may not want to come in to work at all anymore. They probably like the remote work model, and they want to stay home as much as they can. However, you still need to have them at the office in person sometimes, and we’ll explain why in the following article.
You Want Employee On-Sites to Boost Morale
You might use the term “on-site” to refer to in-person employee meetings. Employee on-sites matter in the remote work era, even if your workers can do much of their job from home.
One reason is that you can keep up employee morale if you see your workers in person a couple of times per week, at a minimum. If you only see them via Zoom meetings or you only communicate with text messages or emails, you can’t necessarily convey your enthusiasm regarding ongoing or upcoming projects.
As a company leader or owner, you may have times when your workers don’t feel too confident or excited about a project. Maybe it’s taking a long time, or it’s over budget.
If you can meet with your workers in person sometimes, you can give them pep talks that would not really have the same impact if you did them via a Zoom call. Sometimes, you simply need to rally the troops in person. You can’t do that if you never see any of your workers face to face.
You Can Reduce Isolated Feelings
You may also notice that if your employees only work from home, they might experience “Zoom fatigue” at some point. This means that they tire of Zoom meetings and other digital communication forms.
An isolated worker can feel lonely sometimes. The reality is that humans crave interaction. We are social beings, and it’s tough to stay at home day after day and work on a project without bantering with others who are working on the same thing.
You don’t want your workers getting together and wasting time, but you want them to communicate in a healthy office culture. You can’t have that if your employees never see each other in person. This is why a hybrid model where your people get together at least a couple of times per week is often perfect.
You Can Brainstorm Together
It’s also challenging if you have Zoom meetings and you’re trying to facilitate brainstorming sessions. You can’t very well bounce ideas off each other if you’re all in remote locations. Maybe you can do it a little bit, but it’s going to work so much better if you can get together sometimes.
If you have a company where you need to think about things like new ad campaigns, new products, fresh marketing ideas, and so forth, it’s almost impossible to do all of that remotely. Since nearly every company needs these concepts, it makes in-person meetings necessary.
If you always work in isolation, or you only interact via Zoom meetings, you will probably not have very productive brainstorming sessions. Getting together and having a free-form idea huddle will usually yield superior results.
You Want to Have Your Most Crucial Meetings in Person
You will probably want to have your most important meetings in person as well. Think of it this way. You might need to have a meeting where you assemble all the company’s high-ranking personnel. Together, you need to decide whether to move forward with a new product, allow an investor to come on board, or get rid of a problematic product that’s causing your business too many headaches.
You can have these meetings via Zoom if you must, but that is not ideal. It’s so much better if you can all sit down in the same room and talk about why you want to move in a particular direction. You can also pick up on subtle nuance that you can’t see via a Zoom call.
If you do all your most essential meetings digitally, you might not feel satisfied that you got the best from everybody. Hashing out where you’re going to take your company should go better if you can all look at each other and interact in real-time in the same room.
You Need to Provide Management Access
Management access is one final reason why you should still have employees on-sites. You can make yourself available to your workers remotely, and they might set up meetings when they feel they need to speak to you. However, if you sometimes get together in an office setting, you let your workers come to see you throughout the day when they feel that need.
Informal management access can let your workers feel like they can speak to you in a more relaxed way. Some of them might require that. Maybe they will need to talk to you about something on their mind, but they want to do that one-on-one.
If you can set up times when the whole management team is together in one place, at one time, and your workers lower down on the totem pole are there too, you encourage more interaction. Individuals can get to know each other better that way and get more comfortable with one another.
While remote work is great, having continued employee on-site meetings also matters. That should continue for the foreseeable future.