A remote worker sometimes feels like an island. When working in an office environment, your colleagues are only a few steps away and can be easily reached for questions or collaboration. This is not true for remote employees who work with their team over email, chat apps and phone calls. Without face-to-face contact, it can be difficult to build relationships and foster teamwork — which are crucial components of any successful company culture. However, by implementing the right communications strategies (and using the right tools) you can create a culture that goes a long way in supporting and motivating remote employees:

Set Clear Expectations

It's important for both you and your remote employee to have clear expectations. It's also important for those expectations to be realistic, which means that they should be attainable. If you expect them to complete 10 hours of work per day, but they only have four hours of work available, then you're setting them up for failure.

Set clear expectations by:

• Establishing guidelines and policies around how much time they should spend working each week (this can vary depending on the specific job).

• Clarifying what exactly they're expected to do during their work hours (this includes any specific tasks or projects).

• Defining how often they'll communicate with other team members and how often their manager will meet with them in person or over video chat (if possible at all).

Create a company culture

A company culture is an employee’s surroundings and environment, which can have a huge impact on how they interact with other employees, as well as their overall happiness at work.

A company that has a strong culture will be able to create an environment where employees feel like they belong. This leads to higher levels of trust, loyalty, and engagement across your entire team—even when you have remote workers.

You should define your own company culture by asking yourself these questions:

• What values do you want to instill in your team?

• Are those values aligned with what you are trying to accomplish?

• How does this align with what your clients expect from their experience working with you (are there any problems that could arise if clients were not satisfied)?

Schedule regular check-ins

How often should you check in? The answer to this question depends on your team size, the type of work they are doing, and how often they communicate with each other. For example, a small team may only need a weekly check-in while a large team may need daily or even hourly check-ins.

Some examples of things you could discuss during these check-ins include sharing feedback about what’s working well for each person on the team and where there might be opportunities for improvement; identifying goals for the week/month/quarter; brainstorming ideas for new projects; reviewing an issue someone is having at work (or life outside of work); asking if anyone has any questions they would like answered by another member of the group; etcetera.

Encourage feedback and communication

One of the most important things you can do to motivate remote employees is encourage feedback. As you know, feedback is a two-way street—both parties have to be open and willing to listen. But it’s not always easy for remote teams to communicate well with one another.

Here are some tips for getting better at this:

• Encourage your employees to share their thoughts and ideas with each other on a regular basis, even if they’re not sure they want them heard. This will help create an environment where employees feel comfortable sharing their concerns as well as praise.

• Don’t shy away from honest criticism when it comes up in conversation or during reviews; after all, feedback doesn't exist unless someone has something negative to say about something else! Be sure that everyone knows that he or she should never feel afraid of giving his opinion (or speaking up when something isn’t quite right).

Foster social relationships

Social relationships are important because they help us feel connected and engaged with others. This is why it's important to foster social relationships among your remote team, as well as make sure that people get the right amount of social interaction. When people feel like they're part of a team, they'll be more likely to collaborate and work together, which helps your company grow.

Communicate, communicate, and then communicate some more.

When it comes to managing and motivating your remote employees, communication is key. The more you can communicate with them, the better off you’ll both be. Use a variety of methods to communicate: video calls, email and text messaging are all great options.

Keep in mind that not everyone works at the same pace or has the same schedule as everyone else; some people get up early and like getting their work done before noon while others prefer working late into the night.

Hire good people and trust them.

Hire good people and trust them. Good remote workers are often self-motivated and great at managing themselves, so give them ownership over the work they do. Give them responsibility for making decisions about how their tasks get done. Trust that even if there are bumps in the road, they will do what’s best for the company and communicate with you about how to solve problems as they arise.

If you have a culture of transparency and honesty, then your team members should feel comfortable asking questions or raising concerns when things aren’t going as planned—and you should be open to hearing from them as well!

When you’re managing a remote team, it can be easy to forget that they’re people with lives outside of work. You want them to get the most out of their experience so they stay engaged and motivated, but it can be hard when they don’t see each other every day. The best way to keep everyone happy is by keeping communication open, scheduling regular check-ins, creating an environment where everyone feels supported and valued—and hiring good people who care about their jobs!