{"id":1776,"date":"2016-04-25T19:49:47","date_gmt":"2016-04-26T02:49:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/?p=1776"},"modified":"2017-05-16T19:47:49","modified_gmt":"2017-05-17T02:47:49","slug":"buildingteam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/2016\/04\/buildingteam\/","title":{"rendered":"Building a team culture among remote workers: yoga, cocktails &#038; games"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/virtualvolunteering.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-3169\" src=\"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/virtualvolunteering-262x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"262\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/virtualvolunteering-262x300.jpg 262w, https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/virtualvolunteering.jpg 327w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 262px) 100vw, 262px\" \/><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/www.workforce.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Workforce.com<\/a> has an outstanding article from February of this year, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.workforce.com\/articles\/21890-culture-cocktails-and-remote-co-workers\" target=\"_blank\">This Party&#8217;s Electric: Culture, Cocktails and Remote Co-workers<\/a>, about some creative, effective ways companies have created <strong>a sense of team among remote workers<\/strong>. This article is about paid employees, but these practices would also work for those engaging online volunteers, in many scenarios.<\/p>\n<p>The article notes that:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>All 70 of the employees at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.flexjobs.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">FlexJobs<\/a>, a telecommuting job service, work virtually, and many employees have never met in the same room, in-person. To build team culture, the FlexJobs leadership team uses collaboration technology to come up with fun ways to help employees develop relationships outside of work, including a twice-monthly virtual yoga class over Skype run by an employee with a yoga certification, and a trivia-themed happy hour using Sococo, an online virtual workplace, where employee teams gather in virtual rooms to brainstorm answers to questions posted by the CEO. \u201cYou would be surprised by how well it all works,\u201d said Carol Cochran, FlexJob\u2019s director of people and culture.<\/li>\n<li>Katie Evans, senior communications manager at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.upwork.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Upwork<\/a>, an online talent marketplace formerly known as Elance-oDesk, created a \u201cget to know you\u201d exercise, and had remote employees submit three facts about themselves. She shared the facts anonymously with the team, then employees met using Google Hangouts video to guess which facts went with which person. \u201cI thought it would last for 30 minutes, but it lasted two hours,\u201d she said. \u201cEveryone had a lot of fun.\u201d The party made her realize that you don\u2019t need to be live and in person to build company morale, and you don\u2019t need to use complicated technology to make virtual celebrations fun. \u201cThe value is in the face time and storytelling, not the platform,\u201d she said. Now she hosts quarterly all-company parties and smaller teams have begun using collaboration tools for team coffees and weekly \u201crocks and roses\u201d meetings where everyone shares their best and worst moment of the week.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The key in these and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.workforce.com\/articles\/21890-culture-cocktails-and-remote-co-workers\" target=\"_blank\">other examples from the article<\/a> is that these remote workers do already know each other, to a degree, through work &#8211; they work together already, they&#8217;ve interacted enough to know each other&#8217;s names and roles.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/vvbooklittle.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-831\" src=\"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/vvbooklittle.jpg\" alt=\"vvbooklittle\" width=\"187\" height=\"242\" \/><\/a>For more advice on working\u00a0with remote volunteers, or using the Internet to support and involve volunteers, check out <strong><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.energizeinc.com\/store\/last_virtual_volunteering_guidebook\" target=\"_blank\">The\u00a0<\/a><\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.energizeinc.com\/store\/last_virtual_volunteering_guidebook\" target=\"_blank\">Last\u00a0<\/a><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.energizeinc.com\/store\/last_virtual_volunteering_guidebook\" target=\"_blank\">Virtual Volunteering Guidebook<\/a><\/em><\/strong>. Tools come and go \u2013 but certain community engagement principles never change, as the aforementioned Workforce.com article confirms. Successfully working with people remotely is a very human endeavor that people who are amiable, understanding and thoughtful tend to excel in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Workforce.com has an outstanding article from February of this year, This Party&#8217;s Electric: Culture, Cocktails and Remote Co-workers, about some creative, effective ways companies have created a sense of team among remote workers. This article is about paid employees, but these practices would also work for those engaging online volunteers, in many scenarios. The article [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[20],"tags":[151,667,1287,477,570,530,532,542],"class_list":["post-1776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-community-volunteer-engagement","tag-digital","tag-online-volunteers","tag-remote","tag-tech4good","tag-virtual-volunteering","tag-volunteering","tag-volunteers","tag-workers"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3fFJB-sE","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1776"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1776\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3230,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1776\/revisions\/3230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}