THE Engagement Question

How do you increase employee engagement in a virtual environment? This was one of the questions posed to me during my presentation, 3 Simple Ways to Make Your Employee Never Want to Leave at the @AICPA #ENGAGE2022 in Las Vegas last month. Although I did not have time to answer it fully in my session, it warrants an answer because it is a great question.

In Office Engagement

Many of the firm leaders I talk to want their employees back in the office. There is just something magical about collaborating with our teams face to face, or meeting up for lunch in the break room, or simply working alone at your desk knowing that everyone else is too. The overall hum of machines calculating, teammates conversing and work being done just can’t be matched in a virtual environment. However, we can’t let that stop us from engaging our people, whether they are in the office, remote, or some combination of both.

Remote Engagement

Employee engagement is a firm differentiator – the firms doing it well are bringing on new staff and keeping their best leaders. Firms not doing it well are being hit harder than ever by the great shakeout or reshuffle. Sometimes we overcomplicate things and I believe that engaging our remote staff tends to fall into this category. We get caught in the trap of thinking that we need them to be in person to fully engage.

Let’s stop and think outside the box for a moment. What does engaging our employees look like in person? Working together, laughing together, knowing each other on a personal level and having spontaneous interactions are just a few examples, right? Engaging your remote staff works the same way.

Engagement Ideas

You are probably already working together using Teams or Slack. Try implementing a fun activity to the workday. Consider what some firms are doing:

• Throw a crossword puzzle in Teams or Slack and have your team (whether it be audit, tax, or a small engagement team) answer the questions throughout the day.
• Have a riddle day, where each person on the team inputs a riddle and all throughout the day there will be new riddles added, comments about trying to solve the riddles and laughter from laptop to laptop.
• Create a snapshot collage. Every person on the team sends in a snapshot they took over their weekend, or a snapshot of something that resembles their weekend. One of the team members puts them together into a collage and shares it with the group. Comments and questions go back and forth throughout the day.

Some of you are thinking, we can barely get our work done, we don’t have time to solve crossword puzzles and riddles! Let me tell you, studies have proven that adding a fun activity into the workday actually makes our work time even more productive. The ability of firms to engage their remote workers is not a “nice to have,” but a MUST HAVE.”

So, how would you rate your ability to engage your remote workers? What would you have to do next to be even better?