Digital nomadism is on the rise. Since the pandemic died down, the number of digital nomads has risen by a lot. Most of these people are professionals who do not want to be tied down to the setup of an office space. They also do not fancy the remote work-from-home idea. But this does not mean that they are not skilled enough to get themselves a sweet gig with one or multiple companies. In fact, with the rise of AI tech, the need for experts is greater than ever and you could even get yourself a highly skilled professional working for you at a steal deal price.
Another aspect of the digital nomad lifestyle has to do with going remote yourself. The rise in real estate prices has put a lot of startups and SMB entrepreneurs at risk of bankruptcy. In this light, getting your travel gear on and hitting the road while still putting in 40+ hours per week is not a bad idea. It saves you a lot of money that you’d otherwise spend on a bricks-and-mortar office space. It also opens up the vista of options you can explore for realizing your travel dreams while still working a full-time work schedule.
However, getting the most from your digital nomad team members demands more than just chatting up on Slack and keeping regular with the tasks and projects. It requires team bonding and cohesion like you didn’t even do when you were all together at work. And for that, you need something like a virtual coffee chat and an employee engagement app like LEAD. Here are the ways in which your business and team can benefit from these team collaboration activities:
4 Ways Employee Engagement Apps Make Cross-Team Collaboration and Productivity Grow
Virtual Coffee Chats
Key Takeaways:
Personal connections bring out the best in digital nomads
Employee engagement via virtual coffee chats is a great way to build team spirit
One-on-one interactions with remote teams boost DEI efforts
A hybrid and remote world is one that demands a lot more from coworkers for the same price. They need to know each other well and anticipate each other’s working process while syncing theirs in with others. Unfortunately, that’s not so easy when you may never meet the persons you are working with in real life. While we love the emojis and memes on Slack and Microsoft Teams, they are a pale substitute for a face-to-face interaction. But virtual coffee chats come in to fill this space and they do it with a great set of benefits to offer.
What Are Virtual Coffee Chats Benefit Digital Nomads?
Virtual coffee chats are 2 person peer interaction sessions. It involves one-on-one conversations, mostly via video between two members of an organization. This applies to both on-site as well as remote workers. For digital nomads, virtual coffee chats are a great way to know people they may impact with their work. This sense of personalization helps them develop a stronger sense of belonging and work ethic when it comes to their colleagues. It also eliminates the possibility of rigid working processes getting in the way of accomplishing goals. The benefit here is simple, people who know each other personally or even just in person tend to work and collaborate more effectively.
Plus, virtual coffee chats are events where you can reinforce your diversity-drive activities. Talking to a person from another gender, sexual preference or cultural diversity helps digital nomads bond and share the work much more actively than they would otherwise.
Watercooler Sessions
Key Takeaways:
Group chats on Slack and MS Teams can help promote team bonding
Random on-topic chats may create a creativity spike thanks to impromptu brainstorming
Managers can schedule group chats and also use AI to pick topics
Digital nomads are people from diverse backgrounds and perspectives. This makes them an asset well worth having for businesses looking to go global. But the caveat here is that they need to fully integrate into your working environment and process. For this, you need something like the Watercooler – a place where random discussion topics bring together all your team people and promote team or even cross-team interactions. This is also the place where your employee engagement ideas can come true to form and create the cultural momentum you want. For digital nomads, who often deal with isolation and loneliness, this is a great way to belong and be part of your team.
How Do Watercooler Chats Help Digital Nomads?
From a technical perspective, watercooler chats are preplanned topics that you post via apps like LEAD.bot in your work collaboration apps like Slack or Microsoft Teams. This is one of the best employee engagement activities possible since there are literally endless options to use. You could spark a chat on a popular meme, discuss diversity ideas, take weekend trip details, or anything else. And in all of those you will find a sense of personalization coming from all those who participate including digital nomads. If you use sophisticated remote employee engagement work tools like LEAD.bot, you can also get AI suggestions and make the whole cultural value generation process even easier!
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Mentorship Programs
Key Takeaways:
Mentorship programs help both digital nomads and companies.
Digital Nomads are far more likely to stick with a company that offers mentorship
Through mentorship and learning, nomads can take on more productive and impactful roles
Digital nomads have a lot of uncertainty involved in their lives. Not everyone is living the dream travel life while pulling a high-paying IT job. Some do it simply because the expenses are cheaper in places like Southeast Asia or Central America while they save up to have a permanent solution or retirement. That is why many digital nomad jobs put up by reputable businesses also have certain additional benefits on offer like mentorship. Aside from getting a hard cash inflow or holding down a job for decades, the best way to secure a career is to have constant learning and growth. This is where digital nomads benefit greatly from associating with remote businesses that offer mentorship programs.
How Do Mentorships Help Digital Nomads?
According to a case study at Randstad, employees who participated in mentoring programs were 49% less likely to leave, in addition to saving the company $3,000 per participant per year. For digital nomads, these numbers would be even higher since they know they can face job loss if they drop a viable employment situation. In most cases, nomads who are serious about their careers and are not just juggling freelance gigs will stick with a company for years if not decades.
They can also take up other roles like mentors themselves in case your company wants to develop an extensive remote network of gig workers or digital nomads. It is important to note that some employee engagement platforms like LEAD.bot also offer mentorship solutions that can be further customized to suit the needs of the business. Using such platforms streamlines learning processes and helps managers orchestrate team development at a complex level.
New Hire Onboarding
Key Takeaways:
New hire onboarding offers digital nomads direct team inductions
They increase productivity and collaboration possibilities
They will likely stick with companies if they feel valued like with 30/60/90 days check-ins
The need for quality onboarding of new employees has been recognized recently as a crucial factor for ensuring consistent performance. The same also applies to gig work and therefore, digital nomads. In fact, if a company is hiring new or inexperienced remote workers, then it needs to have a very clear and well-defined new hire onboarding process. Studies show that a good process for orientation and induction with consistent employee engagement creates a 1/3rd increase in the productivity value of employees. Digital nomads would also fit this criterion since they are known for facing issues like loneliness and isolation. So, creating a welcoming space right from the start is a good way to develop strong working relations with them.
What Benefits Do New Hire Onboarding Options Offer?
One of the biggest advantages of good new hire onboarding programs is strong orientation values. Since remote work employees like digital nomads need to orient with the team interface software and remote tools used by the company. This is important for fostering productivity and collaboration benefits and enabling smooth operations through remote portals. Further, new hire onboarding documents remain as an easily accessed resource for any kind of procedural inquiry of accessibility reference. This saves the HR and other managers time since if asked queries about these issues they can simply direct them to the relevant documentation. Further, certain elements of the new hire onboarding processes like 30/60/90 check-in reminders enhance the onboarding experience and enable people to keep turning out good work.
How Should Your Business Pursue Employee Engagement with Digital Nomads?
Gig work is increasingly becoming the norm across the world. Correspondingly digital nomads have increased by 130% and the numbers will only grow larger as tech evolves. Creating a strong employee engagement platform with LEAD.bot can help businesses maximize their productivity output and overall business performance.
LEAD.bot is a team engagement platform available on Slack and Teams. It is an all-in-one team development software with features like virtual coffee chats, buddy programs, birthday celebrations & work anniversary celebrations, new hire onboarding programs, and Pulse Surveys.
LEAD.bot also offers cutting-edge Organizational Network Analysis (ONA) for big enterprises and institutions. Executive to mid-level managers use ONA to gain highly actionable insights and build strong workplace connections. Using this app enables developing innovative employee engagement ideas to connect employees and foster better organizational health, employee retention, and overall performance with this simple app!
LEAD.bot is a product of LEAD.app and we also LEAD.bot’s sister app Sunrize which showcases workplace attendance by graphs right on Slack! Book a demo now!
