7 Ideas To Motivate Your Remote Employees To Keep Learning And Growing

With remote work slowly becoming accepted, often even the preferred way to work, both managers and employees are doing their best to establish a system they are all comfortable with. As registering a virtual office is now simpler than ever, even those who have been resisting the trend find themselves embracing it.  

When everyone is working from the same office, motivating your staff to learn and keep growing is simpler. However, motivation in a virtual office setting can be harder to come by. 

Nevertheless, teams who keep working on their skill set are more productive and engaged at work, and tend to have a better work-life balance too. Let’s examine some of the challenges that come with remote motivation, and how you can overcome them.

1 - Help Them Learn 

The most straightforward way to motivate remote employees to learn and keep growing is to give them access to the resources they need to level up their skills. 

Reaching for both internal and external workshops, courses, ebooks and resources happens to be one of the best employee engagement strategies. By implementing this simple tactic, you can see a lot of positive effects.

Determining what to focus on can be a bit of a challenge though, but you can start by working on some core skills that are applicable in any industry, or pinpointing specific position-related areas that each employee can individually work on.

Ideally, you want to allow your staff to do these courses and access all learning materials in their own time, and at their own pace.

2 - Reward Their Progress   

Once you have established a learning system, you should focus on rewarding your remote team for taking the time and investing the effort in becoming better at something. 

No matter how intrinsically motivated someone already is, getting a pat on the back and some external validation will always help them push through and will help them to keep doing their best. 

Come up with a reward system that will celebrate significant milestones and wins. Whether someone has completed a course, finished reading a book, or achieved a great score on a test, take the time to mark this moment. 

The rewards you choose don’t have to be major ones: they need to boost morale and foster both a team spirit and a growth mindset, so sometimes a happy hour (with drinks on you) is all you need. 

3 - Meet Face to Face 

In order to further motivate your employees, try to organize in-person meetups as often as you possibly can. Organize a meeting space that is the most convenient for the majority of your remote employees, and make sure to give them plenty of notice in advance. 

When you are all there in person, take the time to tackle the business side of things, i.e. hold a live workshop or lecture, and discuss important work-related matters.

This is a great opportunity to praise everyone, one-on-one, for doing a good job, and to offer some team-level pep talks and help everyone get to know each other better too. Introduce those who usually work a lot together online, and let them establish better connections in the real world.

4 - Lead by Example 

In order to truly demonstrate both the power and the importance of continuous learning, make it a point to show that the higher-ups in the company are also pulling their own weight, and leveling up their knowledge as well. 

The way you approach your business, the way you manage staff, and the specific skills that are unique to your industry should all be a part of your management’s plate too. 

When you are able to show remote employees that something a manager or a CEO has recently learned has helped make the company a better place to work or achieve a specific goal, they will all feel inspired to do the same and will re-dedicated themselves to becoming better at their jobs. 

5 - Have Regular Check-Ins With Your Team 

We often ask ourselves “what can a business do to improve its productivity?”. Regular team check-ins are a great way to both ensure everyone is on the right track, and to hear all about everyone’s unique struggles and successes. 

When you have regular effective calls or meetings, you are able to pinpoint everyone’s strengths and weaknesses more accurately, allowing you to determine what kind of learning resource someone can benefit from. 

Whether it is simply talking to a colleague from another country who does something very well, or listening to an online course, providing individually-tailored resources can make learning a much more pleasant and worthwhile experience.

6 - Don’t Push Too Hard 

Don’t forget that not everyone will be able to keep learning at a pace you would ideally like to see. There may be individuals who aren’t interested in growth at all, for whatever reason. 

Cut your employees plenty of slack when you need to, and don’t force them to push themselves too hard. They may be feeling overwhelmed, unmotivated, have too much on their plate, or they may be going through a rough time in their personal life.

Just because someone isn’t ready to commit to leveling up their skills doesn’t mean they need to be punished - it’s okay not to want to participate at a given time.

7 - Show Them You Care 

Finally, you want to show your remote employees you appreciate them and that you care. The more they feel they are a part of your family, the more motivated they will be to work harder and to keep improving their skills and knowledge. 

If you merely demand improvement for the sake of earning more money, and if you frame it through the lens of “this is good for the company”, you will only antagonize your remote workers. 

Even if a specific skill someone has expressed an interest in improving does not benefit the company, help them work on it. The better someone feels about themselves, the more productive and engaged they will be, which will result in the company growth you have been aiming for. 

Conclusion 

Motivation is an often overlooked driving force that separates average remote teams from the most successful ones. And while it can certainly be more difficult to inspire in a virtual setting, try to implement some of our tips, and see how your employees respond. Keep tailoring your approach until you feel everyone is starting to not only perk up but perform noticeably better. 

About Samantha Clark

Samantha is a Warrington College of Business graduate and she works for the professional accounting firm - ThePayStubs. She handles all client relations with top-tier partners and found her passion in writing articles on various finance and business-related topics.