The significant shift to remote and hybrid work in recent years fractured something fundamental in our workplaces. The easy camaraderie of a shared office and the spontaneous “watercooler” chats we once enjoyed weren’t just perks of the before times; they were the connective tissue of our organizations. Now, many of us are grappling with working in personal silos, leading to a pervasive sense of disengagement from our employers that can negatively impact a company’s culture.

As future-thinking HR leaders, our job isn’t to pine for the old way of working. It is to intentionally design a better one. Our first critical step is to understand the anatomy of these new challenges so we can move from diagnosis to design, creating a framework that fosters genuine connection, clarity, and equity, regardless of where our people log in from.

As HR professionals, we must be knowledgeable of the staggering financial and operational consequences of the invisible barriers brought on by remote work to make the business case for change. An overwhelming 85% of employees say that productivity results when knowledge-sharing in the workplace increases. Inefficient knowledge-sharing can cost large companies big—an average of $47 million in annual productivity losses. But these numbers are just lagging indicators of a deeper, human problem: a breakdown in trust. The root cause is a connection problem, and that’s the domain of HR.

To address workplace disengagement, it’s our job to be the intentional creators of connectivity among employees. We can start this work by building on three core pillars:

1. Create a shared playbook for communications. In a remote setting, communication can’t be left to chance.

• Establish clear norms that define how and where communication should happen (e.g., Slack for quick questions, email for formal queries, and one shared platform for project updates), and set expectations for response times. Communicate this information during onboarding, and continue to remind employees about which communication channels to use throughout their tenure with your organization.
• Coach your leaders on the importance of relentless transparency, encouraging them to share the “why” behind their decisions to build employee trust.
• Create structures that support two-way dialogue. Gallup data shows that employees who have regular one-one meetings with colleagues are almost three times more engaged than those who do not.

2. Champion the asynchronous advantage. Permit teams to embrace an “asynchronous-first” mindset, in which employees “do as much as [they] can with what [they] have, document everything, transfer ownership of the project to the next person, then start working on something else.” This gives employees the agency they need to move projects forward on a schedule that works for their unique situations.

This respects time zones, accommodates different work styles, and protects time for employees to do deep, innovative work. When done well, companies with asynchronous cultures experience increased efficiency and higher productivity.

• Promote a culture of documentation. Introduce and provide training on tools that support a “single source of truth” (e.g., Notion, Confluence, or Google Docs), empowering employees with the autonomy to find information for themselves.
• Create a shared language. All employees should have easy access to information that defines common workplace terminology, such as values, leadership principles, and common business terms for an industry.
• Push for agenda-based calls. To get the most out of shared time together, provide company-wide coaching on how to have effective project calls by creating agendas that help move work forward.

3. Lead leadership by design. Help company leaders make the fundamental shift from controlling employees to trusting them, coaching leadership to focus on work outcomes rather than hours logged.

• Develop and implement training that helps leadership recognize and actively combat their own “proximity bias,” which results when managers favor employees who are physically closer to them over their remote workers.
• Introduce and champion policies such as the “one-remote, all-remote” meeting rule, where if one person is remote, everyone joins remotely to level the playing field.
• Encourage your managers to lead with empathy by training them to intentionally check in on their team’s well-being and recognize major life events. Equip them with a standard process and a small budget for responding with humanity to personal issues and ensuring equitable experiences across the team.
• Make space for connections by urging managers to encourage their employees to reserve time to connect and share knowledge with one another. If only some teams do so, resentment can build in departments that are disconnected and hinder productive connections from taking place. Encourage managers to set goals for their employees regarding sharing knowledge across the company or with other teams to break down silos.

Culture is woven from human connections. Since “watercooler” moments are gone, it falls to us to intentionally build them.

• Own the virtual handshake. The onboarding process is your first and best chance to build a connected company culture. Design an orientation program that includes a welcome campaign to acclimate new employees to your culture. Implement a virtual “buddy program” that pairs new employees with established ones who can educate them about company norms and provide an immediate social anchor. Identify key people for new employees to meet and encourage them to meet people from other departments to build company cohesion.
• Engineer serendipity. Introduce tools like the Donut app for Slack to randomly pair colleagues for virtual coffee chats. Create and promote dedicated social Slack channels for non-work topics to build camaraderie and relaxed conversation.
• Fund grassroots connections. Empower employees to build their own connections by providing budgets for peer get-togethers—whether virtual or in person. Enabling your people to connect on their own terms gives them true ownership of the company culture.

Our highest-level work is to connect our people not just to one another, but to a shared “north star” that is at the center of our unique organizational culture. Ensure your company has a common purpose, vision, and set of values. If not, start there, and then work through the list!

• Don’t let your company values be just a plaque on a wall. Implement peer-to-peer recognition platforms linked directly to company values, and coach leaders on how to use storytelling to make those values tangible.
• Promote communities of belonging. Actively support the creation of virtual employee resource groups (ERGs) and implement a structured virtual mentorship program or impact program to help employees combat isolation, contribute meaningfully, and accelerate their career development.

Cultivating a meaningful culture for remote employees shouldn’t be confined to a single program; it should connect to the organization’s larger cultural ecosystem. As HR leaders, we build the foundation of that system, using both stories and data to prove a powerful concept: investing in employee connection and organizational cohesion drives greater employee engagement and retention.

Our mandate is to nurture an environment that makes the invisible visible and builds a culture that not only survives but thrives in the era of remote work.

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