How do you make your remote presence felt in an RTO world?
How do you maintain visibility, connection and relevance in a work environment where all your colleagues are going back to the office but you’re still working from home?
It’s the latest challenge not only for remote workers but also for HR managers, as the return-to-office movement gets stronger.
Jennifer Dulski — founder of the team-building platform Rising Team, which works with companies like Adobe, Facebook and Weight Watchers — approaches remote presence from the perspective of empathy, noting that people often become so focused on themselves that they forget the best way to build relationships is to put others in the spotlight.
“The better you understand people as humans, the easier it is to work with them,” she said. “And when you’re not physically together, you lack the sort of coincidental time … so you have to take intentional time to get to know people.”
One handy tool Dulski recommends is what she calls user manuals, personal guides created by individual team members designating how they prefer to work and communicate. “Everybody creates a manual for working with them — like, if you were an appliance, what should I know about how you operate?” she said. “That can be extremely helpful, especially in virtual settings.”
It’s essential that remote workers be proactive rather than wait for an invitation to contribute, said Dulski. “How do I get a seat at the table? Everybody wants a seat at the table, but I say you don’t need to be offered a seat,” she said. “You can, you know, Shirley Chisholm-style, pull up a folding chair … bringing ideas that are good and by offering to help.”
Another pro tip: always keep your camera on during video meetings. “You cannot build relationships or presence with other people looking at a blank screen,” as she put it.
Likewise, Luck Dookchitra, vp of people at HR platform Leapsome, recommends that remote employees proactively engage with their in-office colleagues across shared channels, as well as respond promptly to group chats and give props to coworkers whenever suitable, ideally by way of an employee-recognition program. Presence isn’t just about work tasks, she emphasizes, but about joining conversations around non-work topics to show the full range of who you are — something that is naturally more challenging when you’re not face-to-face.
Annie Rosencrans, director of people and culture at HR platform HiBob, says remote workers should strive to balance visibility with value by regularly updating their goals and progress in shared platforms and by using one-on-ones for development-focused conversations rather than just status updates.
“Intentional communication is the new office charisma,” she said.
With the drive toward RTO and hybrid working arrangements, HR people have made it a top priority to ensure that all employees, whether remote or in-person, maintain a day-to-day presence — even if HR leaders disagree with their companies’ RTO policies. A report from Leapsome found that more than half of 1,000 HR managers surveyed feel pressured to enforce in-office mandates, even though 4 in 5 think other working models better support collaboration.
While it is true that building a remote identity requires a consistent investment of time, it’s less than one might think. In fact, Dulski proposes as little as three to four hours per quarter. Even with such limited investment, her firm has found eNPS (Employee Net Promoter Score, a metric used by organizations to measure employee satisfaction and loyalty) improves by anywhere from 50% to 200% while employee retention surges 33%.
But it’s about more than just time spent. Remote employees must be willing to give more of themselves, and consistently.
“You’ve got to go deeper than sports and the weather,” Dulski said, suggesting prompts in coworker conversations like “What’s something funny you got into trouble for as a kid?” that enable workers to reveal their most vulnerable moments. Doing so illustrates that “they are not perfect and everybody makes mistakes, and you’re building a foundation for psychological safety.”