5 Ways to Show Love to Your Work-from-Home Agents

This Valentine’s Day, we at Five9 want your company to show some love to your remote agents! 2020 was quickly met with a frantic shift to working from home which is now a thing of the past as workers have settled into the virtual lifestyle. Companies now must work to implement effective methods to foster an enjoyable and company culture as employees continue to work from home.  

Maintaining a positive culture is so important for companies operating remotely—here are 5 ways to make sure your contact center agents are feeling the love! 

1. Incorporate collaboration tools that align with your company culture 

Many agents can feel isolated while working remotely, but technology can connect us in ways that create a sense of community and teamwork, even in a remote setting. Finding collaboration tools that fit with the lifestyles of your employees can make connecting with each other significantly easier and ensure that no one is facing the challenge of working from home alone. For example, at Five9, we use Slack to quickly communicate with colleagues. We even have a series of Slack channels targeted at connecting over common hobbies like book clubs, pets, cooking and music. This makes for a quick and easy way for colleagues to stay connected while working remotely. 

2. Host virtual meetings 

Before we shifted to working fully from home, many joked about how many meetings could have simply been an email update. While it has been nice to efficiently communicate instead of attending unnecessary meetings, it is still important to make sure that your employees connect with each other through virtual meetings. Through communication across multiple mediums is vital to working from home, being able to chat face-to-face on a regular basis helps to make sure that everyone is heard and part of the team. 

3. Provide remote training options 

Let’s be honest, there is a big difference between in-person training and remote training. Training adapted specifically to a remote setting helps agents working from home to maintain momentum online and to feel confident in their work from home capabilities. Integrated eLearning tools assists agents in tackling challenges and provides a sense of support for workers. Additionally, incorporating virtual training that enables access to instructors and peers while fostering an open question forum is also beneficial to remote workers. 

4. Provide performance visibility through maintaining supervision 

Working from home means that there is a chance for employees to feel underappreciated for their work, as employees can often feel they lack the visibility they had when working in-person. By maintaining supervision, managers can ensure that they are informed of their agents’ actions and can recognize their accomplishments just as they would in-person. Keeping up with everything from performance metrics to birthdays can make sure that employees feel valued when working from home. 

5. Promote an engaging company culture 

While providing the right tools is vital to an engaging company culture, planning inclusive events on a regular basis ensures that employees have a space to connect that feels casual, even online. At Five9, we host Thursday’s In the Cloud, a monthly event in which the whole company is informed of company news in a themed setting! Events like these encourage employees to actively participate in the company culture and shape what it means to work remotely. 

Learn more about engaging work from home agents here.