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Talent, talent and talent—that’s the key to a great company.

Yet finding the right talent has become more challenging, particularly if your search is limited to a local candidate pool. With baby boomers retiring, that problem is about to increase substantially. The rumored talent gap in insurance is real, and it’s growing.

Fortunately, remote workers are a viable, if not perfect, option for today’s workforce. It’s not just a trend; remote work is becoming the ultimate business disruption. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 43 percent of all work in the U.S. in 2017 was done remotely. The change is being driven by today’s employee. According to a Buffer report, 90 percent of remote workers plan on working remotely for the rest of their careers.

With a growing worker shortage and more workers demanding better work-life balance, the time is now for companies to learn how to incorporate virtual workers into their current staff and create a culture that includes remote workers.

That culture matters. Whether you’re moving toward a smaller office with some employees working remotely or you’ve decided to work completely virtually, you need to engage your employees no matter where they’re located.

That’s no small task. However, despite traditional thinking, a company’s culture and an employee’s sense of belonging to the corporate family is not about real estate or physically being in the same office with each other.

The research is clear that a majority of employees are not engaged at work even when they work in an office. In fact, a TINYpulse survey shows that 91 percent of remote employees believe they get more work done remotely than in a traditional office setting.

So do their employers. A study conducted by 15Five reveals that 21 percent of employers say they saw an improvement in productivity and performance in remote workers when compared with their in-house staff.

How do you engage your virtual workers? What won’t work: antiquated, status-quo management methods that require your employees to be onsite five days a week. Engaging your employees does not require physical presence and proximity; rather, it requires retooling how you instill a sense of belonging to your employees.

The Remote Culture

One virtual company I know has figured out how to build success through its virtual workforce. The company created an engaged, high-performing team and a caring corporate culture that has purpose.

From the outset, the company held firm to the standard that all employees would be treated with respect and dignity. Working with the belief that responsible employees are ones who feel valued, the owner worked hard to build processes that would make each employee feel like part of the corporate family.

That meant finding methods to engage employees, make them feel like part of the team, and support and motivate them in working toward a common goal. The first thing to go: performance reviews.

Why? Because today’s performance review serves to treat employees like children. In fact, the way we manage today is old-fashioned. A performance review is much like a report card, and often workers have no way of knowing about issues until their performance reviews

Instead, the virtual company’s managers meet with each of their employees once a month using a shared OneNote folder. The folder contains questions about work, goals and family. Problems are resolved and performance issues are addressed as they happen, not once or twice a year.

These monthly one-on-one meetings also help the company identify bad performers and cultural misfits. The owner believes a virtual company cannot afford one poor performer or one performer who does not fit the corporate culture.

Another policy the virtual company implemented that differs greatly from traditional business: a take-what-you-need time-off policy. As long as another team member is covering that employee’s work and the employee does not make it habitual, employees are free to address life’s issues without worrying about their jobs. The focus is on results, not days off.

Also, onboarding employees is a hands-on process. A new employee shadows not just the employee in their department who trains them but also employees in other departments. That gives them a thorough understanding of how the entire company works, as well as a bird’s-eye view of the company culture. In many brick-and-mortar companies, employees don’t shadow across other departments.

What isn’t there: training literature and company policy handbooks designed to be the employee’s sole source of assistance. Also not there is having employees shadow just those people in their department. For employees to truly engage in the company goals, they must understand how their job duties fit within the scope of what the company is trying to accomplish.

Also, by losing unnecessary things like performance reviews and a set number of personal days, the company was able to show respect and trust. Employees rewarded the company with the same respect and trust given.

Virtual Perks

That respect extends to employee perks. Just because a company is virtual does not mean it is stripped bare of rewards. Without the expenses or overhead from maintaining a corporate headquarters, the money saved goes toward twice-annual retreats at destination-style resorts for workers and their spouses or partners. At the retreats, the workers engage in team-building activities, games and charitable endeavors. Also, they work together to solve problems and to develop strategies going forward that will improve the company and culture.

Something else happens at the retreats: employees bond. Without the usual office stresses and politics that come with a traditional in-house staff, the virtual team is able to connect on an extraordinary level.

Back in their home offices, employees are still engaged with their co-workers. Video team chats and conferences allow workers to reach out and problem-solve, albeit virtually. And communication is high—the team communicates with each other more than if they were working in an office together. Why? Because they don’t take that communication for granted.

The company doesn’t take traditionally celebrated events for granted, either. Holiday parties are part of the calendar year, and employees gather virtually for the party, all wearing their holiday attire. One year, the company gave employees mugs with inspirational sayings printed around the inside. Every employee received a mug prior to the party, each with a different saying. During the party, employees read their sayings aloud with their decorated home offices as backdrops.

The same virtual party atmosphere is used when an employee retires. At one party, the company sent employees cupcakes in a jar. Each employee received two cupcake jars with different flavors, and the jars were labeled with well wishes for the retiree. Delivered the day before the party, the cupcakes were “shared” at the virtual video party and everyone had a chance to wish the retiree well.

Why Virtual Matters

So, why tell this story? Because carriers are in a great position to lead their companies toward rethinking how they view staffing, thus getting ahead of the current talent shortage in insurance. As the story of the virtual company illustrates, the old adage “You can’t supervise employees you can’t see” no longer fits with today’s workforce.

Also, any belief that employees will take advantage if they are not managed in person or measured using old methods of performance measurement and set time-off rules are false. In fact, most policies and procedures were written with 10 percent of the workforce in mind—that 10 percent are the ones who will take advantage.

The current management model used by countless organizations is based on punishing great employees in anticipation of bad behavior by a small minority of employees. It creates a counterproductive dynamic. Employees who are not respected do not engage fully in their work. However, if you establish the right culture, your employees will be more productive for you.

In this Information Age, where collaboration is critical to business success, we need to embrace a staffing disruption that sheds old management styles and thinking. It starts with knowing that most employees want to contribute. We who have managed and worked in virtual organizations know that the majority of employees and managers are responsible, trustworthy people. They don’t want performance reviews—they want respect.

We know that when employees work remotely, even part-time, they are more productive than when they are office-based. We know that engaging employees and building a stronger company does not depend on having four common walls around us. And we know that if we create a great culture where employees feel they have purpose and are engaged, they can share ideas that can make a positive impact on operations.

The future of employment is that more people will be working remotely as they seek a better quality of life. It also calls for us to adapt to this new dynamic and create a great culture to accommodate a growing remote workforce.

When you create a virtual company, you must think out of the box about how to create a truly amazing culture with high-performing employees. If a virtual company can succeed with forward-thinking management principles, so can all companies.

So can your company.