An online workplace community is an internet-based gathering and sharing place created to foster better relationships between people who work together. A positive online community can benefit everyone in an organization.
However, it is especially beneficial where remote teams are involved. Online communities provide an opportunity for everyone to connect with all their team members, not just the ones who happen to work on site.
Have you considered creating an online workplace? There are several benefits to doing so.
What is an Online Workplace?
An online workplace is a digital gathering place where people who work together can communicate and share information. It is possible to create a workplace community that is all business. However, it’s common for these communities to become places where workers connect on a personal level.
Think of it as a bit like the office itself. There are water cooler conversations, celebrations, team building, and work happening in the same space.
Where Are Online Workplace Communities?
There’s no rule dictating that you must use a specific platform to create a workplace internet community. Some of the places where you can build these communities include:
- Private groups or pages on social media platforms
- Collaborative apps and software such as Slack
- Dedicated websites
- Online forums and communities
Whatever your organization chooses, just be aware of privacy concerns that might exist depending on the specific software or platform you use. Most platforms are pretty secure, as long as you take the time to learn about their security features and set them up correctly.
The benefits of online workplaces are many and varied, so let’s look at some of the more obvious ones.
Making Information Available Always
An online community is a great place to create a knowledge base and provide a platform for sharing expertise.
Imagine being out of the office and needing specific information about a product or service or one of your company policies. If you incorporate an online knowledge base into your work community, that information will be at your fingertips.
Online workplace communities are also perfect for creating question-and-answer forums and providing room for experts from different departments to help people with advice and mentoring.
Helping Remote Teams Connect
Remote work is one of the key reasons that online communities are becoming more popular than ever. Even before the pandemic, companies were trending towards using remote workers and even hiring people globally.
The downside is that it can be difficult for people who aren’t in the office making person-to-person connections to truly feel like they are a part of the team. Those minor social interactions that happen at the office do have an important impact.
While an online workplace may not be able to duplicate that exactly, it can make a positive impact by helping to create a positive work culture for all employees.
Hosting and Planning Employee Events
It is important to hold employee events and team-building activities to connect and make work a more enjoyable place. Online workspaces can be used as an organizational tool for planning events and a platform for online get-togethers.
Remote workers can participate in online happy hours, game and trivia tournaments, even movie nights. Company leaders can also use online workplace communities to announce and coordinate in-person events.
Providing a Collaboration Space
Many platforms that have become popular for these communities offer various tools and technologies to support collaboration. This collaboration includes document sharing, breakout conference rooms, web or video conferencing, screen sharing, and group messaging.
Used on its own or combined with other communication and collaboration software, an online platform can improve a project team’s ability to work together and meet their goals.
Sharing News and Information
All too often, efforts at corporate communication tend to fall flat. Company newsletters tend to be ignored because they’re simply too easy to set aside. Workers may go weeks or months without even thinking about signing into a company intranet site if they aren’t given a reason.
On the other hand, an active, engaging internet community is different. It can draw workers in to check on the latest news and connect with their coworkers.
That makes these platforms a perfect place for sharing company news and information. It’s even possible to boost worker engagement by encouraging team members to share employee-generated content.
Creating Equality Among Employees
Tension can be created in the workplace when remote workers feel they don’t have equitable access to technologies, advice, information, or opportunities. Unfortunately, in many cases, their impressions are correct.
While remote workers might enjoy more flexibility, those who work in the office are often at an advantage in other ways. They tend to learn about organizational changes first. Additionally, being in the office provides the benefit of being aware of changes in the culture that could cause concern.
To be clear, an online community won’t erase all of these disparities. However, it can make communication and sharing much more likely.
Creating an Online Workplace Community
Creating an online community for a work team can be as simple as making a dedicated Facebook page or group. It can be as complex as building an internet community from scratch with all of the features you desire.
Before you get started, make sure you have a clear understanding of what you want to accomplish with this community. This process should include gathering feedback from remote workers to better understand what they may be missing by not being in the office.
