18 Ways Companies Build Community with Remote Employees
Building a strong community with remote employees requires more than video calls and instant messaging. We asked industry experts to share one thing their company does to create a sense of belonging for remote employees. From culture buddies for new hires to weekly recognition meetings, these approaches help organizations foster genuine connection and engagement across distributed teams, creating bonds that contribute to a cohesive company culture.
- Run Active Self-Organized Discord Community Channels
- Gather Weekly for Updates and Fun
- Pair New Hires With Culture Buddies
- Include Remote Workers on Client Teams
- Transform Work Updates Into Identity Updates
- Schedule Weekly Fireplace Conversations About Anything
- Host Coffee Chats and Weekly Recognition Meetings
- Build Trust Through Consistent Intentional Communication
- Leverage Employee Resource Groups for Connection
- Utilize Slack for Weekly Connections
- Organize Cross-Team Show and Tell Sessions
- Maintain Casual Human Connections Before Meetings
- Prioritize Communication Through Preferred Platforms
- Conduct Quick Daily Standup Video Meetings
- Hold Weekly Design Debriefs for Collaboration
- Normalize Visible Honest Status Updates Companywide
- Share Weekly Agendas and Friday Voice Notes
- Balance Core Routines With Individual Flexibility
Run Active Self-Organized Discord Community Channels
Our approach to belonging has grown out of real habits, not handbooks.
We run everything on Discord. The community channels are active and self-organized, from reading and content clubs to niche spaces like geopolitics, crypto, F1, and even stock market analysis. People show up because they care, not because they have to. You can see a snapshot of the clubs we’ve got running.
Every Friday before we log off for the weekend, we host an hour-long team hangout. It’s usually games, icebreakers, or whatever helps people unwind. No slides, no agendas.
We’ve also started a weekly internal podcast. Three people from different teams hop on to talk about a shared topic. It’s casual and unstructured, but most of the time the topic fades and people end up just talking about their hobbies, side projects, or random things they’re into. And that’s what makes it work.
Gather Weekly for Updates and Fun
We have a remote-friendly setup, and I know how easy it is for remote teams to lose that human connection. That’s why every week, our entire team meets on a company-wide video call. It’s a simple rhythm that keeps everyone in touch, no matter where they are in the world.
We start with company updates, then shift into something fun like trivia games or light team-building activities. People also post photos from their weekend, and that helps everyone see the person behind the job title. Those small, genuine moments help bridge the distance that remote work creates.
Over time, this routine has built real friendships and trust across continents. There’s more laughter, more openness, and a shared sense of belonging. Even though we’re remote, the culture feels closer than most offices I’ve worked in.
Pair New Hires With Culture Buddies
One of the most effective ways we create a sense of belonging for remote workers is by pairing every new hire with a “culture buddy” in the first month. This is not a manager but a peer who shows them the company’s unwritten rules, traditions, and style of communication. Such an informal relationship encourages open dialogue and connection over and beyond work topics and helps new employees feel integrated faster. Over time, it has created a far stronger sense of community and trust across time zones, making our remote culture more cohesive and engaged.
Include Remote Workers on Client Teams
One of the most powerful ways we build belonging is by making sure every remote employee feels like part of their client’s team, not a contractor on the outside. We encourage clients to include offshore team members in meetings, recognition programs, and provide company swag so they can proudly represent the brand they support.
Internally, we reinforce connection through engagement events, virtual contests, and recognition programs that celebrate achievements across all locations. Whether someone sits in Honolulu, Bogotá, or Davao, they’re part of one culture: collaborative, transparent, and people-first. That consistency builds trust and cohesion, turning remote teams into true extensions of our clients’ organizations.
Transform Work Updates Into Identity Updates
If there’s one thing organizations can do to create a sense of belonging for remote employees, it’s to turn work updates into identity updates. In remote settings, people often talk about tasks, deadlines met, projects shipped, hours logged. But belonging isn’t born from productivity; it’s born from personhood.
So instead of asking, “What did you complete this week?” ask, “What did you learn about yourself while doing it?”
This simple shift transforms a transactional check-in into a moment of reflection and connection. Employees start to express pride, vulnerability, and growth, and colleagues begin to see each other as people with evolving stories, not just avatars with deliverables. Over time, this practice weaves emotional texture into digital workspaces. It tells employees: you’re not just here to perform, you’re here to become. And that feeling of being witnessed in your growth is the deepest form of belonging any workplace can offer.
Schedule Weekly Fireplace Conversations About Anything
We have weekly “fireplace” conversations where we sit down for an hour to talk about something that a team member picks that day. It could be their family, a hobby they’re excited about, the situation in their country, a new tool or platform they discovered… Anything that comes to mind. The idea is to give everyone a space to express themselves and have some watercooler conversations outside of Slack.
I think the biggest impact it had is that we learned about each other outside of work quite a bit more. I now know if my team members have any family that lives with them, pets, hobbies and interests outside of work. It’s a very small time investment with huge payoffs. Just don’t schedule this on a Friday afternoon if you want actual participation.
Host Coffee Chats and Weekly Recognition Meetings
Creating a sense of belonging for remote employees starts with sincere and informal communication. One effective approach is “coffee chats” between departments on Zoom. These gatherings help employees talk to colleagues they don’t often work with. Over time, this results in genuine and sincere relationships that reduce the feeling of isolation.
Another approach is hosting a weekly meeting where everyone shares updates, personal wins, or challenges. In this meeting, we appreciate our hard work and discuss how we can maintain our team’s achievements. When remote workers are recognized in front of everyone at meetings, this leads to them working more consistently.
By combining formal and informal interaction, remote employees feel appreciated. When they feel appreciated, they become more communicative, confident, and eager to help develop the company. As a result, company culture improves. Unhappy remote employees can’t help develop the company, but appreciated ones can.
Build Trust Through Consistent Intentional Communication
One thing we mainly focus on to create a sense of belonging for our remote employees is building real human connections through consistent, intentional communication. We always make sure to hold virtual meetings and check-ins to ask how they feel and if they need anything. We ask them to share their wins, personal milestones, and even challenges through casual conversations. Aside from casual meetings, we also created virtual spaces where they can connect with each other and bond over their shared interests, like wellness, volunteering, or professional development. These kinds of efforts help everyone feel connected and supported, even if they’re miles away from each other. This approach also helps us strengthen our company culture by building trust and comfort for our employees who are working remotely. I still strongly believe that collaborating more openly will make your employees feel more connected, and they will feel more comfortable. And if they’re more connected, they will be more motivated to contribute ideas that will help the company grow and move forward.
Leverage Employee Resource Groups for Connection
What’s really helped me build a sense of belonging among our remote team has been tapping into our Employee Resource Groups (ERGs). When we shifted to remote work, I noticed how easy it was for people to feel isolated — the spontaneous, “How’s your day going?” moments just disappeared. I didn’t want our culture to lose that human connection, so we encouraged our ERGs to take the lead in bringing people together.
At first, it started small — a few interest-based groups organizing virtual coffee hours and support circles. One of our most active ones is the “Women in Leadership” group, which began hosting casual lunchtime chats where people share real experiences, wins, and even frustrations. Over time, these groups turned into trusted spaces where people felt safe to speak up and be themselves.
What surprised me most was how these connections started spilling over into work. Collaboration improved, people started mentoring across departments, and the overall engagement felt stronger. From a company perspective, we’ve seen this translate into better retention and a more inclusive, cohesive culture — one that doesn’t depend on being in the same office to feel like a team.
For me, the biggest takeaway is that belonging doesn’t happen by accident — you have to create intentional spaces for it. Our ERGs have done exactly that, and they’ve become one of the most powerful, long-term investments in our company culture.
Utilize Slack for Weekly Connections
Technology has provided several unique benefits to the workplace culture that exists today. At Steady, we utilize technology to our advantage for our remote employees. Slack is an integrative tool we use and incorporate into weekly check-in questions and opportunities for team wins/shout-outs to stay connected to each other. Having multiple ways to connect on a human level makes a huge difference given the work we do.
Organize Cross-Team Show and Tell Sessions
One thing we’ve found really helps remote employees feel connected is hosting regular cross-team “show-and-tell” sessions. People share wins, challenges, or even personal projects, and it’s a chance to connect as individuals, not just coworkers.
These sessions make a difference: they create empathy, open communication, and a sense of shared understanding. When people feel seen and heard, no matter where they are, collaboration naturally improves, and everyone feels more engaged and invested in what we’re building together.
Maintain Casual Human Connections Before Meetings
My company has a 100% remote team spread across four continents, and one way I create a sense of belonging for our remote employees is by keeping casual human connections alive. Before every meeting, we all catch up on what’s happening in our specific countries.
This could be news, a random fact, or even something funny. It may sound small, but it makes a huge difference. When people feel seen and heard as humans, not just employees, collaboration improves naturally, even across time zones.
Prioritize Communication Through Preferred Platforms
We prioritize frequent communication through our employees’ preferred platforms to create a sense of belonging for our remote team members. We pair this with providing kind feedback, understanding individual team needs, and ensuring every employee has the tools necessary to succeed in their role. Our team members have confirmed this approach makes them feel valued and engaged with their work. This commitment to open communication has been essential in building a cohesive culture where remote employees feel fully integrated into our company.
Conduct Quick Daily Standup Video Meetings
We hold quick daily standup video meetings where everyone shares updates and a bit about their day. It keeps the team connected on both a personal and professional level, helping remote employees feel part of the same rhythm. Those small, face-to-face moments build trust and familiarity, turning a dispersed team into a cohesive, supportive culture.
Hold Weekly Design Debriefs for Collaboration
We’ve found that building a sense of belonging in a remote-first manufacturing company has nothing to do with virtual happy hours or mandatory team-building activities, and everything to do with problem-solving together. Each week, we hold what we affectionately term “Design Debriefs.” It’s where engineers, project managers, and operations leads hop onto one open meeting to discuss what’s being built, what’s winning over new clients, and even the occasional glitch in the system.
These meetings are where our virtual shop floor is happening. It doesn’t matter if people are calling in from Shenzhen or Seattle; it gives everybody a look at how their piece of the puzzle is a part of the whole thing. This is important; it gives people a reminder that they’re not alone in what they’re doing, that they’re part of a community that is making something tangible that gets shipped around the globe.
It is this purpose that enables culture to build upon itself. They feel understood, appreciated, and linked in via the work, and that is what keeps the company running, regardless of the time zone.
Normalize Visible Honest Status Updates Companywide
One of the most quiet but powerful changes we’ve made to our remote culture is to normalize visible, honest status updates on Slack, and to treat them as a source for the team to manage burnout and boundaries, not just a way for devs to queue issues.
Anyone on the team can set a status like “Notifications off — walking dog,” “Heads down: product sketches,” or “Doctor’s appt, back at noon.” What’s not obvious is what else these micro-permission slips do. They give other people permission to obey their own rules without having to worry about extending apologies to the group or other implicit pressure to respond they’re wirelessly receiving anytime they set foot near their computer. When people can trust that there’s a valve on availability, which the people in charge open and close explicitly, it reduces anxiety.
We rolled this out during a period of growth when people were anxious about burnout and the “always on” nature of their work. By showing explicit, real-world priorities in work channels, sometimes just “Going to parent-teacher conference,” we asked and got an informal survey response from 94% of the Cords Club team that they’d feel “comfortable” or “very comfortable” about shutting their computers to protect offline life, vs. less than 60% before we started explicitly setting statuses. This didn’t just reduce burnout; it created a new form of belonging. We started seeing people show visible care about each other’s lives outside work, which hadn’t been part of the culture before. This is a very subtle change — you wouldn’t notice it if you just looked at the company from the outside — but it changed the culture in the direction of trusting people as humans first.
How startup leaders can copy this idea.
If you want to propagate this idea of building belonging in distributed teams, do it by making visible status updates into a leadership ritual instead of “best practice.” Encourage people, from senior designers to interns, to signal when they’re “heads down,” “out of touch,” or just living their lives. This will, over time, work as a pump handle for the valves of belonging in your company. It’ll become clear that the source of belonging is not responding to Slack late at night, but the rules for response that people explicitly follow.
Share Weekly Agendas and Friday Voice Notes
Our company was born to rid businesses of complex processes and bureaucratic documentation while insuring themselves. After years of working, we as a team have reached a point where we’ve made business insurance truly simple. And we got here because we built a culture where we believe in each other and work closely to bring our ideas to life.
We do things differently.
Every Monday, our leadership team shares an agenda for remote employees. It doesn’t include targets or numbers to hit, but focuses on what needs to be done, what roadblocks we might face, and who’s accountable. It sets clear expectations when we work remotely.
On Fridays, our remote team shares voice notes about anything they observed, learned, or just funny, random moments from the week. Our marine cargo specialist once shared his thoughts on industry trends while stuck in traffic. It strengthened our sense of belonging even though we’re connected only digitally. We’ve even made it a rule to reply to every voice note with another voice note!
We don’t clock in and out at rigid times or use trackers to monitor our remote employees. Why? Because we trust them, just as they trust us. We believe accountability comes from passion and the desire to build something meaningful.
Recently, our HR team started a monthly mental wellness program where we can speak to a certified psychologist about any mental discomfort we face. It’s part of our buddy program, which offers mental health support to all remote employees.
What we do isn’t revolutionary. But it’s real. And that’s what actually moves the needle.
Balance Core Routines With Individual Flexibility
As we’ve been remote-first since day one, creating a sense of belonging for our global workforce has been one of the most crucial keys to our success. One of the ways we’ve achieved this is by recognizing that our global team is made up of individuals with distinct needs. Rather than demanding that people fit an outdated corporate mold, we give space to our team to harmonize their work and personal lives. While the way this looks depends on each person and their role, we work by balancing core routines with trust in individuals to shape the rest of their work experience. Over the years, this has delivered a strong and cohesive company culture that helps our team maximize whole-life harmony no matter where they’re based around the globe.
