How to unify a remote workforce around culture and community

If you’re one of the many internal communicators tasked with reaching a workforce that went largely remote during the pandemic, you’re not alone.

During Ragan’s Future of Communications Conference in Austin, SVP and Chief Communications Officer at the American Institutes for Research Makini Nyanteh shared how communicating with a workforce that went from 20% remote to 70% remote presented her a unique challenge to build an intentional strategy for nurturing community and culture.

Here’s what we learned:

Regardless of where you work and what you do, Nyanteh said, the culture of your organization defines communications and how you drive connection between remote teams.

“Community is really about how our employees are building relationships, and culture is really how they’re connecting to our mission and our leaders,” she explained. When mission and purpose are really important, you don’t want to leave it to chance. That’s why her team decided to be intentional about how they build community and culture.

There are two primary ways that AIR accomplishes this.

AIR has eight ERGs including ones for Black employees, Hispanic, Asian women, people with disabilities, LGBTQ+, and veterans along with a recently launched ERG for women. An interfaith employee resource group is on its way.