Paylocity’s Cheryl Johnson Shares Perspectives with Forbes on Helping Remote Teams Stay Connected

Paylocity Chief Human Resources Officer Cheryl Johnson recently provided her insights to the editors of Forbes for an article about helping remote or hybrid teams stay connected.

The article provided a summary of actionable steps leaders and employees can take to stay connected, whether completely virtual or in hybrid roles. Tips ranged from scheduling virtual breaks, embracing new hobbies, creating moments of connection, or trying new technologies for collaboration.

Cheryl was quoted in a portion of the article about being proactive with status updates to avoid being out of sight, out of mind. Since Paylocity tests its own products before release to clients (a practice we call drinking our own wine), her HR team has tested most of the innovations used by thousands of clients, serving millions of employees.

She provided insights on how to help employees connect, collaborate, and communicate using Paylocity, the most complete platform for the modern workforce. Managers should already know what their remote colleagues are working on and have a proverbial “finger on the pulse” of their organization through regular one-on-one meetings. But modern technologies can help—especially when the manager works in a different location or time zone. For example, employee experiences gaining popularity include video journaling for Performance Management, creating asynchronous video updates that a manager or teammate can watch at their leisure, and posting real-time video announcements on Paylocity’s online social collaboration hub, Community.

She also pointed out that Peer Recognition is just as important as manager feedback.

“Peer recognition can provide visibility to managers but also increase connection among employees and helps them feel valued,” Johnson said. “Tools that enable and celebrate individual employee success can help build culture, especially with distributed workforces. For our most active clients, peer recognition is contagious. The number of employees receiving public recognition from their peers increases on average by more than 500% within 180 days of implementing Paylocity.”

Within Community, Paylocity’s Peer Recognition tool called “Impressions” make employees feel seen and heard. Employees can give virtual kudos to teammates that show up directly in the Community feed, so their colleagues can celebrate. Impressions for direct reports are also surfaced to managers for performance reviews.

One of Paylocity’s clients, manufacturer Revere Plastics, with 1,000 employees across nine facilities, switched to Paylocity to streamline typical processes, make communication more accessible to all employees, and build culture, ultimately driving business results. In the first year, Revere reduced the administrative time for onboarding by 25%, and saw a 70% reduction in turnover.

One priority for the company was to make Revere employees feel appreciated. Leadership wanted all employees to understand how much they meant and how much of a difference they made to customers. They rolled out Impressions, which helped to boost engagement; Revere has seen some managers give more than 1,000 impressions – including video impressions using the premium video tools built into the platform.

“It's important that everyone understands what they mean to us in the role they play and how much of a difference they make to our customers,” said Kristi Steutzer, Vice President of HR for Revere Plastics.

Amazingly, Revere employees discovered Community, started sharing messages, and giving impressions to teammates – before the HR team’s planned internal launch. The platform and the social collaboration hub were so intuitive that they went viral across the company. Soon, everyone was logging in to share personal and professional stories in addition to recognizing their peers.

Another client, real estate management company Mills Properties, has seen impressions bringing workers together across the miles. “People are seeing Impressions across 29 different properties, so they're seeing people getting recognized that they don't even know and may never meet in person, but it’s about making that connection,” said Shawn Simmons, VP of HR for Mills Properties.

Forbes, which reaches more than 60 million readers each month, “inspires the conversations that lead to change.” To read the full article on how to keep remote employees connected, read here.