8 Essential Company Culture Tools For Distributed Teams

Company culture – the phrase we hear everywhere, every day, but rarely see defined and itemized. For us at Gable, company culture is a set of practices, procedures, and rules that define how people work together, communicate, and express themselves in the workplace. And these practices seem to be gaining more value for employees by the day.

Remote work, distributed workforces, The Great Resignation, workplace experience, and employee well-being – all these are both challenges and opportunities for People teams on their way to creating a top-notch workplace culture.

The market for company culture tools can sometimes be overwhelming and it’s hard to distill what purpose each tool has and how it complements others you are already using. So here’s our handy list of favorite tools to boost company culture, from a perspective of a global, distributed team.

Slack

We can’t really talk about company culture in distributed teams without mentioning the one tool that makes it all possible: Slack. Slack has become the virtual headquarters of every distributed team (and many office-based ones!) and we can’t imagine a remote team working without it.

Slack makes communication with coworkers and teams incredibly easy, regardless of where they are. Remote teams use Slack channels for everything from daily tasks and urgent matters to team bonding and sending pet photos (guilty as charged).

However, maybe the coolest thing about Slack is the incredible amount of integrations, especially with other tools from this list. You can connect your favorites and design a killer distributed workplace, with Slack as the main hub.

ClickUp

ClickUp is the productivity and transparency hub of remote teams and another tool that makes remote work possible. With ClickUp, you organize workloads and tasks, collaborate with the whiteboard, keep information neat with docs, and work together with goals.

Distributed work requires communication, documentation, and transparency at a much higher level than office-based work. ClickUp makes that happen easily, so everyone can see what’s on their and the plate of their teammates, and contribute to goals and strategies.

Streamlining and simplifying how remote workers collaborate and work together is essential for creating a culture of communication and transparency – and ClickUp does an excellent job in achieving that.

Gable

Gable is a centralized platform for remote workspaces and managing the distributed workplace. With Gable, employees can find and book workspaces close to them and join coworkers. HR & People operations managers can manage budgets and usage policies easily and stay in the know.

You can set budgets by employee, department, and the whole company and manage usage, get reports, and see trends and employee feedback – all in one place. Gable also has a set of available integrations – from HRIS to SSO and communication tools – enabling a holistic workplace experience.

Building a distributed and remote culture is no longer a perk, but an essential part of your company culture. Gable helps managers foster collaboration, in-person connections, flexibility, and support for what each employee needs – wherever they work from.

Kona

Kona is your company’s culture officer that lives inside Slack as an integration. It’s a daily check-in tool to help employees communicate, and managers foster transparency and offer help when needed.

Kona encourages employees to share how they feel every day and why – creating an atmosphere where it’s okay to say you feel stressed about a deadline or proud about your kid getting an A in school.

For managers, Kona delivers visibility into how employees are feeling, as well as trends that help you catch issues like burnout early and prevent them with simple actions. And the best thing? You can set up Kona in just 5 mins!

Yac

Yac is the voice and video messaging platform aiming to replace meetings with asynchronous communication. It’s perfect for teams who want to spend less time in recurring or ad-hoc Zoom calls and focus on getting work done.

An async-first approach to communication is what makes remote work exceptional, as that is just the factor that allows coworkers from different time zones and schedules to work together even if their calendars and availability don’t overlap.

With Yac, remote teams get an essential tool for shifting to an async-first culture, while still being able to share essential information or hold daily stand-in meetings.

OfficeVibe

OfficeVibe is a platform with which People managers can listen, understand, and manage their remote employees better. Every company that wants to take a regular pulse of how employees feel can now do it from a single place.

OfficeVibe offers everything from pulse surveys and anonymous feedback to one-on-ones and manager insights. All topics and ways of getting insight are covered, and it’s super easy to set up and use since it integrates not only with Slack, but suites like Microsoft Teams and Google Workspace.

For employees, this platform gives them the feeling of being heard and the ease of sharing how they feel and why. For managers, OfficeVibe helps them build trust, analyze what employees say, and act to improve.

Gatheround

If you came to this article in search of a tool to facilitate team bonding for distributed workers, look no further than Gatheround. This tool makes cracking your culture code easy, with its plethora of activities for team bonding, new hire onboarding, and employee recognition.

You can use templates with pre-created questions or add your own discussion topic, and events you can organize range from all-hands social time to birthday celebrations and work anniversaries.

For those on your team who organize and host the events, Gatheround has a Host orientation session to help you get the most out of your team activities and make them memorable for everyone.

Headspace

Headspace is an app for employee wellbeing that emphasizes meditation, mindfulness, sleep, and focus and is tailored for the modern workplace. Employers who use Headspace show that they care about their employees’ mental health and overall wellbeing on an enterprise level.

Managers can tailor the programs and exercises for their employees making them easy to access and use. Additionally, managers can see and monitor the impact of the program with the employer dashboard and resources.

Headspace has a special support team for enterprise users to help them set up and launch their wellbeing program, so if your company hasn’t tried out wellbeing apps before, you’ll have a steady hand to guide you through the process.

Strengthen your company culture

Using all available tools at your disposal to strengthen and showcase your company culture makes your job easier, and leaves you more time to focus on what your employees need and how to achieve it better.

With Gable, you’ll weave remote workspaces and the distributed workplace right into your company DNA in no time.

Schedule a demo with Gable today and turn remote work from a hassle to a homerun.