With teams that meet in person daily, bonding and communicating happens naturally – in the hallway, breakroom, and quick face-to-face meetings. If your team is one of the many that has recently started working remotely unexpectedly, you'll want to quickly establish new ways of working together. Now, more than ever, team leaders must proactively work to keep their teams supported, help team members be supportive of each other, and create a sense of team cohesion.

Working remotely has many benefits – especially in terms of productivity. An Indeed study found that 57% of employees surveyed felt they are more productive working from home. Even more importantly, 72% of employers agreed with those workers in that their employees have higher productivity working remotely. With 22% reporting that their employees were equally as productive at home or in the office, only 3% reported lower productivity with remote workers.

There can also, however, be some drawbacks to working remotely. The Buffer State of Remote Work found that the top three challenges reported by remote workers are unplugging after work (22%), isolation (19%), and collaborating/communication (17%). Heightened stress levels, combined with many people working remotely for the first time, mean that team leaders must purposely work on virtual team building during the current crisis. Team leaders should also encourage their team to sign off at the end of the day to avoid people working around the clock.

Here are five ways to build camaraderie on your remote team: