I'm the CEO of a company with 177 employees that's been entirely remote for 13 years. Here are 5 ways we built a thriving remote work culture.

Hire the right people

It's obvious but crucial: You cannot build a successful remote business without hiring employees who excel in that environment. If you're hiring remote employees, you should consider that environment a key point in evaluating whether a candidate is the right fit for your organization.

We've made our remote work policy a part of our interview process. This includes asking candidates if they've considered how they'd make the adjustment. It also involves reminding candidates that not everybody thrives working from home and ensuring applicants are aware of this before accepting the job.

Remote companies shouldn't promise applicants they'll love working from home and dismiss any concerns out of hand. A key driver of any effective culture is an honest hiring process — businesses need to be clear with candidates about what they value and what they expect, allowing applicants to candidly consider whether that culture fits their needs.

Beyond that, screen for certain candidate traits. Ask interviewees: Do they have trouble setting their own schedule and staying disciplined? Are they self-motivated? These questions will help reveal if a person is right for a remote environment.

Invest in technology

Technology makes it easier than ever for teams to stay connected while working remotely. To ensure employees can connect personally and collaborate professionally, businesses often invest in video conferencing software such as Zoom, GoToMeeting, and Skype, and project-management tools such as Slack and Asana.

Video is an absolute must for remote teams. Conducting as many communications as possible over video calls, rather than phone, ensures employees are more engaged, personally connected and invested in the success of the team.

These types of tools are also crucial for onboarding new employees, or transitioning a team to a remote environment. Employees need to know their organization is committed to making the remote work lifestyle as comfortable and effective as possible, and these technology investments go a long way in assuring that.

Create organizational transparency

It can be normal, especially in larger companies, for employees to feel disconnected from senior leadership. Under the wrong conditions, this can be especially true in remote organizations, where an employee may go their entire tenure without having a one-on-one conversation with an executive.

Leaders of remote organizations must proactively address this problem. We've made top-down transparency a foundational part of our culture. This includes having biweekly all company briefings where our senior leadership team reports our company financials, progressing sales deals and operational initiatives to the entire company in real time.

When a company's leadership is transparent — and invites regular questions and feedback — it creates an environment of trust for employees. In a remote environment, it's vital for workers to feel safe to be open about their workloads and to bring any potential issues to leadership before they become unfixable.

Host face-to-face company meetings

While remote employees spend most of their time working from home, it's important to create opportunities for workers to interact in person, even just a few times each year. While having an annual in-person meeting is a great start — ours is called AP Summit — there are other creative steps businesses can take to foster in-person connections on their teams.

As part of our hiring strategy, we organize most of the company into what we call "hubs," cities where large collections of our employees are based. This allows us to have semi-annual "Hub Meetings," where large groups of our employees gather to connect in person and share feedback with senior leadership in attendance. It also facilitates regular collaboration days, in-person trainings and social events.

While remote organizations can't recreate an office environment completely, prioritizing face-to-face meetings goes a long way in bringing your team closer together.

Prioritize professional development

Companies thrive when employees are consistently learning and growing, rising to meet the new challenges as the business grows. Likewise, most employees want a clear path for advancement at work and want their leaders to help them grow even if they aren't at an office every day.

Leaders need to make professional development a top priority — this includes creating virtual courses that employees can take on company best practices and policies, creating mentoring groups where senior team members can share knowledge with new ones, and setting aside time and resources for in-person trainings.

At our company we've taken this a step further — to develop our future senior leaders internally, we've started holding regular, in-person Advanced Leadership Training workshops where employees gather to learn from experts on how to grow their personal and professional leadership skills.

Building a great remote culture isn't easy, especially for organizations that need to make a sudden transition to this workplace model. However, most organizations can develop the culture they need to thrive in this environment if they make it a priority. By creating transparency and trust, hiring the right people, and investing in employee growth and enabling technology, business leaders can create a remote organization that doesn't just match a traditional work model, but outperforms it.

Robert Glazer is the founder and CEO of Acceleration Partners, a global partner marketing agency and the recipient of numerous industry and company culture awards, including Glassdoor's Employees' Choice Awards two years in a row. He is the author of the inspirational newsletter Friday Forward, the books Elevate and Performance Partnerships, and host of The Elevate Podcast.