Remote working certainly isn’t anything new and has been the norm in a lot of larger organisations such as Banks since the 2010s due to desks, or lack of them, However, it wasn’t something I used to do regularly and was new to a lot of us when we had no choice but to work from home once the pandemic hit.
It’s been 3 years almost to the day since I started to work from home regularly and I thought I would share some of my and my client's experiences on how you can make the most of remote working from both an employee's and employer’s perspective.
Setting the ground rules
Remote work can blur the lines between work and home life, so it's important that ‘ground rules’ or ways of working are established.
It's important to set clear expectations around work hours, availability, and response times. This helps ensure that everyone is on the same page and understands what is expected of them. This can easily be done with the tech of today, setting status’ to ‘School Run’ ‘Lunch’ ‘Coffee Break’ etc on Slack or Teams gives visibility to your team, increases trust and sets boundaries.
Letting your team know when you will be available or unavailable or what typical hours you will be working throughout a work week goes a step further with setting boundaries. Everyone has home life to deal with and as a result of remote working, people may work some ‘unorthodox’ hours. Letting people know that just because you email at 9pm once the kids are asleep, doesn’t me you expect a reply!
Having flexibility around fixed reoccurring meetings. Moving a daily stand-up by 10mins might allow a team member a bit of space to get back from the school drop and avoid them logging on via their phone, disturbing the meeting and creating friction with the meeting chair.
As an employer encourage team members to take breaks and prioritise self-care. This can help prevent burnout and improve overall productivity.
Establish clear communication channels
Communication is key when it comes to remote work. This for me is the single biggest loss or challenge with remote first or fully remote environments. Quick chats in the kitchen, water fountains or in the lifts are intangible and hard to replicate remotely.
Make sure your team has a reliable means of communicating with one another, whether it's through messaging apps, video conferencing tools, or project management software.
Have regular meetings with the team to increase engagement, but make sure they are short, productive & collaborative. Don’t meet for the sake or it.
Set up slack channels, projects in Teams or WhatsApp groups where those quick questions can be asked and answered, not everything has to be a scheduled 30mins VC.
Be clear on expectations with Cameras on video calls, not every call will require people to have their cameras on, but some meetings you may feel do need everyone to be visible. Be clear, give notice and be flexible if there are the occasional reason why a team member doesn’t want their camera on.
Foster a culture of trust
Trust is important in any team, but it's especially important in a remote environment. There is nothing worse than thinking your employer doesn’t trust you and is trying to catch you out and on the flip side, it’s hard if you feel a certain team member is overstepping the mark and taking advantage of the situation.
Make sure team members feel comfortable reaching out to one another for help and support and encourage collaboration and transparency. Trust is built off the back of this.
Provide the right tools and resources
It might seem a simple one and I’d hope most organisations have this in a good place by now! But remote workers need access to the right tools and resources to do their jobs effectively
Make sure your team has the necessary hardware whether that’s webcams, headsets, desks or chairs people need the tools to effectively work remotely.
It’s important that the right software is also in place, you need messaging and video conferencing tools, such as Slack, Teams or Zoom. Collaboration tools such as Miro can also be extremely effective and allow multiple users to edit and contribute.
Training. This can be overlooked, but staff still want and require upskilling and training, make sure you have training modules in place throughout the year.
Create opportunities for team building:
Remote work can be isolating, so it's important to create opportunities for team building and social interaction.
This could be virtual team-building activities, online gaming sessions, or even just casual check-ins.
Face to Face interaction. You can still be fully remote or remote first and ask people to meet up once a month or twice a quarter, it’s vital to make sure they are productive sessions and are a good use of people’s time. Things like backlog grooming sessions, architecture meetings or domain designs might be more effectively done in person around a whiteboard.
In-person team building. This can be a really key part of having a successful remote team, it helps build relationships, which in term fosters trust and engagement. Be mindful to plan these in advance to give people a chance to arrange childcare, dog sitters or whatever else they may need. It’s also important that it is inclusive for the whole team and has some variety throughout the year. Not everyone wants to go to the pub all the time…
In conclusion, a lot of this isn’t rocket science, but it also isn’t the easiest to get right 100% of the time, for every team member who is happy to be fully remote with every little interaction, there is one who craves the team environment and needs collaboration to produce their best work. It’s important to establish all the things above but to bear in mind you will need to be flexible and understanding of individual team members from time to time. Remote working is firmly here to stay, and I think we will all continue to evolve and improve the way we work in remote teams and manage remote teams. Maybe 3 years on I will update this blog on whatever I have observed and learned!