Working Remotely
140 companies answer 6 questions
Working remotely comes with unique day-to-day challenges. From the initial step of implementing remote policy to nurturing company culture while operating remotely, we ask leading remote companies to share how they approach running their distributed teams from an operational level.
How did you implement a remote work policy?
Some of both. Many people wanted some remote work. We formalized it. A recent acquisition only worked well because the acquired colleagues all went remote.
Given that remote work is the fundamental underpinning of Omni Interactions, it’s at the core of every business decision and process we undertake. The beauty…
Founded it from the beginning.
Can a remote-friendly company have a healthy culture?
Yes! At Parse.ly, we believe that a distributed team is an asset, not a problem to be managed. It allows for radical transparency about how…
Remote companies can absolutely have a healthy company culture. At Remote Year, we are constantly discussing what needs to be centralized and what needs to…
Absolutely! But as with any culture, you have to put a lot of effort into building it in order to have a strong one. Since…
How do you nurture your company’s culture in a remote work environment?
(a) At the start of our weekly one-on-one calls, we take a few minutes to talk about something that we are enjoying being involved with…
Annual company retreats, weekly Google hangouts (non-work related), and gif battles on Slack.
The best thing we do, I think, is our yearly meetup. It’s a very democratic meetup, meaning that we vote on everything—where we want to…
What advice would you give to a team considering to go remote?
You must excel at “human” connection. Dispersed workers still need nurturing. Find ways to reach through the technology and make people feel like people. You…
Follow best practices and be disciplined. When you’re home, it’s easy to be distracted or goof off, and that’s when remote work can fail to…
Assess if this is the way you would like to drive your company and if the answer is yes—go for it.
What challenges have you encountered building a remote team?
Interviewing and hiring new team members is one of the main challenges. Occasionally people are determined and send a solid portfolio during the hiring process,…
We like to think that we have an advantage since we built the company remotely from the beginning and did not change to working remotely.…
It’s hard to have visitors. People feel weird about coming to your home. Now that we have an office, it feels like a good place…
What are the most effective tools for remote team communication?
Communication is key on our teams. We use Slack as a central hub for daily communication, with clear channels to help team members know what…
Our “office” is Hipchat. We have chat rooms for different projects, a room for announcements and a “water cooler” room for cat gifs. 🙂 We…
Skype, Video Conference, Basecamp/Asana, and of course Email. We also use tools like Tinypulse for soliciting consistent feedback and sending “cheers” to team members.
What has changed about how your remote team operates?
There have been many positive changes to how we operate by enabling our front line to work remotely. We have more flexibility in scheduling, it…
As our team has grown we have been slowly shifting from a company of generalists where everyone does a bit of everything to a place…
We’ve grown at such a rapid pace that adapting and scaling has become second nature. Because we are now spread so widely across the globe,…
How does your team address different time zone challenges?
We offer some flexibility in work schedules so that team members can have somewhat of a normal schedule, but we also require work hours to…
We are very conscious of the times that different teammates work and ask them to include it in their Slack profile so that everyone can…
We work in EST/CST business hours for the most part. Certain roles that are not client facing have more flexibility, but we still require at…
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