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?
Our earlier years had one office, in addition to a remote team. But eventually the office became irrelevant and, if anything, a way to make…
Founded it from the beginning.
We knew no alternative so many policies were as natural as breathing. We tried to develop and lean on trust rather than develop policies.
Can a remote-friendly company have a healthy culture?
Absolutely – if anything, it’s especially important for a remote company! It takes extra effort to prevent the remote work experience from feeling isolating, so…
Of course. Culture isn’t only a product of proximity, it’s a product of how you treat your staff. We know from studies that remote companies…
Absolutely! The most important thing is for the leadership to actively discuss and decide what the company values are up front, and then act upon…
How do you nurture your company’s culture in a remote work environment?
Broadly speaking, our culture is based on the Relationship Care approach to servicing, an ethos that says service is a people business driven by the…
(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…
We encourage people to bring their whole selves to their work. We have channels in Slack for people to share their love of games, literature,…
What advice would you give to a team considering to go remote?
Be accommodating and flexible. You will receive their dedication in return.
Try it, it’s not as scary as it seems! If your company is focussed on outputs and not inputs, then it shouldn’t matter whether your…
Go for it! Do audio calls instead of draining video calls. Do daily all-hands meetings of no more than 15 minutes. Make your schedule conform…
What challenges have you encountered building a remote team?
Developing a high level of trust and collaboration with people who are half-around the world. It’s a challenge, but it’s possible, and as the various…
We’ve had some bad experiences with remote workers. There are freelancers who try to work on other projects while billing time to Hubstaff, and we…
One thing we’ve seen is that you have to invest a lot of time and energy into hiring well. Growth is hard, but it’s much…
What are the most effective tools for remote team communication?
Our internal wiki is at the top of the list. We use it as a virtual watercooler (think sports smack talk and podcast reviews) and…
We rely on tools such as Slack, Zoom, and Trello to communicate and plan our daily work commitments. I’m not saying we are perfect and…
We use Hipchat, a company instant message platform, to communicate as a team on quick or fun topics. You can devote rooms to certain themes…
What has changed about how your remote team operates?
We used to all be in Maryland. We had four team members in Maryland and it was really easy for us to all get together…
We’ve definitely made communication a bigger focus. It’s not necessarily going to happen organically, so it needs to be somebody’s job to ensure that communication…
As software tools have evolved, we’ve reached for solutions that boost transparency and real-time collaboration.
How does your team address different time zone challenges?
Everyone adds their working hours to company calendar, then each team leader knows very well when everyone is on working time. This allows us to…
We make sure everyone coming on board understands the different time zones. We work together to identify when the majority of workers are available and…
Currently, all of our remote employees are in the same time zone. We are a 24/7 operation so we do encounter scheduling conflicts with our…