REMOTE WORK

The Best Tips From 5 Remote Work Leaders

What can we learn from companies that have been successfully working remotely for years

There were thousands of companies working remotely since long before the coronavirus pandemic. They’ve had the chance to make all the errors and all the wrong decisions. We can learn from them.

This article introduces five companies that have been successful in establishing home working. We’re going to take a look at their tactics.

They are:

• Aha!
• Doist
• Clevertech
• Toptal
• X-Team

Aha!

Aha! was founded in 2013. They wanted the freedom to hire the best talent and knew that only hiring people in Silicon Valley wasn’t going to work. As a result, they have been working remotely since long before the pandemic panic.

Aha! have advocated for remote work since day one. Their motto is “Love your job and the people you work with.”

They have a team of nearly 100 people that work across six countries and 78 cities. They are experts at serving customers, communicating with teammates, and accomplishing daily tasks. They only work remotely. Here are the Aha! tips on working remotely with a full house:

• Track schedules. You can use a whiteboard or you might prefer Google calendar.
• Set boundaries. Your family needs to know you are working even if you are at home.
• Designate shifts. If you have a partner, you can try to figure out a shift schedule and adjust your meetings accordingly.
• Routine is your friend. Create a detailed hour by hour schedule for your kids.
• Let your colleagues know when you need to step away for more than a few minutes and when they can expect you back.
• Be flexible.
• If possible, take the kids out to play, so either you or your partner have some quiet time to work.
• It’s amazing how much relief deep breathing can provide.
• Practice kindness. Your team will work better if you support one another and share it openly.
• Separate offices. It’s better to work in the other room if possible.

Here’s Aha!’s advice on how to work remotely if you have never done it before:

• You need a clear separation between home and office if you want to maintain professionalism.
• You will need extra equipment and tools to work remotely. A headset and collaborative software like Zoom is the minimum you need.
• Seeing yourself on a video can be strange but you will become accustomed to it. One tip is to try to keep your eyes on your colleagues’ faces. Your co-workers’ expressions give clues that help with communication.
• Be thoughtful about how you communicate. Choose the right channel to convey your message, write as clearly and succinctly as possible, and consider your audience. Poor communication can cause problems, but so can over-communication.
• Boundaries are important. Communicate your expectations to others at home and mitigate interruptions if you can.

Doist

Doist was founded in 2007. They have a team 68, from 25 different countries — from Jamaica to Poland, Taiwan to Australia.

Many people love their product Todoist. I find it one of the best tools for organizing. They employ men and women, gay and straight, religious and atheist. Doist is a remote company that tries to be borderless in every way — they believe that this way of working is the future.

I love how they speak openly about problems with remote working. Remote work can lead to isolation, depression, and anxiety. Here is what Doist are doing about it:

• You need to ask what situation best suits your needs and personality and then actively experiment until you find a good fit. It might be a home office, a coffee shop, a coworking space, none of the above or a combination.
• It’s dangerous to ignore your mental wellbeing. A lack of work boundaries or social interaction can lead to an unhealthy situation. Talk about this openly.
• When you don’t see your co-workers in person every day, it’s easy to assume that everything is ok when it’s not.
• Openly acknowledge that there can be serious mental health issues related to remote work. People are not alone in these struggles — there’s nothing “wrong” with feeling anxious or depressed.
• If a person is having problems with depression, anxiety, or stress then we should be there for them 100% (as co-workers, as leaders, and as a company).
• Give 40 days of paid vacation per year to your employees. A time of true disconnection from work is fundamental to help people de-stress and recharge.
• Encourage people to use sick days for mental health when they need them.
• Use co-working spaces, so you can get outside the house and be in an office and community setting if you wish.

Clevertech

Clevertech was founded in 2000. They’re a custom software and app development company that solves hard problems in the business and systems integration domain.

Clevertech is based in New York City with fully remote development teams. It’s a leading consultancy company whose mission is to build transformational digital solutions for the world’s most innovative organizations.

Enterprise companies turn to Clevertech to help them launch innovative digital products that interact with hundreds of millions of customers, transactions and data points.

A review from an ex-employee says it all:

“I’ve worked remotely for over 15 years. Clevertech does this style of work better than any company I’ve worked for in the past. Clevertech is a great place to work for many reasons: Remote! (if that is your thing) Management trusts its employees. Management is engaged with the employee’s Management invests in its employees. Management is genuinely interested in their employees’ happiness. Very competitive salaries. Good benefits package. Fairly flexible schedule … within reason. You are part of a high-talent team. Interesting projects. Work with top talent from around the world.”

Here is what Clevertech have to say about communicating like an adult in business:

• Communication is vital to the success of any relationship. It’s even more important in business.
• Poor communication stems from a lack of understanding of the other person.
• The best way to overcome problems with communication is to first realize and accept that we are terrible at it. That means we have an opportunity to improve.

Clevertech suggests:

• Ground your assessments.
• Respect the historical background of the other party.
• Allow negative things to happen without being threatening.
• Confirm shared goals.
• Be passionate.

Toptal

Toptal is an exclusive network of top freelance software developers, designers, and finance experts.

It was founded in 2010 and has no headquarters. Many op companies rely on Toptal freelancers for their most important projects.

Here are their tips on leading remote product teams:

Product managers need to master four key areas to achieve success:

• People leadership.
• Communication.
• Thought leadership.
• Results-oriented cultures.

People leadership

• The best product managers are excellent leaders. If not, they’ll fail to garner the trust of their team and performance naturally suffers. Building trust is crucial.
• Leaders must be extremely diligent at following best-practices. The best leaders lead by example.
• Team members recognize concerted efforts to proactively ascertain and tackle personal problems — the best leaders offer support proactively.
• Motivate team members by recognizing great performance. Celebrating wins and empathizing with failures is part of the role of a good project manager.

Communication

• Keep large group calls to a minimum. Instead, emphasize small group or one to one calls where valuable discussions and updates take place. Only this will make your team meetings better.
• When you’re working on a new feature that involves multiple stakeholders, immediately create a group slack channel with everyone involved (operations, copywriters, designers, engineers) where you can discuss anything related to the project. Try to foster direct communication.
• Always be available. Unplanned conversations between co-workers create important flows of knowledge throughout an organization.
• If you have a nine-to-five mindset, or if your energy flags after a normal day, maintaining a tireless stream of energy and enthusiasm may sound like a quick route to burnout. Try adapting to a more flexible schedule by including breaks between work sprints to keep consistent performance over long periods. Managing remote teams often means managing timezones.

Thought leadership

As well as rallying teams and stakeholders, product managers drive impact by developing innovative ideas, improving existing products, and deploying user instincts to understand the customer and stakeholder needs.

• Encourage innovation and creativity. Innovation can become a real challenge in a remote organization. Remote product managers should proactively set up idea-generation or brainstorming meetings.
• Toptal usually records a demo of any new feature they’re about to launch and they sends it all stakeholders and team members for feedback. Promote feedback loops.
• Build credibility; a project manager needs to be trusted, respected and to come across as a leader in his area of expertise.

Focus on results

A lack of physical contact means managers have only one way to evaluate performance — by results. This is good — in fact, this is how it should be in all companies. In remote companies, the nature of the game forces you to work in this way.

Here you can also read how not to manage your remote team of developers.

X-Team

X-Team is a 100% remote company that’s helped companies build remote development teams for more than a decade. They started with a corporate headquarters in Melbourne but today their team spans three continents.

X-Team says this about switching to remote:

“The office environment was fun and collaborative, but ultimately our remote team was far more productive than us there. It organically made sense to go entirely remote soon after. By focusing entirely on remote developers, we’re able to bring companies the best developers to help solve their challenges, rather than them relying on what’s left in their own location. Without remote being an option, our partners would be settling for less quality with their development.”

X-Team believes that meetings are a valuable way to communicate with people. But they shouldn’t be the first thing you resort to when you want to speak to someone. A few suggestions from X-Team:

• Have a couple of simple questions? Just ping someone on Slack. No messages in Slack are considered urgent unless explicitly said so.
• Have a big idea? Create a Google Doc. Making comments on a Google Doc is significantly easier than replying to each separate small point on Slack.
• Need to teach something to someone? Use a Loom message to show your screen and guide them through a step-by-step process.
• You can also use Loom to get feedback.
• Before a meeting decide on its purpose and the desired outcome.
• Meetings are a great way to brainstorm as a remote company.
• Meetings are also a great way to bond, get together, play games, and get excited about big company announcements

Where to Go From Here

Check out the resources for Remote Working on WeWorkRemotely.

Check out the following popular blogs on remote working:

• CleverTech’s blog
• Toptal’s blog
• X-Team’s blog
• Hotjar’s blog
• Aha!’s blog
• Doist’s blog
• Buffer’s blog
• Invisionapp’s remote work problems with solutions

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Enjoy your day :)