Working Remotely

It was a formal process that included doing a lot of research, creating boundaries and parameters, and including our clients in the process.

One person at a time! We’ve been all-virtual since our founding in 2001. When we were hiring our first team member, the “perfect” candidate lived…

We knew no alternative so many policies were as natural as breathing. We tried to develop and lean on trust rather than develop policies.

This all comes down to hiring. It’s critical to hire like-minded folks who genuinely want to work together. For us, we have way too much…

I feel like we have a very healthy company culture, and we’re constantly working to make it better. We do little things sometimes like spend…

It absolutely can. Just like a company located in an office can have a dysfunctional culture. The key to any healthy culture is having everyone…

Retreats are a huge thing. We have an annual all company retreat, but we also have more focused retreats pretty regularly for smaller teams within…

We have an incredible Director of Culture and Development who is focused on developing a strong culture in a remote work environment. Examples of some…

We schedule engagement activities each quarter that all can participate in. We make sure there are activities that resonate with the types of gig workers…

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…

Make sure work obligations are completely understood, that communication capabilities and a robust technology infrastructure are fully embedded in the organization, and that you have…

We succeed at making remote work by being deliberate about our communication process. We have work-related communication tools, like Slack and Google Hangouts, as well…

The biggest challenge we’ve found is when we encounter verticals that aren’t able to handle an “officeless” company. One of our team members worked for…

Personality conflicts are particularly difficult to resolve remotely. We’ve found that when a team is having a hard time seeing eye to eye, the only…

We have a great culture and team and have been growing very fast in the past few years. The biggest challenge is ensuring we keep…

We meet in person every three or four months for an all-company meeting where we strategize and work on big projects together in person. Otherwise,…

We detest emails. That means that the vast majority of our communication falls into 3 channels: Slack, Asana and Skype. We communicate a lot though,…

If I had to pick one, it would be group chats. We have always used group chats (a la IRC) since we started. At first,…

With remote work, there’s a lot less verbal communication than before, and a lot more written communication. This communication happens largely in our project management…

The most noticeable change for me has been the size of the company and the effect that has on team (and inter-team) dynamics. When I…

We have much more discipline and structure in place for managing various processes. 

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…

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…

Slack and JIRA—the platform we use to track development tasks—are asynchronous tools, allowing us to manage communication even with different time zones. Of course, sometimes…