Managing Remotely
140 companies answer 6 questions
Managing a remote or distributed team successfully requires good support, planning, and communication. Whether deciding if and how to get the team to meet in person or defining the line between vacation and flexible work, the management of a remote team has differences from managing traditional on-site teams. In our Managing Remotely section we ask top remote companies how they keep their teams running smoothly from thousands of miles away.
Do you have remote communication protocols for your remote workers?
Partially. There is a company scrum at 10am every morning during which people are expected to come, but it’s not a big deal if they…
Yes, but they are different. We have regular meetings where we expect people to do their synchronous work. We also promote “core hours” 7-10 a.m.…
We have clear, written guidance for our team members with regard to how quickly and thoroughly they need to respond to prospective business clients and…
Do you organize remote team retreats?
In the earlier days when the team was ~15 people, we would gather the whole company together for week-long (Mon-Fri) retreats in different locations 4…
Yes. We find one place that can host us all. Make sure it’s not in a city, you want everyone to be huddled up together…
Yes – see my blog where I wrote the definitive guide to planning an offsite.
Do your remote team members meet in person?
Twice a year, the entire company gathers in a destination travel location for a week. We call these “onsites.” This is our opportunity to look…
Yes, absolutely. Face to face communication is vital so we have teams break off and have quarterly offsites. The Engineering team is going to Punta…
We only do one formal meeting each year, a 4-day annual retreat that tackles some operations-level work, but is mostly for play and social time.…
How do you measure the productivity of remote workers?
Productivity is roughly equivalent to answering two questions: 1) Am I meeting the goals I’ve set out? and 2) Am I gaining progress on key…
Through project management and time tracking tools.
Since almost all of our communication is through writing, it’s easy to see who is making progress on their goals through updates on the P2s,…
What elements are key to successful working relationships with remote teams?
Being able to measure the output of your employees. Trust.
An empathetic understanding of one another’s roles, expertise, and workflow. Over-communication in Slack or on video chat. Honesty, vulnerability, coaching, and feedback.
If you can, by all means spend a week with new colleagues onsite. That immensely helps in building trust. Ongoing, having regular video calls helps.…
What is the hardest part about managing a remote workforce?
Scheduling meetings can be tricky because we cover a lot of timezones and some people may choose to work very early or very late, depending…
Working from home can be isolating, especially for staff who have never worked remotely or for TNTP before. You have to be proactive about building…
The hardest part about managing a remote workforce is the propensity for terse communication. Often times, people are chatting, trying to quickly accomplish something or…
How do you keep remote employees engaged and feeling part of the bigger picture?
It’s very important for new team members to feel connected to their coworkers, so a new hire buddy is always assigned to them from the…
We make our communication better by having daily calls and hangouts between team members. We get the entire team together at the GitLab summit once…
Our weekly video standups really help here. However, we also do company-wide retreats twice a year to get everyone together face to face.
What is your BYOD policy for remote workers?
Because of the type of work our customer care professionals do, they must be logged into a secured workstation to address Card Members’ inquiries. Many…
Team members can use any hardware that they please. After you’ve worked with Doist for six months, you are granted a generous hardware and software…
This varies based on roles. For our customer consultants, they need to provide their own high speed Internet service, headset, and a personal computer for…
What is your time off policy for remote workers?
In short, “take some”. We used to not track days off, but it resulted in some people (mostly US employees) not taking enough time off.…
As a mom friendly organization we have a generous time off policy that includes paid sick days and paid family leave.
It’s quite flexible. We ask that people are respectful of company deadlines and crunch times, while also being respectful of their health. As of early…
What were your biggest fears in managing remote workers?
I never had any fears. We’ve been told countless times that at some point we need to get an office and have a headquarters so…
I’m a first-time people manager and first-time CEO. My fears were (and still are) around leading a team of people. Being remote was never part…
Never really had a fear, if you fail in managing remote workers, it is not the system causing the failure, it is you.