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?
We’ve never had to set policies around communication as our employees are very self-motivated and if anything need to log off more often.
We created the 10 Slack agreements of Buffer just for this.
We don’t have any overarching rules or norms, other than to ensure that mandatory meetings are remote-friendly. Each team sets their own norms as necessary.…
Do you organize remote team retreats?
TIP 1: think about the most important thing you want to accomplish and let that lead your decisions about who attends, what you talk about,…
Yes – see my blog where I wrote the definitive guide to planning an offsite.
We currently don’t, but I hear they are awesome 🙂
Do your remote team members meet in person?
Each year we hold a company meeting and try to gather together as many remote teams as possible. These meetings last a few days and…
We do not routinely meet in person. Some of our management team has met a couple times and when I am traveling, I’ve made a…
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?
It’s not a perfect science; we have had situations where employees were “skating” for a month or so and we did not notice. But, eventually…
We have sales and other deliverables which are measurable. I think it more difficult to measure the productivity for roles that don’t have clear deliverables…
When looking at developers the code quality is essential. We focus on output, not on working hours.
What elements are key to successful working relationships with remote teams?
Effective communication Understanding Accommodation
Open communication, honest & constructive feedback and open mindedness + accountability
Being able to measure the output of your employees. Trust.
What is the hardest part about managing a remote workforce?
The hardest thing is just making sure to stay in touch with everyone and make sure everyone knows that they are part of the team…
Learning how to effectively communicate remotely takes practice. How much to share, how often, who to include, and how to ensure the intended message is…
If you’re a typical startup, <10 people sitting in an office, then with everything that happens, everyone always knows about it. So how do you…
How do you keep remote employees engaged and feeling part of the bigger picture?
We have a monthly newsletter called Yours Virtually and the team takes turns to write in it from their perspective, and to share a little…
We’ve evolved a lot on this one. It started as a quarterly Google Hangout where everyone got together to watch a presentation on progress made…
Our weekly staff meeting, done via Skype, keeps everyone on top of the company’s initiatives.
What is your BYOD policy for remote workers?
People can use whatever device they’d like, as long as they can use the software and apps our team is already on 🙂
All of our IT infrastructure is cloud based. At this point we are totally happy with anyone on the team accessing their work email, for…
Our company provides computer hardware and software to all our team members.
What is your time off policy for remote workers?
Aha! currently offers 15 days of paid time off to all teammates in their first year and 20 days in the following years, as well…
We have a flexible time off policy which provides employees with a generous amount of vacation, allowing them to take off whichever holidays they want.
We have an open PTO policy, meaning that employees don’t accrue paid time off and we don’t track the time that they take. We measure…
What were your biggest fears in managing remote workers?
Not many fears that I can think of. Really just accountability and showing up, but I don’t feel that’s any more of an issue than…
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…
We didn’t have any major fears, and fortunately, we haven’t had any major problems!
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