Managing Remotely

As with an office based role, remote workers are required to be available during the working day.  Generally most managers will establish the norms, as…

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…

We do have guidelines, and they apply for everyone, including leadership. For example, if something isn’t urgent, we strongly encourage emails in place of chat—especially…

We organize retreats and offsites about once per quarter. A couple tips: choose a great venue for your company retreat and, of course, use the…

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 organize three all-company events per year. One focused on working together on specific company projects, one focused on training, and another focused on…

Yes, whenever we can. Typically 3-5 times a year.

Yes, we aim for once a year meetings in person.

We organize team gatherings three times per year (when it’s safe to do so) where we all meet and work together, but also have fun…

We’re an Agile organization, so self-examination is built into our workflow very naturally. We set goals, then examine and measure progress, output at regular, discrete…

We aren’t too formal in this area, but our project management tool keeps track of everyone’s tasks as they are completed. The entire team can…

Productivity is purely based on results.

Communication is key. I’ve found in a remote environment people actually work harder at communicating because they have to. Especially if you’re dealing with an…

Agree on communication channels and style of communication.

First, hire people who fit the model.  Not everyone is cut out to work remotely.  Next, be very clear with your expectations and provide the…

The most difficult part is helping your team stay motivated and feel part of a team when they have never met. In the office, a…

We haven’t really had many challenges in management but we’re also still a small team (8 people full-time with several part-timers or contractors). We’ve done…

Making sure people are consistently aligned with the mission.  People can start to lose track as they get heads down on the day to day…

While we aren’t big on meetings, we do have a regularly scheduled Monday meeting where we go over any admin items and talk about the…

At Goodway, we don’t treat our remote employees any differently than if they were in an office setting. They can’t be seen as exceptions or…

Keep everyone in the loop, whatever it is. Also talk to them about private things and regularly ask how they are doing! Because it is…

We tend to equip people with a strong Mac so they can be effective wherever they are.

We provide equipment to our remote employees.

Everyone is free to get their devices from the company, but as far as I know everyone’s just using their own machine.

Employees start with two weeks of paid vacation.  We also accommodate employees with school age children by letting them take extra unpaid time off over…

Appirio has a very generous policy when it comes to time off. Employees are given 15 days of vacation annually in their first and second…

We have a minimum vacation policy at Buffer where we ask employees to take at least 15 days off every year, in addition to whichever…

My biggest fears were around not being able to manage work output, and not having clarity into someone’s projects. For the first 6 months this…

We were a bit worried about our teachers not feeling a sense of belonging. But it turned out most of our teachers just love us…

I don’t know that we had any preconceived fears in working remotely, but I think generally speaking most organizations are fearful of remote workers because…