Managing Remotely

We have a Monday weekly meeting for about 45min where everyone should show up. Other than that team members are free to take time off…

We operate more like a regular office, where we are all here during EST/CST business hours. We are trusting of our team where if they…

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.…

Yes, we do. This is critical for us. First of all, you need to have a clear agenda with what you want to achieve during the…

We meetup as an entire team at least twice per year. We call them JarFests. We work hard to plan them in a fun city…

Yes, we go to a company off-site twice a year. The off-site is a mixture of team sessions, presentations, working together, team activities, and hanging…

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

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.…

Our central New York office serves as a hub for remote workers and team members who are in the office every day. We accommodate any…

Depends on the roll, but in most cases it becomes very clear who is productive and who isn’t.  For engineers github is key.  

We use an agile development methodology that incorporates daily progress checks for the team. Also, if a developer’s velocity falls below a certain threshold, we…

Productivity is purely based on results.

Trust is absolutely essential. We are a team of colleagues and hire some of the best talent in the world. If you don’t trust the…

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.…

Actually having one. A relationship doesn’t mean reading standups in a Slack channel. You have to put in the work to meet regularly with each…

One of the challenges in managing a remote workforce is employee engagement. To be successful at Remote Year, employees need to be both collaborative and…

Making sure we build relationships offline as well as online.

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…

We connect virtual assistants (VAs) with other VAs to provide training, integrate VAs in team environments, offer performance feedback, monitor workload and availability to take…

We talk all the time. A short, daily all-hands meeting allows everyone to understand the what and the why. We make a point of being…

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…

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…

We provide all equipment people need to do their jobs. If someone wants to use their own device, that’s fine too.

Every team member is provided with a laptop and can then use their own mobile phone with the company paying up to $150 of the…

You take it when you need it. The responsibility that everything you promised gets shipped when promised is still yours. And you are the one…

We have “unlimited time off” for our salary workers. Our rule of thumb is if you’re wondering if you’re taking too much time off, then…

We have a fairly standard PTO plan for full-time [A]gents.

In regards to our independent contract remote workers, making sure they have represented themselves honestly and that their credentials are valid is a common source…

To me, making the work visible was a big fear. Even in traditional companies, there are people working nobody knows what they are actually doing.…

My biggest concern is worrying about the happiness of our team members. It’s easy to tell how someone is feeling in person. Fortunately, we haven’t…