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?
While we haven’t had the need to set strict norms, we all have an understanding of how to stay connected throughout the workday: be available…
Our focus is employee happiness and productivity. We do have communication norms especially when it comes to communicating with our customers. Assisting customers is and…
Ha, no. This sounds terrible. Where is the trust?
Do you organize remote team retreats?
We do organize a company-wide trip twice a year. This gives everyone a chance to mingle and meet face to face. It also encourages the…
I’d say that it’s important to organize the retreats with time in advance to make sure the team works smartly together (discuss ideas and works…
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…
Do your remote team members meet in person?
We don’t require it, but we do have hubs of team members in New York and Florida, and try to get together and cowork as…
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.…
Twice a year, the entire company gathers for a week-long retreat where we laugh, learn, review and plan. Even though we haven’t seen each other…
How do you measure the productivity of remote workers?
By outcomes. Always.
We measure productivity the same way traditional office workforces measure it – we look at the results. Being a remote workforce truly shouldn’t be a…
We measure all workers- by what they produce.
What elements are key to successful working relationships with remote teams?
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…
Open communication, honest & constructive feedback and open mindedness + accountability
Clear expectations are critical for remote workers. Training a remote worker is different than training an in-house worker; it is doubly important to be clear…
What is the hardest part about managing a remote workforce?
Developing cultural sensitivity and acumen that allows one to manage their own style and preferences so they can connect with different people around the world.
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…
At GitHub it’s important to us that we look after our employees. We’re not just in this for short-term productivity, we’re in this for the…
How do you keep remote employees engaged and feeling part of the bigger picture?
Transparency rules our remote working policy: we all must be aware of what is going on. Aside from that, we meet quarterly for a retreat…
Our team communicates regularly on Yammer, FlowDock, GitHub, and via email. We have Google Hangouts daily, and often have company-wide updates or individual “Ask Me…
Encourage transparency and company-wide visibility of information on Slack. Stick to good engagement habits such as regular one-on-ones. Consider also using some type of employee…
What is your BYOD policy for remote workers?
Computers, monitors, peripherals, desks, chairs are provided by Automattic.
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…
As a company we have internal policies that helps us to have key security measures that protects us from any liability concerns that possibly could…
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.…
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…
Vacation, sick and personal leave are lumped together. We take time off seriously. When an employee formally requests time off for an extended period of…
What were your biggest fears in managing remote workers?
The biggest fear is definitely running into a situation where you need something from someone, but that person isn’t available or is unresponsive. This obviously…
When we started out, especially when we had to grow and hire new people, my biggest fear was that they’d not work hard and would…
Quality. We feared that because we couldn’t see, in person, what someone was working on, that quality would drop. We have to trust that our…