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?
Everyone needs to attend the daily and weekly meetings related to their work. They should be reachable on Mattermost during working hours—these are set on…
We expect people to be online during their scheduled workday. If they’re not going to be around or stepping out for whatever reason we ask…
We don’t place strict rules, but there’s a common understanding that everyone is usually on from the hours of 9 am to at least 6…
Do you organize remote team retreats?
At our team meetings, we do organize loads of stuff, which are fun and supports team building. Most of the time we are away for…
Yes we do, and they are awesome. My tip would be to keep the work content to a minimum. A brief session on how the…
Yes we sure do! Jungle Camps twice yearly. It is a great way to meet, work, and grow together. It is also a time when…
Do your remote team members meet in person?
Yes! Every fall, we gather for our annual “All Hands” meetup with our entire team. We started doing these meetups in 2013, and they have…
Minimum twice a year for summer and Christmas Event
It is informal and unscheduled, but sometimes employees living near each other will get together for a lunch or dinner. We also have our yearly…
How do you measure the productivity of remote workers?
I think this is a very important question for all organizations – not just organizations with remote workers. Too often a “flexible workplace” turns into…
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…
Measuring productivity is the same regardless of where someone is located physically. If they are in the cube next to you, they can be as…
What elements are key to successful working relationships with remote teams?
It is critical to have open communication and no silos. Everyone should be able to communicate with anyone and be open to reply quickly.
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…
Keeping them engaged through regular communication is most important. They should also have a clear expectation of their role and how vitally important it is…
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…
Ensuring that there is a common understanding of practices and procedures to help everything run smoothly.
Growing larger than 50 people seems hard. It’s hard because you need a layer of managers in there if everyone is going to get individual…
How do you keep remote employees engaged and feeling part of the bigger picture?
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…
We have a whole team in charge of teacher community in China and the U.S. that keeps our teachers informed through the portal. Emails from…
We set OKRs for each team that are talked about in every all-hands meeting. We also have a #winning Slack channel where teams post a…
What is your BYOD policy for remote workers?
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…
Our employees get a laptop for administration work, as well as a display, keyboard, and mouse. The software developers and QA team may have different…
Employees of Trello are provided with what they need from a technology standpoint to get their jobs done.
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.…
We don’t track time off but expect people to take roughly 4 weeks vacation. Most of our team doesn’t have set hours so it’s really…
Everyone gets unlimited time off. If goals are clearly communicated and employees are responsible, we don’t need to babysit with restrictive PTO policies.
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 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…
The biggest fear is “culture cracks” as our CEO calls it. Since we do have such a significant amount of remote team members, it is…