Managing Remotely

We are starting to implement this a little more as we grow. We have a lot of de-facto standards just from having done this...

We do not have explicit communication norms set for our team. In terms of responding to communications, it depends on a number of factors...

Everyone is expected to respond to both internal and client communications within half of a business day. For working with clients...

Socializing and team building is important when we all get together. It isn’t all about productivity and getting work done ...

At our team meetings, we do organize loads of stuff, which are fun and supports team building. Most of the time...

We will be arranging at least one team retreat this year and will be meeting at several industry events.

Each year we hold a company meeting and try to gather together as many remote teams as possible. These meetings last...

We don’t require it, but we do have hubs of team members in New York and Florida, and try to...

We fly our entire team out for a conference once each year. This is our opportunity to spend time together, get...

We don’t actively measure anything like work output.  Everyone is quite honest about their flow and usually it’s quite clear from the...

Nobody works alone at Scrapinghub. Everybody reports to a manager that keeps track of their work and this feedback moves up the chain, as...

For external staff, we conduct weekly and quarterly audits of their work. We have a 3-strike system for any instances where it is clear...

It is critical to have open communication and no silos.  Everyone should be able to communicate with anyone and be open...

For us, it’s the use of video and platform agnostic systems. We require our employees have a modern computer, hi-speed Internet and a...

Communication is key. We are all completely available to one another during our work hours, meaning we can connect via video conferencing or chat...

Creating a healthy balance between trusting our team members to manage their work time and monitoring their activity. We have team...

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

The hardest part of management is keeping everyone on the same page. As I mentioned above, we try to do this...

Keeping remote employees engaged is definitely a challenge. You need to make an effort to check in with co-workers and learn about their lives...

Sharing how the company is going and being fully transparent when it comes to growth and financials has allowed our team...

All of our team members are part of at least one mini-team and we have weekly team meetings to share information...

As a company we have internal policies that helps us to have key security measures that protects us from any liability concerns that possibly...

We provide a monthly stipend for these sorts of things via a prepaid debit (Pex card) and we offer to front-load it on hire...

This varies based on roles.  For our customer consultants, they need to provide their own high speed Internet service, headset, and...

We have “unlimited time off” for our salary workers. Our rule of thumb is if you’re wondering if you’re...

In short, “take some”. We used to not track days off, but it resulted in some people (mostly US employees) not taking enough time...

Unlimited paid vacation. Many team members travel and work on the go, mixing the two. But we wholeheartedly encourage and support...

Accountability. The fear that people would simply flake, walk off into the distance, play video games instead of work. Sure they...

Trust is a big fear and challenge. At the end of the day, as a business owner of a remote team, you aren’t...

We were not afraid.