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?
There are very tight guidelines for communication around classes, and we expect immediate communication if there’s any reason a teacher needs to cancel a class—we…
The only hard routine is our Monday review call where everyone gets together for 90 minutes. As CEO I have scheduled 30 minutes of 1:1…
Do you organize remote team retreats?
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…
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…
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 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.…
We do! Twice a year, we gather the team for weeklong retreats, so we can both work together and get to spend quality time getting…
How do you measure the productivity of remote workers?
We give our remote workers a lot of freedom. Every order placed through Scribendi has an accompanying deadline selected by the client from the available…
We work with project management tools and have set goals and KPIs. We rely on Asana, a project management tool, to keep track of projects…
What elements are key to successful working relationships with remote teams?
We place a strong emphasis on transparency, authenticity and being direct. We do monthly one-on-one feedback sessions, which we call “pair calls” where we run…
Trust is a key element; you have to ensure that every member of the team trusts each other to do what they have agreed to.…
An empathetic understanding of one another’s roles, expertise, and workflow. Over-communication in Slack or on video chat. Honesty, vulnerability, coaching, and feedback.
What is the hardest part about managing a remote workforce?
Building rapport with new coworkers can be difficult when you don’t get the casual social interactions you often get for free when everyone is in…
Learning how to effectively communicate remotely takes practice. How much to share, how often, who to include, and how to ensure the intended message is…
When you cease seeing a person all day, every day, you have to develop new ways to determine if they are present and working hard.…
How do you keep remote employees engaged and feeling part of the bigger picture?
We have weekly all-hands meetings that we conduct via video chat. This gives everyone a chance to hear what’s going on in the company and…
Clear and precise communication, including town hall meetings, fireside chats, e-learning training sessions, and reward programs reinforcing performance.
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…
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…
Everyone is free to get their devices from the company, but as far as I know everyone’s just using their own machine.
What is your time off policy for remote workers?
You can take off whenever you like, but we pay you by the hour. You get one to five weeks of vacation depending on how…
First of all, we have a flexible schedule and the only condition for the remote team members is to have at least some overlapping time…
We do not have a time off limit. However, for it to be worth my while to manage our resources, they have to contribute a minimum…
What were your biggest fears in managing remote workers?
My biggest fear was probably that everyone was just going to goof off and not get any work done with little oversight. This has been…
I think my biggest fears are when we lose touch with someone. Every once in a while, someone will just “disappear” – they don’t answer…
That it would be harder than it actually is. In fact, the management problems are the same regardless of location.
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