Working Remotely

Organically. It is a very natural work style for both our teachers and internal staff. We also provide the most flexibility compared to the other…

It was our policy from the beginning!

Very organically. We started remote, and we stayed optimized for working remotely. We didn’t get an office until year 3, I think.

Of course a remote company can have a healthy company culture. In fact, we think remote work positively contributes to company culture.

Absolutely. In fact, in order to have a successful remote force, it’s vital to have a healthy company culture to keep employees inspired and working…

Of course! A few things that we do is have team retreats to get together where we all meet in person. This helps bring a…

I think adopting Slack has been the biggest improvement to our remote culture. It’s a lot more informal than Asana which lets us have more…

We have Slack channels dedicated to all sorts of interests, from fitness to cooking to travel. Our teams meet anywhere from daily to weekly by…

Our online forum is an important part of our company, a place where everyone can share ideas and chat—a virtual water cooler, if you will.

Structure and communication are key to having success with remote work. Having a set of tools everyone uses, and make sure everyone on the team…

Trust. It will take large amounts of trust as you won’t be able to “see” the work of the team. And hiring those who are…

Working remotely can be isolating, especially for new hires that are used to traditional office settings. Companies should encourage employees to participate in local activities,…

Getting everyone on the same page! Since we don’t “see” each other on a consistent basis every day, we have to constantly be thinking about…

We still haven’t quite figured out a remote equivalent of bringing in donuts for the team! (Though we once arranged surprise, synchronized pizza delivery for…

The main challenges are time zones and cultures. You need to make sure projects run smoothly and that nobody is stuck waiting for someone’s reply…

Our internal wiki is at the top of the list. We use it as a virtual watercooler (think sports smack talk and podcast reviews) and…

Phone calls are useful. As are group chat tools like Slack, and email too. It’s a mix.

Slack! I couldn’t imagine communicating as well as we do today without Slack. Our systems (finance, servers, schedules) all integrate with this communications tool, and…

Our team has just gotten a lot bigger. Our head of teacher recruiting, Bel Chan, has done an amazing job with that. When she started…

We found quickly that being fully distributed wasn’t going to work well for us. We missed seeing each other in person and the rare times…

There have been many positive changes to how we operate by enabling our front line to work remotely. We have more flexibility in scheduling, it…

Our team works asynchronously and communicates largely via Slack, which keeps us organized across 17 time zones. Keeping an up-to-date shared calendar is also very…

We offer some flexibility in work schedules so that team members can have somewhat of a normal schedule, but we also require work hours to…

We work in EST/CST business hours for the most part. Certain roles that are not client facing have more flexibility, but we still require at…