Working Remotely

Organically. Appen has been operating mixed remote and in-office teams for many years.

Organically.

More formally. It started with the CEO, Andy Tryba, who works remotely from Austin, Texas.  As the company grew, more and more people were hired,…

Absolutely. The key is having the right communication tools and connecting regularly. We use Slack for constant text based communication throughout the day. We find…

This takes intention and effort because it is easy to let the days roll by focused on projects and milestones. The team should have a…

Yes, absolutely, but this includes a lot of work. You have to agree on values and hire for attitude, not (only) for skills. An in-depth…

No gossip policy Empower employees who know they are trusted Servant leadership—invest in our people (holistically, not just professionally) Live out our core values and…

The best thing we do, I think, is our yearly meetup. It’s a very democratic meetup, meaning that we vote on everything—where we want to…

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…

Go for it. It’s super unlikely you’ll be disappointed. It makes everything easier. But, be sure to get together in real space here and there…

You can do your job whenever and wherever you want .. as long as you get your desired results. Working remotely surely brings a lot…

Don’t hesitate to hire and fire someone who’s not working out. It’s more difficult to hire remote employees but when you get the right ones…

The only real challenge is to convince people that they can work well from home. This problem has two factors – firstly people are used…

One challenge was developing a project management system to provide clients with information about work that their virtual assistant performed. We ended up developing our own…

Changing the mindset is the hardest part. Everybody in the company has to be on board with it.

We use several tools to maintain constant communication throughout the day.  Sqwiggle is our on-demand video platform, Attentiv.com offers us a constant stream to communicate…

XWP relies heavily on Slack and an asynchronous style of communication, which allows us to communicate effectively across 17 time zones.

Skype – This one is awesome.  Skype really helps when getting to know someone.  It’s a great tool for interviewing people too.  You really feel…

For a long time, we operated with a very flat team structure. As you can imagine, it’s much easier to maintain that structure at 15…

The biggest change for me is that I’ve gone from directing what everyone does to having teams that operate independently and set their own agendas.…

As we’ve grown, we’ve incorporated technology more into our daily operations.  With more people involved in each process, it’s important to continually increase efficiencies.  We…

Everyone adds their working hours to company calendar, then each team leader knows very well when everyone is on working time. This allows us to…

Time zone differences can cause confusion within a remote team. Luckily, while the overall workflow has to be coordinated, the specific tasks for providing our…

Currently, we hire only within the UTC-1 to UTC+3 time zones. Our core working time is between 10am-3pm (Berlin time) and during this time everyone…