Working Remotely
140 companies answer 6 questions
Working remotely comes with unique day-to-day challenges. From the initial step of implementing remote policy to nurturing company culture while operating remotely, we ask leading remote companies to share how they approach running their distributed teams from an operational level.
How did you implement a remote work policy?
Some of both. Many people wanted some remote work. We formalized it. A recent acquisition only worked well because the acquired colleagues all went remote.
As we transitioned from being a traditional print marketing company to an all-digital firm (in 2006), we simply began hiring remotely. And once we began…
Founded it from the beginning.
Can a remote-friendly company have a healthy culture?
Of course a remote company can have a healthy company culture. In fact, we think remote work positively contributes to company culture.
Definitely. FlexJobs has been a remote company for over 15 years, during which we’ve developed an award-winning culture recognized by Outside, Quartz, Entrepreneur, and many…
This all comes down to hiring. It’s critical to hire like-minded folks who genuinely want to work together. For us, we have way too much…
How do you nurture your company’s culture in a remote work environment?
There are a number of events and all staff communications that strengthen relationships and ensure we have an engaged, high performing organisations. At any point…
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 consider our remote employees for any event we plan as a company. We limit office parties to only twice a year since remotes cannot…
What advice would you give to a team considering to go remote?
Go all in, if you’re going to make the leap. In order to select and build the tools, systems, habits, and culture that really enable…
The day you have your first remote employee is the day all of the employees working with that employee need to start thinking and acting…
Spend a lot of time setting up your HR policies, procedures and guidelines. Work with someone experienced in the field. Get the best tools available…
What challenges have you encountered building a remote team?
We’ve had some bad experiences with remote workers. There are freelancers who try to work on other projects while billing time to Hubstaff, and we…
Personality conflicts are particularly difficult to resolve remotely. We’ve found that when a team is having a hard time seeing eye to eye, the only…
Changing the mindset is the hardest part. Everybody in the company has to be on board with it.
What are the most effective tools for remote team communication?
We use Slack all the time. It’s for work, play, water cooler topics, silliness and direct messages. It’s the hub of our culture. We also…
Skype chats – we have tons of chat groups. We have project-based ones for each project, location-based ones for each region (wherever there is a…
We have at least quarterly team conferences calls.
What has changed about how your remote team operates?
The communication has gotten better between the team. We are a very tight-knit “travel family” and our goal is to service our clients in the…
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…
One of the biggest achievements for Skillcrush is that we have adopted transparent salary tiers where every team member has insight into what their colleagues…
How does your team address different time zone challenges?
We are very conscious of the times that different teammates work and ask them to include it in their Slack profile so that everyone can…
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…
Thankfully this isn’t a big issue, but as our team grows, it will become a challenge. More clearly communicating goals and aligning team members will…