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?
Organically
Organically. At first we had no choice because I was still in school. Once we realized how much more effective it was, we made the…
It grew organically and is still fairly organic at this point. The policies we have in place mainly deal with security protocols.
Can a remote-friendly company have a healthy culture?
Absolutely. But you have to work hard to garner it by using internal company jokes, slangs, and other fun stuff. A chat tool is essential,…
Absolutely. Culture is something that we are constantly working on. For us, it started with a globally connected workstyle, an independent lifestyle, and pride in…
Absolutely! The most important thing is for the leadership to actively discuss and decide what the company values are up front, and then act upon…
How do you nurture your company’s culture in a remote work environment?
Having fun is a really essential part of the Formstack culture. We rely pretty heavily on weekly team meetings, fun IM chats and, of course,…
We have an incredible Director of Culture and Development who is focused on developing a strong culture in a remote work environment. Examples of some…
We focus on the pillars of our culture: Fun, Action, Communication, Transparency, Trust (FACTT). Fun – Meetups, video chats just to make each other laugh.…
What advice would you give to a team considering to go remote?
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When introducing any change as significant as distributing operations, we recommend defining discrete steps and rolling out any change in iterative phases that adapt based…
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…
You need to spend time exploring the technology to run a remote team, such as Skype, Trello, and Atlassian Jira for projects, and invest in…
What challenges have you encountered building a remote team?
We’ve been remote workers before Workfrom. We’re pretty well versed in the challenges that face remote teams. Most challenges revolve around easy yet reliable communication,…
Identifying which staff are doing a great job and which are not.
If this is the first time someone has worked remotely, they may not anticipate that they may have feelings of isolation. We pair people with…
What are the most effective tools for remote team communication?
We use a number of great commercial productivity tools such as Slack for real-time communication, Github for code management, Hangouts and Zoom for video conferencing…
Slack is awesome. We use Google Hangouts. Most importantly for us is that we hire people who live near each other and so we can…
We believe that the key to making sure there is effective communication for a remote team is consistency. We have daily stand ups where everyone…
What has changed about how your remote team operates?
We are more organized now. You have to be extremely organized if you want to go remote because it’s easy to get lost in emails,…
We introduced using a wiki to keep all internal processes and documentation organized. We used to use Google Drive and Google sites, but it was…
As the Internet has changed, we have opened more and more channels for communication with our teachers and between teachers. As we expand globally, our…
How does your team address different time zone challenges?
This is likely the largest challenge we face as a remote company. I don’t like making people stay up late or get up super early…
Time zones are always a challenge to address, especially in Remote Year with our global presence. We find that making sure our staff on the…
Being in different time zones is an absolute advantage for MustHaveMenus. Most of our engineers are nine hours ahead of the rest of the team.…
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