Twitter just announced last month that they will be hiring more remote workers and creating more support for a remote workforce. This month, the news about a new disease is making employers seriously consider transitioning their workforce from office to remote. Here at Gr8er Good Games, we've been working with remote teams, helping them improve their communication, collaboration and build their team-culture, for a while and have talked with over one hundred remote teams. Here's some of our advice on how to transition your company from an office environment to a remote team.
Have a plan: It's not going to be easy to transition from a fully office workforce into a remote, distributed one. Have a plan in place with contingencies.
Assess your current processes and procedures: Take a strategic look at your current processes and procedures to determine what can easily be translated to remote teams (ie, instead of using a physical whiteboard, switch to a whiteboarding app), and what you might still have to do on-site (shipping of physical products)
Have all the team's tools in place: At the least, you need something for document sharing, video-chat, project tracking, and messaging platform. Here's a list of great tools for remote work that we've compiled. Make sure that everything is accessible to everyone while being cognizant of data security.
Have a documentation policy: Documentation is so vital to make sure that all remote team members have all the information that they need when they need it. All meetings should be documented and all decisions. Have a document labeling and filing policy.
Have a data security policy: If team members are going to be logging into secured portals using public wifi, you might want to considering creating a data security policy that includes VPN.
Make sure every team member has the tools they need: This usually just means a work laptop. You might want to consider also paying for staff member's home wifi, wireless mouse, and tools for ergonomic work.
Set expectations for when everyone is working: Everyone should know the approximate schedule that their team members are working, so they know when they are able to get an immediate response and when they might have to wait. This doesn't mean micro-managing when everyone has to be online (we've heard about some terrible remote companies that track their employee's keyboard strokes and mouse movements to make sure that their employees are working all 8 hours of the day). It can be as informal as "everyone change their slack statuses to working or not working" to scheduling work times on a shared Google Calendar.
Cowork: Yes, we dared say it. Sometimes, for some people, coworking is a great way to boost productivity and employee morale. You can virtually cowork by just jumping on a videochat together. The camaraderie of knowing that someone else is typing away on their laptops, and being able to just ask a question and get an immediate response makes remote work feel more comfortable for extroverts and also helps simulate an office environment. Co-workers can even take time and eat lunch together or take coffee breaks together.
Set expectations for productivity: Make sure remote team managers are clear with their team about the expectations for productivity for each team member.
Encourage social bonding and fun virtually. Establish a playful environment online for your remote team. This can range from posting gifs on a fun slack channel to spending two hours together on video-chat and playing one of our remote team-building games. One of our favorite slackbots is donut, which simply pairs slack team members together to get a "donut" together. This can mean anything from a virtual coffee where two people drink coffee and get to know each other on video-chat to a virtual walk (where you face-time each other while walking and getting to know each other). You might also want to integrate some time into your team meetings for ice-breakers
Have a strategy for regular meetings: Just because employees are remote doesn't mean that they never attend meetings. In fact, we like to suggest that all remote team members should have these five meetings regularly.
Either go all-in or have a strategy for how to include remote workers: The most difficult teams are actually mixed teams, with several people co-located in an office and some remote workers. There's an inherent discrepancy in having some core team members in the same location, able to just tap each other on the shoulder or to go out to coffee together while others cannot join. There's going to be jealousy, there's going to be mistrust, and there's going to be gossip, unless you set a good strategy for how to include everyone. This strategy might include things like:
All decisions should be made during the video-chat that it's discussed and won't be changed afterwards
Communication and documentation should be highly emphasized. If something isn't documented and communicated to the whole team, then that discussion should be considered non-existent
When one person is on video-chat, everyone is on their own individual video-chats. It's so easy to have side conversations, to not have the videochat pointing at the right person, and to leave off people in a video-chat. When teams establish a policy that everyone is on their individual video-chats, it eliminates the psychological (and physical) barrier between the in-crowd and the remotes. It might feel strange at first to be sitting next to someone but talking to them on video-chat, but it really alienates remote workers when some team members are in the same room and they have to call in.
On-site employees are invariably going to create bonds and friendships, but you can also encourage virtual friendships with remote team members. By creating a fun, playful atmosphere in your company's slack and during your video-chat meetings, you help your team
For a 30 minute free consultation with our founder, Shuai, on how you can ease the transition of your team from an on-site office-based team to a remote team, reach out to us at hello at patchworkadventures.com