Working remote is incredibly powerful and a superpower most smaller companies should actively introduce or fully adopt because it's one of the most effective competitive angle they can leverage against their bigger competition. If you're reading this, it's probably because you already understand some of that but to formalize what remote can do for you:
That being said, it won't work for everyone or under any and all circumstances.
Most companies or people who advocate against remote do it because they didn't figure it out (or have a vested interested in its failure). You would hear/read things like "I don't have the data, but I know in office is better". It's hard to blame them because very few guidelines or playbooks are actually published out there, so here is mine (so far).
You first need to understand the work you do, what it requires to be done in terms of facilities, equipment and attendance, and evaluate the state of maturity/independence of your staff/processes (your operation).
Not all work is doable remotely, but with maturity in your remote work, you'll find surprising how easy it is to work on even hardware projects remotely. This is because the tooling and overall infrastructure we enjoy these days makes the logistics of said operations incredibly easy and affordable.
There are countless departments that I wouldn't recommend remote for though:
On the other hands, some departments work really well remote, despite assumptions:
So to make this work, you need to first understand the work you do and find remote-able divisions or departments in your operation and rank their 'remoteness'. This is essential because 'remote' doesn't necessarily imply that everybody can be fully effective while being nomad.
I use this grid of remoteness:
| Level | Remoteness Name | Circumstances |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | In Office | Basically not remote |
| 1 | Close Remote | Staff is remote, but close enough to a relevant office that they can do a day trip if needed. This is usually 1-2h away |
| 2 | Wide Remote | Staff is remote, can't make it a day trip to a relevant office but within +/- 1-3h timezone difference range |
| 3 | Distant Remote | Staff is remote and likely internationally positioned in 3+hrs of time difference |
Make sure you don't make any division/department sit in between remote and in-office. It is fine to be in-between levels of remoteness though but when a team/department works remote, it needs to be everyone or no one. Having mostly an in-office team and a few floaters remote (or reverse) will automatically create a divide in the team. It may be a mild one, it may be a big one, but that's going to be a stressor you'll have to handle and if you can't, it may break your dynamic as a whole.
Working with Distant Remote teams or members creates a unique dynamic that gives a unique sense of velocity (the work never stops). It also gives easily and positively cover for support/maintenance in odd-hours without risking burning up your staff. Timezone difference is another superpower that's way too often seen as a liability, but you do want to keep the distant aspect within a set boundaries of timezone control. It's harder but very manageable to handle two major timezones, but if you do all three (Americas, Europe, Asia) you will have a hard time making it work on a regular basis. Mainly find an alignment time that works for all.
With your division/departments breakdown sorted; your remote and non-remote workforce structured, it's now about assuring you have the right people.
The requirements aren't as high as many think, but you do have some requirements that are different from a traditional in-office setup:
All of these are very simply covered through transparent conversations. Again, this isn't about better or worse, it's about match making expectations and desires from both sides.
With a right structure in place and the right people ready to work, you need now to operate accordingly.
First, take a minute to understand and appreciate what a physical office brings passively (I wouldn't dare say 'for free'). In a nutshell, it's communication and organization.
As you walk through the space, you bump into people. It creates opportunities for conversations. The space will also have whiteboard, peg board and other visually accessible information.
Next, as you find people around you'll have the ease of creating impromptu meetings to discuss the issue of the day and come to find a resolution. These meetings won't be run with everybody's attention split into something else because this would be rude (and this is important).
Last, our dear human ears are capable of dissociating multiple voice in a room (to a certain point) because of their space audio capabilities. This - and until spacial audio comes to video conferencing - is quite an enabler of fluid conversation that don't require a hands up to function.
The office setting is doing a lot of the leg work for you, and when working remote you need to bring an active effort behind these things until they become passive effort through reflexes.
The passive communication and organization the office brings also a lot of distractions, interruptions, casual rescheduling and fights for meeting space that's never enough - just to name a few. These are important to rightfully appreciate as we're trying to bring what works into the new realm of possibility remote offers.
Its bookmarks and pinned messages are the wall content, its channels are the offices (open or not) and you should structure it as such instead of being topic based. Topic based structuring comes from approaching slack as email 2.0 instead of office 2.0 and that's a mistake that will make you hate it as it grows to infinite room numbers where everyone is anyway.
This doesn't mean you can't have notifications or topic channels. This means that you should not make it the main structure. The beauty of online is that it has no space constraints. You can have both your cake and eat it.
So, treat your channels as meeting rooms or team rooms. Promote large public area (that's your open space) for high level, daily conversation - not just announcements -; promote mid-size channels at seniority levels and aggressively tackled private and small groups conversations. Advocate for out-loud-thinking but rewarding it rather than sanctioning it.
The number one enemy of remote is the isolated communication that doesn't permeate outside the given group, and this structure is the first element to succeed.
With a good structure in place, the next thing is to establish good practice on how to write messages.
First, you will want to make sure that everyone is trained on how the app works. Anyone that has more than 5-7 years of experience is likely to have never used Slack or any other IRC-style chat tools. They are also very likely embarrassed and will pretend they know how to because of the never ending ambient ageism in tech. The best thing you can do is present a friendly environment for people to expose they lack of knowledge and train back. This is a general principle that helps everything.
Once you have a high level of confidence, create a small and lightweight guideline on how to communicate on Slack. This is to address the never ending "should this meeting be an email" type of problems:
First, my (current) favorite toolbox:
| Roles | Tool | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| Emails | GSuite | Cheap, simple and efficient. There is value in keeping things simple |
| Calendars | GSuite | Same as above |
| Video Conferencing | Google Meet | It used to be bad, but it got good. IMO the GSuite is at the sweet spot of simple and reliable at this point. |
| Day to day Chat | Slack | Slack had ups and downs. It lost some of it reliability, but they added some interesting features that increased the productivity. The app ecosystem and dev program maintains it at the top. |
| People Management | Lattice, Gusto, Remote.com | Different purposes but I don't want to dive too deep here (just cover enough for founders). Gusto is great but US only. Remote.com is the solution for remote hires globally. Lattice is a perfect perf/culture manager. |
| Project Management (Eng) | Jira | I've tried so many and I keep coming back to JIRA. It's powerful, incredibly efficient but 100% dependent on how you use it. |
| Knowledge Base (Wiki) | Confluence | It's not really great, but its integration with JIRA makes it the best. Most other tools tend to be overly fancy for very little value add. |
| Source Control | GitHub | I really don't like to fuss around too much on these. Github is tried and true. |
| Customer Support | Zendesk | Best UX, incredible integrations, the right features in the right places. |
| Product Management | Product Board | Best product management tool out there but with a steep price curve when you scale up. Very clean UI and consistent feel. |
| QA/Testing - Manual | Testrails | This is an expensive tool that I just can't find a replacement for. It's great, works great but pricey. |
| CI | Jenkins | I've come to appreciate that the flexibility it give and the saving in conf files outside repos is the best workflow. |
| Whiteboarding | FigJam | I like to say I love it for the 'high five' feature, but it's mostly because they got the details right. Super responsive, font with fixed size regardless of zoom, all these things make the content very consumable. |
| Product Design | Figma | Figma has completely flipped the world upside down. The tools are excellent, the experience is excellent. It retired all the other ones I used before. |
| Cloud | AWS | None of the cloud providers offer something that's pleasant to use. It's all poor product structure, so you stick with what has the biggest talent base. |
| IT Asset Tracking | SnipeIT | Great, simple, OSS. You'll love to know what gear is where for all sorts of reasons. |
| Monitoring | Grafana | Sentry and Datadog are good as well, but Grafana is hyper powerful and OSS. |
| MDM | Pending | Most MDM are garbage. I'm actively looking at this and will update here when I have something. |
| In-Office Network | Ubiquiti | The gear is incredibly reliable, the tools to setup extremely comfortable and the remote control is impeccable. |
Pick and choose as you wish, but ask yourself what is the tool doing for your productivity vs what it may make you feel. Make sure that you don't allow sprawl of countless apps with overlaps. Tools are only as useful as how often they are used. The confusion of which is the right tool will have a more significant impact in a remote setting.
Once you have it, it's time to use them properly. I won't cover each of them because that would make this a dedicated book, but instead leave you with some principles to follow:
1/ Don't use all the features if you don't need them.
You most likely don't need them as the need for them evolves as your team grows, but actively fight the feeling that you aren't getting full value if you don't use it all.
2/ For video conferencing specifically:
3/ Get control over logistics
You need a logistics partner to ship and receive; a dedicated person with the right tools (label maker, proximity to dispatch, etc); and basic supplies. You're going to ship/receive more, you need to be ready for it.
Some companies offer this as a service, and it could work well.
Keep track of who has what, and define 'kits' per functions in the company, so you always have a +1 of each handy (if possible)
If you work with more complex gear and international shipping, get ahead of these by looking into customs requirements and other restrictions.
Now that your operations are defined and setup, it's time to be productive. Usual check and balances, usual review and repeat will strengthen this part, but something will inevitably creep out.
As you work away from people, the benefits of remote can be a tree that hides the forrest of the socialization need we all have. This will start to impact productivity, mood, tolerance with each other, etc.
The remedy is incredibly easy: meet face to face on a regular basis to focus on human connection and alignment.
This is important to cover because, at times, people think that remote companies don't ever need to meet face to face.
Set up a schedule that is appropriate to the team, level, etc. The beauty of remote is that the details of these meet ups are all open. The group, the location, the duration and the frequency can all be tailored to the goal at hand, and the need to define these, brings a passive focus on defining a goal.
A remote culture isn't that different from the one you would have in-office. That is, if you understand and accept that Taco Tuesdays aren't company culture.
Many of the steps I've given above are already hinting at the culture you should pursue. One that is compounding on the means a remote environment is giving you to achieve initiative, speed, efficiency and excellence through empowerment, asynchronicity and autonomy.
A remote environment won't work if you don't foster a culture of trust first, understanding, compassion but also high expectations for each other, strong discipline and high level of communication in its frequency, quality and quantity.
You have to reward and reinforce those who are proactive and dynamic while sanctioning those who wait to be carried by the group.
Remote is a wonderful perk to have, but it has to matched with equal commitment and reciprocity.
This balance of values will create a culture where people will be able to support each other in the full flexibility remote offers while continuously deliver in the highest expectations and difficulties.
Many of the real obstacles you will face will come from previously established behavioral expectations from the in-office culture. It's up to you to actively counter these as they will actively hold you back.
If you want to have trivia, donuts or any other fun activities, all the better. I don't really count these as culture.
You're now all set. You just need to steer the ship, rinse, repeat and enjoy the benefits: