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Aug 14, 2020
>be me
>stalk your future employer on LinkedIn
>see you’re going to have 8 new colleagues
>arrive at the office on your first day
>only find 3 smiling faces
The other 5 you’re going to meet in a video call because they’re not working in the same office as you.
That was my first glimpse of remote teams at Planable. I was very excited and very intrigued at the same time. I couldn’t understand how my CEO trusts her team so much that she doesn’t need to see them working every day.
But soon enough, I understood this is possible. It’s actually healthier than any other working formula out there. Here’s how I see things now:
Disclaimer: we’re not working remotely per se. We have two teams and two different offices in different countries. But the challenges are the same. It’s two teams that need to stay close to one another, work together, without face-to-face interaction.
Remote teams are made of people with individual skills to achieve specific business goals, without working from the same location. Geographically, they are located in different cities, countries, or continents. It not only incorporates diversity, and equity in the workplace, but also helps companies get the best talent without border restrictions. Managing remote teams is a challenge most of this century’s leaders face. Fortunately, remote team leadership has become an indispensable skill that we get to learn on the go.
Remote team members work for the same business, are led by the same team leader, and share the same responsibilities regarding their day to day activities.
We’re trying to bring top talent in the organization without interfering with their personal lives. After our co-founders took the journey of their experience all the way to San Francisco, they decided to settle where they felt like they’d find the most resources for their fresh start-up. And so the story of remote teams started at Planable. The business division (as we like to call it) moved to Bucharest, while the dev team started to grow at Chisinau. Since I started my journey here, the teams doubled (and only one year passed by). Is it hard to find people that feel comfortable working that way? Yes! Does it feel good to have the freedom to take care of your personal life? Hell yes!
Employee satisfaction increases. Remote collaboration work is the beginning of freedom for any employee that’s out there. When you work from wherever you feel most comfortable, you start experiencing satisfaction in everything you do. Because flexibility is just the beginning of privileges. Working hours, projects, and mindsets, they all change once you start working with people who feel as free as you do, for instance playing online games to foster team building. Similarly, for remote teams, remote device management can further facilitate team collaboration and increase productivity. With it, businesses can deploy necessary files, documents, and data straight to the mobile devices of remote employees to ensure harmony among remote teams.
Meetings are more productive. Regular meetings can become an unnecessary burden. But transforming these meetings in videoconferences requires strong remote team collaboration. And collaboration with effective time management leads to productivity. When you know you only have 30 minutes to discuss the agenda, you come prepared. You synthesize the information. You eliminate the fluff. It’s easy to see that an online conference tool can be a huge benefit for your remote team. They give you the chance to not only work more efficiently, but also collaborate in ways never before possible.
Every person is autonomous. For some, this can be a challenge. Working remotely implies you strive for the same goals as your coworkers. This doesn’t mean you’re alone in finding the means to reach your targets. If you’re a marketer, for example, your target can be bringing 1k leads in a quarter. From there, you have to find the right strategy to reach this goal. Being autonomous often implies you bring more results than questions to the table. Don’t get me wrong, we all get stuck sometimes. It’s just that independent employees find the answers to the questions on their own.
Co-workers are motivated to work hard and preserve their benefits. What makes remote teams work is trust. We trust each other that we’re doing our job. We trust each other that we’re not scrolling on our phones during calls. The business is healthy because it’s built on trust. It’s a loop that keeps the relationship going, and keeps everybody happy.
You can hire the best talent in the world. To be honest, I like to think we’re working in semi-remote teams. Because technically, we’re split in two. But in reality, our team members work from all over the world. Fully remote teams have the advantage of hiring the best talent in the world. As long as we have the right tools, we can all do our job from anywhere. Not being bound to an office, and not being forced to relocate are some of the best perks of digitized businesses. The team at gaming company SolitaireBliss, for example, took advantage of all fully remote setups to outsource a software team and output. From their savings on office space, they hired 5 more engineers across the world, and as a result, have increased the number of games they’ve released.
Low turnover rate. A recent study shows that 95% of employers surveyed admit that remote work has a significant impact on employee retention. Remote work is only the tip of Maslow’s hierarchy of modern work life. Freedom surely makes a company desirable.
Company culture. When working in the same office, employees easily assimilate bits of company culture. But what happens when you work apart? In the end, company culture echoes in everything. From employer branding to the way your product and services are sold. Here’s how it works at Planable. We don’t simply enforce a culture that’s served on a plate. We continuously work on building our own culture. We actively engage and collaborate, recognize accomplishments, and encourage growth. That’s right. From operations to tech, we all have a say in the way we see our growing community. What a time to be alive!
Communication bumps. Technology is a good ally in improving communication. And rules. Agreeing that we respect each other’s time is important. So we try and actually succeed in scheduling meetings. We all show up to meetings on time. This bottleneck only requires an extra pinch of goodwill and understanding from everybody. Now, with the help of contact center solutions, our communication works better than I’ve seen at big corporations. The cloud-based contact center solution integrates with the help desk ticketing system of your choice to offer round-the-clock support from anywhere, anytime, and on any device. And I’m sure it’s more about respect than about rules.
Team networking. I like to talk. A lot. I want to know all my colleagues. And I always find something we have in common – personal or professional. So from time to time, I find it hard not to be able to chat with them whenever I feel like. If you’re an extrovert, I so feel you. Take advantage of the meetings you have. Talk to your team when you meet live. You’ll always find a way to connect with them.
Different schedules. Luckily, our two teams have the same time zone. But we don’t have the same schedule. People work differently. They’re most productive at different hours. So what we do is focus on finding as much overlap as possible. To collaborate real-time. But what happens when team members work from different time zones? First of all, it’s mandatory to share your schedule. People must know when you work and when to count on you. Second of all, you’ll have to be more transparent about your work. Project statuses are not your boss’ way to check on you. They’re a way to show respect to your team. Let them know where you are, so there’s team transparency. Set the right expectations all the time. And when you feel like you had other expectations from your colleagues, give them the benefit of the doubt first.
Work evaluation. Evaluating work can be hard at times. Not having the team in the same space can literally come with a mindset shift. That everybody does its part and business goes on. But even when everybody does their part, the outcome is not always the one we expect. So what we find useful is to work with OKRs. When teams work remotely, what’s essential is respecting deadlines and targets, and not if you worked 8 or 10 hours a day. If you’re just starting, here’s my humble advice: don’t track the hours, focus on results.
We got lucky. We started fresh. From the very beginning, we had an environment that encourages growth and experiments. That also means we fail at times. Failure is the only way you know you’re growing. In terms of finding our workflow, we’re still adapting. We’ll probably never stop improving. Who knows. What did we learn so far?
What works for others might not work for you. So I’m not the one to give you the successful formula. I’ll try to describe how we do it instead and hope it’ll help. We always look at bigger companies and see if what they’re doing would fitour culture. But more often, we tailor our workflow to every employee’s needs. As we grow, we’ll have to go with bespoke versions. For now, we’re still enjoying the made to measure workflow in everything we do.
Talking about parts of a workflow, keep in mind that it is not an A to B journey. What we found works for us is more of a hand on the torch approach. We’re equal in responsibility and everybody has ownership of something. This way, we make sure every part of the workflow is the best we can get.
Experiments are also important. We’re not afraid to bring new ideas to the table, and we’re not afraid to admit mistakes. We’re also not (so) clingy when it comes to letting things go. If something doesn’t work, we don’t reiterate endlessly just because others do it.
Looking to hire people that’ll work remotely? Though there’s been a huge increase in remote work opportunities, not everybody’s fit for this kind of role. Here are four common traits I find useful for remote workers:
Doers will always find a way even though they don’t have all the resources they need. They find things to do even when they don’t have an assigned task. Their work is often excellent because they don’t settle for average.
Of course, they still need guidance from time to time. We all do. For big projects or new types of tasks, everybody needs to learn from their colleagues. What’s different is they get the information from one go.
Yes, all employees should have this trait. But the ones working remotely should have it more than anybody else. The advantage of remote work stops when you no longer trust your employees. If you feel like you need to check on them all the time, then you should move to an office. Trust will make space and let you focus on your own work.
Not everybody should be a Cannes Lions level copywriter, but when you all work from the same office, a lot of communication happens in person. This changes when working remotely. Almost everything becomes written communication. As communication is key, you need people that know how to express things right.
This is not yet another blog post with a list of tools to use when you work remotely. Tools, though, are very important and should be used efficiently. Tech plays a great role in enabling teams to work together even when apart. For my team and me, there are three tools we use daily.
Slack is the primary communication tool that lets us drop a line whenever we need to share something. A joke we found on Reddit. Important announcements. We’re mastering the benefits of channels and threads. We’re now up to date with everything happening in the company. Pro tip: Slack threads have a major impact on the way you spam your colleagues. It also helps you keep every conversation organized.
My Slack notifications are on, but if you really need something, don’t hesitate to @ me. That’s the way I know it is crucial.
For me, our tool helps me and my team most. It cuts other ineffective tools out of our lives. Spreadsheets, PPTs, emails – stress disappeared once I started using Planable. FOMO is now a distant memory. For social media, Planable is the best tool that lets you create, edit, get feedback and approval, and schedule your content. All on the same page. Name a feature you need, and it most probably already has it. It’s so neat and friendly.
ZoomIt’s the fastest way to jump on a call whenever I need to discuss something that can’t be addressed on Slack. It’s designed to accommodate both quick one to one interactions and weekly meetings with big teams. We even hosted one of our quarterly planning sessions on Zoom. We spent five days in virtual meetings, following a predefined agenda.
However, most remote teams use a business phone system for quick communication. It allows them to make unlimited phone calls, voicemail to email delivery with toll-free numbers and HD video conferencing in a safer mode over the internet.
It’s ironic, I know. Talking about rules when working remotely means freedom. It’s more about common sense and respect each other’s time and resources. So here are some unwritten guidelines we follow at Planable.
This is just a glimpse of how we make remote teams work at Planable. So far, we’re really thrilled with what we have, and our employee retention rate speaks for itself. In one year at Planable, I found that giving people freedom is what makes them want to stay.
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