Working With a Remote Team
Written in collaboration with Lauren Hasson, founder of DevelopHer.
The pandemic threw a spotlight on the benefits of having a remote-first or remote-friendly workplace, but managers often had no guidance for how to work with a dispersed team. It is important to enable remote-friendly workplaces because it can expand your talent pool and give your employees better job satisfaction through flexibility to work in ways that are tailored to them.
Remote work can be a great equalizer for all sorts of employees. Those with disabilities both visible and invisible get a chance to have equal footing with their peers because they are judged more for their work output and not how they present themselves in the office. They also have the chance to build a workspace that suits their needs. It can also help employees who care for someone else whether it is children or other family members with needs. So many of these groups have felt excluded from traditional workspaces, but they have a wealth of knowledge and abilities ready to be tapped.
Sean has been managing remote teams for around seven years (long before the pandemic) and Lauren has done the same for nearly ten years. We have found a few ways to help your chances of success in building a remote-friendly team.
Communicate Often with Clarity
In an office, it is easy to bump into a teammate and get a brief update on what they are working on. Remote work obviously doesn’t afford you the same opportunities as easily. Remember that over-communication is better than under-communication. You need to be deliberate about checking in with your teammates to quickly course correct if necessary. This doesn’t have to take the form of daily meetings. I’ve had success with asking people to update work tickets a few times a week with their progress. The manager can then review those notes at their own pace. In doing this, be careful to not come across as micromanaging your employees. They’re adults, not high school students.
Clarity in goals, milestones, and responsibilities is vital for a remote team to function well. Work with your project managers to utilize all the tools at your disposal for planning out what your teammates will be working on. Whether it is you as the manager writing out the requirements or the individual contributor writing the same, it needs to be clear. You won’t have as much of a chance for random interactions to ask and answer questions about the work as you would in an office.
Timely and tailored feedback will make a world of difference to a remote-first team. Keep in mind that not everyone is going to have the same communication style, so you’ll need to work closely with your teammates to understand their preferred methods. Some people may prefer ad hoc communication over something like Slack versus others who prefer a more structured manner in ticketing platforms like JIRA. If one of your teammates seems to be frustrated with you often, ask them if they prefer a different means of receiving feedback and updates. And whatever you do, be empathetic. Understand that there is a human on the other end and understand how your message will be received. Remember that as a manager, you are a source of authority who can unintentionally provoke anxiety in your teammates.
Social Cohesion
Cultivating a remote culture has to be intentional. The social cohesion and culture that naturally occurs in an office doesn’t happen in a remote-first environment. It is even harder in a hybrid situation where those who are remote can feel excluded from the activities and social scene in an office. This can be better achieved by having those in-office intentionally include their remote teammates. Be sure to memorialize all in-office conversations for the remote folks.
Going out for a monthly team lunch isn’t an option for a geographically dispersed team, but virtual lunches are. It can be a bit awkward for a team who crosses time zones, but it is still doable. It can also help people with dietary restrictions feel included in group activities. Anyone with food allergies can just order from their favorite local restaurant whatever suits their needs. Use these team lunches to let your team talk about fun things they are doing outside of work. I have one person on my team who loves to talk about his radio frequency projects and it is something that is interesting to almost everyone in the group. Another member of my team can always entertain the group talking about her work in fire spinning (look it up, it is quite amazing). All of this goes to show that you can have social interactions in a remote team, you need to be intentional about it.
Celebrating your team’s successes needs to be intentional and common for a remote team. It is easy for remote employees to lose sight of the progress they have made. As a manager, you need to remind everyone on the team of their achievements. This does not need to be an overwrought display; it can be as simple as calling out someone’s success in a team meeting or expressing your gratitude in whatever messaging platform your team uses. The achievements don’t just have to be professional either. You can celebrate your team’s personal successes. I have a teammate who trains dogs for national shows and we celebrate her wins in our team channels.
Make it Personal
Just like everything else about managing a remote team, you must be intentional about getting to know your team. We have found it fun to introduce ice breaker questions to your team meetings. These ice breakers are a great way over time to get to know who you are working with. You can ask questions like:
Where would you go on your dream vacation?
What is your favorite food?
If you were reborn as an animal, what would it be?
Solicit questions from your team. It will help them feel included in the team building process and create a sense of investment in the success of your remote-first culture.
One huge benefit to the quarantine we all went through is that it spurred creators to setup virtual experiences. AirBnb is a great resource for online experiences you can book for your team. My team has done virtual safari tours, a cooking class hosted by an Italian nona (live from Italy), walking tours of Venice, and more. They offer a breadth of experiences you might never have in person. Best of all, they’re cheap! You can usually book experiences for a team of 10 for under $300. These experiences will give your team something mutual to talk about for weeks after the event is over.
Your team events also don’t have to be for work related successes. We’ve thrown remote parties for birthdays, baby showers, celebrating personal achievements, etc. Remember that you are working with people who have big life events worth celebrating.
Work-Life Balance
When working from home, the lines between personal and work lives become blurred. Burnout can easily creep up if employees are checking messages at all hours of the day and night or if they feel they need to respond to every message within minutes regardless of the time of day. Encourage your teammates to sign off at the end of the day and mute their work notifications. If you see them answer emails and other messages after hours, remind them that the work will still be there tomorrow. Modern devices and messaging platforms all have the ability to schedule do-not-disturb hours and your team should be using them. There’s a time and place for working extended hours, but that can’t be a constant state.
A great benefit to working remotely is that people can have better familial connections. If a parent needs to take a small break to go pick up their kid from school, let them. If a teammate needs to take an hour for a doctor appointment, let them. These are great opportunities to show your teammates that you see them as people and not just workers.