Assume remote, even if you have only 1 person that is not coming to the office. So make sure to share all the information from meetings in a written format.
Have a private, quiet, dedicated space for working in your home. Preferably with a door that closes.
Have the right digital equipment.
Over-communicate.
Make sure you get to actual meet your colleagues face to face.
Most companies embracing remote work also have dedicated headquarters. But remote-ish teams have even more communication and collaboration challenges than fully remote teams.
The single biggest mistake companies can make is to opt to be remote-friendly instead of remote-first. Companies often accept the idea that remote is the future of work without creating an inclusive culture to ensure it works for everyone.
Remote-friendly environment: Employees are allowed to work remotely, but work is not optimized for it. There is a disconnect between office and remote employees and team meetings exclusively occur in a co-located time zone. Water cooler chat is a space for key decisions and presence is correlated with meaningful work. Communication is synchronous-first. Managers must work in the office.
Remote-first companies: Employees are empowered to adopt remote work. Real-time meetings are kept to a minimum and recorded. Decisions are made online and performance is measured by output, not by hours worked. Communication is asynchronous-first. Managers are encouraged to work from home.
Hybrid companies function best when the entire company is optimized for remote work. Successful hybrid teams set up processes to help their remote workers thrive alongside their office teammates.
Leadership must acknowledge the various challenges remote workers face and create solutions. Create a remote work policy that keeps remote workers and contractors from feeling like second class team members. Remote workers should feel fully connected and not missing a thing.
Even though I've been working remotely as a software engineer at Trello for several years, I've recently picked up a new habit: I schedule two ~30 minute weekly video calls with individuals on my team, just for social interaction and casual conversation. This simple change to my calendar helps me enjoy work more and feel more connected.
Nonvirtual work cements social relationships. And for remote workers, being committed to making an effort and spending resources to make remote work feel personal and connected can replace that.
Just scheduling a video call once a week and having some pleasant small talk can be enough to build relationships that last.
Virtual team building is tough. Here are 7 ways you can build social connection in a remote team, even from afar. I'll be shocked if you're shocked: Building social connection in a remote team is the hardest part of managing a remote team.
A sense of connection and belonging are sentiments that are helpful for building “affective trust” – a form of trust based on emotional bond and interpersonal relatedness.
If your icebreaker questions are intriguing, cheeky, humorous – the answers you receive will be, too.
Many remote teams will kick off their weekly meeting with an icebreaker question or insert it during their morning stand-up meeting. Even more popular is asking a series of icebreaker questions during the onboarding process when hiring someone.