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How To Be Professionally Visible And Valued As A Remote Worker
Social Visibility
Work time is also a social time and important for encouraging professional relationships. In the office, these social moments happen at the coffeemaker or in the hallway.
- Reach out. In remote teams, you have to be proactive about creating social moments. It can be adding 5-10 minutes in meetings for weekend catch-ups.
- Set a schedule. Standardizing some expectations for socializing can reinforce the framework: Everyone shares a picture from their weekend on Mondays, or eats lunch together on video on Thursdays. Let the team decide on these schedules.
- Get meta. Regularly review how well (or not) your team is socializing. When teams get busy, they may stop casual interactions. Make time for fun, and make time to review and understand how that fun helps you as a team.
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Key Ideas
Assembling the Team
... that's capable of executing in a remote setup:
- Hire doers: they will get stuff done even if they are working from a secluded island.
- Hire people you can trust....
Software/Tools
In a remote team, you'll need the right tools to make sure everyone stays on the same page and can continue to execute without a physical person standing next to them.
You likely will need a tool in certain categories like group chat and video conferencing to make remote successful.
Processes
Good processes let you get work done in the absence of all else. They provide structure and direction for getting things done.
A few examples from Zapier:
- Weekly Hangouts;
- Weekly One-on-Ones;
- Bring the team together 2 times/year somewhere cool;
- Automate anything that can be automated.
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Key Ideas
The challenges of hybrid teams
Most companies embracing remote work also have dedicated headquarters. But remote-ish teams have even more communication and collaboration challenges than fully remote teams.
...Remote-friendly vs remote-first
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.
Connecting a remote-ish team
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.
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Key Ideas
The shared context
For the whole idea of remote work to actually work, you have to develop a remote culture for your team.
And that means having a shared context: everyone plays by the same rules, you have to ...
Working from home misconceptions
Working from home does not mean you are a remote worker. For a lot of people “working from home” is synonymous with not really working, but instead sitting at home in comfy clothes and doing anything but working. Because no one is really watching you.
Rules for remote work
- 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.
- Have a time overlap with your team.