Top 3 Mistakes Remote-Forced Companies Make & How to Avoid Them
Disclaimer: this is a fairly long, detailed article.
For TL;DR (too long; didn’t read), scroll to the bottom.
Remote-First vs. Remote-Forced
I recently had the pleasure of meeting Nathan Barry, founder of ConvertKit, at Running Remote in Montreal. In his talk, he coined the “Remote-First vs. Remote-Forced” concept, something many of us in the industry have been thinking about.
Which is that there is a massive difference between:
Remote-First companies: intentionally decided on a remote setup, and strategically built their setup and teams as such. They were usually founded and scaled before the pandemic, but not necessarily.
Remote-Forced companies: were forced into an emergency work-from-home setup due to the pandemic, consider this temporary and/or a nuisance. Some of them remain forced to continue operations remotely due to their employees’ refusal to return to the office, or other relevant concerns.
Now, why would one want to build a remote team or a remote career if they aren’t forced to?
To keep things brief, some of the many advantages are:
access to a wider pool of talent (for companies) and a wider pool of opportunities (for candidates)
diversity & inclusion: all of a sudden, working becomes available (and attractive) to a way wider range of people including for e.g. differently abled people or caregivers.
flexibility & work-life balance
less micromanagement (it wasn’t working at the office, and it’s working even less remotely)
lower overheads
higher retention if done right
I have a lot of faith in people's ability to learn on the go, especially in the digitally-enabled and tech industries, and I always thought the remote-forced would quickly learn from those who have been doing it for a long time, and were very happy to share when the pandemic kicked in.
But two and a half years in, I still see entire teams struggling with pretty basic remote work setup mistakes.
Let's see what the top 3 are.
Mistake no. 1: They think remote work = work from the office, but from home
7-8 hours of Zoom/Team/Meet calls and no time for actual work, anyone?
Jokes aside, this first bit refers to mindset, and mindset is a whole topic of its own, so let's unpack.
Emergency work from home during a pandemic is fundamentally different from intentionally building a remote-capable company.
Remote work is NOT the same thing as work from the office (but from home).
But why now?
For starters, at the office, as a company you can get away with lacking a number of processes and a whole lot of intentionality. Here are some examples:
You can get away with onboarding poorly and not training new employees well when you work from the office. They'll be able to keep interrupting everyone else on the team with questions all the time. At the expense of your senior team members’ productivity, which is expensive🙂
You can get away with team members not being trained and nurtured to express themselves clearly and concisely. It’s ok to need 3, 4, or 5 rounds of emails or meetings before something fairly minor is handled. But not when you're working remotely, especially if you throw in a couple of different time zones, too. In that scenario, if people can’t communicate efficiently (due to a lack of skills, ego trips & more), even the smallest thing that needs to get done would take half a week. And it does, in many companies, trust me.
You can get away with micromanaging at the office, because it's the easier thing to do. It’s much easier than having a system for assigning clear tasks, trusting people to get stuff done and uploading transparent, straightforward updates and reports. But when people are physically separated, micromanaging becomes exponentially more difficult, time-consuming and nerve-wrecking for everyone.
You can get away with having team leads that "hoard" authority, ownership and responsibility instead of sharing it, and who ask for even the smallest decision to be approved by them. In a truly remote scenario, that turns into a slog of a team, eating away at productivity and ultimately the, you know, bottom line.
So, if you’re trying to replicate the office at home, you're doing it wrong.
The price for doing it wrong?
You'll:
burn out your team and have to face recurring mental health & wellbeing, attrition issues
and/or work slower, be less profitable, and ultimately less competitive
Source: Zippia
It really is as simple as that.
When people don’t have access to each other physically, and sometimes in real-time, they need to be more deliberate, more efficient, more organized, more mindful of resources and wasted time. Building a remote-first setup ironically forces your company, and your people, to be better in many ways.
It starts with the mindset but has to be supported by good infrastructure.
Let’s see what that is.
Mistake no. 2: They lack the right remote work "infrastructure": systems, policies, tools
As we've seen above, ultimately, remote work exposes many of the flaws a company may have in its systems, workflows and tools (and by tools I don't mean only things like pencils, apps, or software).
So what does a team need to work well together and deliver excellent results?
To support productive collaboration without calling each other every five minutes, here are some of the bits and pieces you’ll need. These apply to all teams, but they do make remote work specifically a whole lot better:
Clear policies and expectations
Preferably outlined in a “single source of truth” like a company handbook/culture deck (I wrote more about this here). Some of the most important questions to answer are:
What are our values, shared purpose/mission/vision/why?
How, where and when do we work?
How do we communicate and how do we meet?
How do we document?
How does paid time off work?
How is performance assessed in our team?
Source: teamwork.com
A must-have “tool stack” as follows:
shared calendars: essential to schedule meetings & collaborate, this usually comes with your Google Workspace or similar
a project management tool e.g. Asana, Basecamp, Trello, Monday.com, Jira, Todoist
a synchronous communication/video conference tool: e.g. Zoom, Meet, Teams, Skype
an asynchronous communication tool like Slack, Twist
a file-sharing/documentation/organizational knowledge/cloud storage: Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, Notion
a password manager: Dashlane, LastPass are some of the options
a system to manage employee data and payroll. This will be highly dependent on the country(ies) you operate in and the type of legal setup you have as a company, as well as the types of contracts you offer your team members. Some examples are cloud-based HR software like Cezanne, Elmo or solutions like RemoteTeam or Deel (specifically built for distributed teams operating across multiple countries).
Great to have:
a screen recording app: e.g. Loom (great for training, asynchronous communication, etc)
brainstorming & group thinking: Mural, Conceptboard, Miro, Stormboard
team member happiness surveys: OfficeVibe, Know Your Team, Tiny Pulse
The tech industry is rolling out all-in-one solutions like Microsoft Teams, Citrix Workspace, Workspace ONE from VMware that claim to provide the functionality of most of these tools in one secure platform. The trade-off is that all-in-one tools rarely provide the best option for all of those features.
Important:
Once you’ve picked your tools & systems, you generally want to have someone in charge of creating & maintaining the accounts, on/offboarding and so on.
Last but not least, you might want to consider some actual physical work infrastructure for your team:
Finance or co-finance a work setup at home
Or cover coworking space memberships
You want your team to have flexibility, but you don’t want them to have bad backs, squinty eyes, feel lonely and lack meaningful connections or a place to go when always at home might be too little/too much.
Now, one of the significant benefits of building a remote team is that you do save when you no longer have an office - or downsize it. Yet to have a high-performing team, I’d recommend you take a part of that $$ saving and reinvest it in good infrastructure and fostering human connection, which we’ll talk about next.
Mistake no. 3: They don't know how to be "human" when remote
There are two aspects that immediately come to mind here.
Lacking the ability to disconnect
Working remotely means tasks can be performed from anywhere, at any time. Having easily accessible communication platforms such as email and Slack pinging away from our pockets or on our screen at all times has led many of us to casually check them while having dinner, watching a movie, or having a conversation with loved ones. So, in many cases, the lines between work and personal time have been completely blurred.
Credit: David Sipress, New Yorker
Researchers at Lehigh University Belkin found that, on average, individuals reported spending almost eight hours a week monitoring work-related emails after hours. 55% had a hard time detaching from work, and only 8% had no problem doing so. The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that overwork is shortening life from heart disease and stroke. For example, people who work 55 hours a week faced a 35% higher risk of stroke and a 17% higher risk of heart disease when compared to those who work 35-40 hours a week, according to the WHO’s report.
In short, it’s quite literally killing us.
For teams and individuals to thrive long-term in a remote setup, they must be guaranteed the right to disconnect. And companies that are new to remote often don't encourage (or compel if needed) their team members to disconnect. I wrote more about this, including a policy example here.
Don’t know how to nurture human connection in a remote environment
Companies new to remote don’t know how to keep things feeling human and connected when remote; I recently spoke to a friend who told me everyone in her remote-forced company loves the work-life balance and comfort of working remotely, but that the social fabric in her team has completely come apart since doing so.
It doesn’t have to be that way.
Social interaction and connection are quintessential human needs, and key to trust, efficient collaboration and the overall success of a team.
At Livit, we make sure we don’t forget that, so we spice up our week with moments of bonding and fun:
Donut dates (30 min/week). We use a bot that randomly pairs up two (or three) people for a virtual “donut” or coffee date and offers a conversation opener if needed. The only rule is: don’t talk about work.
Team-wide virtual watercooler hangouts (30 min - 1h every few weeks).
When you’re remote, you can’t gather around lunch or the watercooler spontaneously and have a chat. So we gather at a set time, pick a random topic and chat away or challenge each other to a dare, a quiz or a game. Some simple examples: find the last song you listened to on your Spotify/playlist and pick a line from it you could use as an email signature. So much fun.
We also make sure we have facilitated, curated, virtual team-building activities at least once a quarter. Here are a few providers: Banana Life, Social Architect, Airbnb team experiences.
All these can be optional (but they will become popular if done well). In a total of 1h a week and another 1-2h per quarter, you can build (or re-build) the social fabric in your team, and deliberately nurture a solid team.
Credentials & conclusion
At Livit, we’ve been working (intentionally) remotely for 10+ years and built dozens of remote teams working across the globe on highly successful businesses, some at 500+ team members now and several rounds of funding.
The Livit team itself is currently working remotely from 5+ different countries, won the "Outstanding Employee Wellbeing" at the Flexible Workplace Awards in Montreal, is one of Indonesia's top 3 Best Places To Work, a top 100 company to Escape to in 2022, and ranks amongst the 2% happiest and most engaged company teams across 90 countries in the world.
Remote isn’t easy and it takes more intentionality and strategy than working from the office. But it can also supercharge your results as a company, keep your teams happy and engaged, and help you thrive in the future of work.
Isn’t that what most of us want?
TL;DR (too long, didn’t read) version:
There is a massive difference between: Remote-First companies (intentionally decided on a remote setup, strategically built their teams as such) and Remote-Forced companies (forced into an emergency work-from-home setup due to the pandemic, consider this temporary/a nuisance, some remain forced to continue operations remotely due to their employees’ refusal to return to the office, etc)
Mistake no. 1: They think remote work = work from the office, but from home
It is not.
Remote teamwork = more deliberate, more efficient, more organized, more mindful of resources and wasted time. Building a remote-first setup ironically forces your company, and your people, to be better in many ways.
The alternative is burn out, recurring mental health/wellbeing, attrition issues, as well as working slower, being less profitable, less competitive.
Mistake no. 2: They lack the right remote work "infrastructure": systems, policies, tools
To work well together and deliver excellent results, a (remote) team generally needs:
Clear policies and expectations
A good “tool stack”"
Someone in charge for these
Actual physical work infrastructure
Mistake no. 3: They don't know how to be "human" when remote
Lacking the ability to disconnect. The lines between work and For teams and individuals to thrive long-term in a remote setup, they must be guaranteed the right to disconnect
Don’t know how to nurture human connection in a remote environment. Social interaction and connection are quintessential human needs, and key to trust, efficient collaboration and the overall success of a team. Spice up the week/month/quarter with curated, intentional hangouts, Donut dates, facilitated teambuilding activities & more.
Remote isn’t easy.
But it can supercharge your results as a company & help you thrive in the future of work.
