As of May 1st, I became professionally homeless. Specifically, the company I work for gave up the office where it has resided for more than half of the company’s 10-year history. I’d only ever worked from there a few times (it’s in New Zealand), but it feels a bit strange.
We’re not the first remote-only company. Automattic and Basecamp are prominent other examples. Working remotely itself hasn’t been a big challenge, but there are team and business challenges that need extra effort or special handling to be effectively dealt with by a remote team.
Working remotely supports flexible working hours. As much possible, we don’t care when/how people work, as long as things get done. Putting in a couple of early morning hours before taking the kids to school, or cranking out code in the middle of the night is easier when it’s just you. The social or political pressures present in a physical office don’t really manifest.
Tech and startup culture can put a lot of pressure on people to be “crushing it” at all hours, or to stick around for social activities in order to really be a team player.
And sometimes an office can induce cubicle inertia: a butt that has been in a chair for hours and hours has a tendency to remain in that chair, especially when your brain is fried.
Offices can actually be detrimental to productivity. (Have you ever met anyone who’s a fan of the open plan office trend?) At home it’s quiet and private, and unless the dog needs to go out, there are few interruptions and I can focus for long periods of time.
That said, because you can get more done working remotely (and because you can’t always monitor how much people are doing), it can actually be a challenge to make sure people stop working.
Flexible work policies are often accompanied by flexible vacation policies. Which actually tend to result in people taking less vacation. We’ve had to make a habit of kicking people offline when they shouldn’t be there, and keeping an eye out for burnout and ensuring people actually book vacation.
More fundamentally, we all have to be the kind of team members that anyone feels confident leaving in charge. “Hit by a bus” philosophy underlies a lot of how we do things.
There’s a different awareness of co-workers when you don’t physically see each other every day. It’s easy to just get used to them always being around for a chat or to ask a question. This isn’t a good habit, though.
It can be nerve-wracking, particularly in a small company, to face being the only one available to handle X, Y, or Z. But especially in a small, remote-only company you need everyone to be able to handle most things that could come up (within your sphere of work/expertise).
While self-sufficiency is important, that doesn’t mean you’re an island. Making a concerted effort to communicate well, broadly, and often is equally important. It takes more work to develop relationships and lines of communication with some co-workers than others.
But if we don’t make the effort, we can remain unaware of vast swaths of company goings-on, important decisions, and the opportunity to gel better as a team.
Especially online, initiating socializing, even on work-related topics, can feel painfully like small talk or mandated team building, initially. But there’s not just one way to make it work. Ask about different projects or strategic decisions, or keep it entirely social. Book different times or lengths of time (short is okay, people are busy).
It’s important to accept that because of how we’re wired and have evolved, online communication will have challenges. But it helps when you keep working at it and make it something that We Do Here.
At the same time, it’s equally important for teams to see each other in person (even the introverts). My team meets up at least once a year. Sometimes we have smaller meetups if there’s a specific project to knock out, or when several folks want to attend the same conference.
Conveniently, being located all over the planet means that pretty much any meetup location is fair game. Try not to screw over one region every time with the super long travel, though. Meeting up also results in cool shared travel and cultural experiences. (Drinking Glühwein together at German Christmas markets beats a golf tournament any day ….)
Admittedly, the logistics of a meetup for 14 people are much easier than 1,400 people, and international travel isn’t cheap. But it’s one of those things the company has to decide is important. Then it gets built into the budget and culture. And hey, the rest of the time there are lots of free, or nearly free, tools for communicating in various media.
Further to defining culture, a cohesive sense of what the company and team are can be hard to describe concretely, but it’s important, even if there are communication, distance, or cultural challenges.
Write things down, talk them over, and record the distilled results, which will have been contributed to, understood, and signed on to by everyone. (Do this work when the team is together.)
Nebulous “vision” statements don’t really do much for me, so I’m a fan of basing company and culture around “We do this here,” and “We don’t do that here.” It simplifies, it’s clear, and leaves no wiggle room for attitudes or behaviours that weaken the team.
My team wrote a social contract, which we all signed, pen on paper. It covers how we want to run and build the company, but more importantly, how we treat each other to achieve the culture and company goals we agree upon. It’s something everyone can access, even remotely.
Humans are not well designed to act humanely outside of the physical presence of other humans. We forget that they’re humans, too.
The result doesn’t have to be as blatant as trolling. But it can be really easy to just tune out that guy who’s speaking at the meeting, or sneak a peek at that open browser tab because you’re not really involved in the project under discussion.
Being present in the face of absence is a skill that has to be learned and practised. The internet’s distractions make it an ongoing struggle. But it’s about basic respect for your team and commitment to doing good work. We do this here.
Teams may not need a shared physical space to be successful, but every team member does need to build and maintain a shared team space in their own mind.
M-Theory is an opinion column by Melanie Baker. Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Communitech. Melle can be reached @melle or me@melle.ca.
