{"id":6539,"date":"2017-07-12T17:11:04","date_gmt":"2017-07-12T16:11:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.small-improvements.com\/?p=6539"},"modified":"2017-07-12T17:11:04","modified_gmt":"2017-07-12T16:11:04","slug":"9-tips-creating-remote-working-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.small-improvements.com\/blog\/9-tips-creating-remote-working-culture\/","title":{"rendered":"9 tips for creating a remote working culture"},"content":{"rendered":"

Remote work ranks up there with one of the coolest perks a company offers. Who wouldn\u2019t want to trade a workspace in a noisy open office for a hammock on the north shore of Hawai\u2019i? Plus, with inter-office communication tools<\/a> like Slack<\/a> and Google Hangouts and project-management programs like Trello<\/a>, it\u2019s never been easier for employees to work outside the main hive.<\/span><\/p>\n

But making remote work successful requires effort on both sides. The company has to trust its employees are putting in the same amount of work as they would in the main HQ. The remote worker needs the assurance that their decision to work outside the office won\u2019t affect their standing or be judged against them. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

To find out what makes for a successful and productive remote working culture, we talked with multiple Small Improvements employees who do it full-time. They all work remotely for a number of reasons, but the primary ones can be boiled down to autonomy and flexibility. Here\u2019s our team members\u2019 checklist of the key components that make remote work possible:<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Learn how to overcommunicate<\/b><\/h3>\n

Scott Faverty, who handles Customer Success and is based in California, feels it\u2019s incumbent on employees not in the office to go above and beyond with communication. For him, that means being especially active in Slack, asking questions, requesting feedback<\/a> from peers, and having regular 1:1 meetings<\/a> with his manager via video chat. And on his recent visit to our Berlin office, Scott made it a point to eat lunch with a different group every day, so he could \u201cput a personality to the avatars\/faces he knows from Slack.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Over-celebrate your accomplishments<\/b><\/h3>\n

Being \u201cout of sight and out of mind\u201d is the biggest challenge that remote workers have to overcome. Overcommunicating, as explained above, is crucial for keeping up with an ongoing workflow \u2013 but even more important than that is the need to demonstrate your impact. Someone working next to your boss will always have an advantage in that they\u2019re more visibly present, so you have to overcompensate a bit (which can be a challenge for introverts).<\/span><\/p>\n

Create discipline and structure<\/b><\/h3>\n

Properly structuring your workday is critical to being a successful remote worker. It can be easy to get distracted and spend two hours watching Star Wars trailers on YouTube when you\u2019re working solo. Linda Jonas, our Director of Brand and Community, recommends creating a dedicated space for work, whether in your home, in a cafe, or at a coworking space, so you can have a physical designation that it\u2019s time to focus.<\/span><\/p>\n

Know your personality<\/b><\/h3>\n

The theory goes that a remote working culture is more beneficial for introverts, particularly those who feel more creative working in solitary environments and perhaps struggle to focus in open offices. Many of our remote employees consider themselves extroverts, though, and have found as much joy and productivity in working remotely, despite the lack of day-to-day contact with their coworkers.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sarah Burgess, who works in Customer Support, notes that she can feel over-stimulated in office environments. So she likes having the option to detach and maintain communication with coworkers virtually \u2013 along with the flexibility of being able to work remotely from places like Silicon Valley or New Orleans. <\/span><\/p>\n

Scott, on the other hand, will take his work to a nearby cafe for a change of scenery, or hop into his 4G-equipped Westfalia van\u00a0and work from the beach.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
Scott Faverty’s Westfalia van during a remote-working trip to Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, USA.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Agree how performance is measured<\/b><\/h3>\n

At some companies, remote workers must agree to a number of performance-tracking measures to ensure productivity, be it screen monitoring, keyboard\/mouse tracking, etc. At Small Improvements, we don\u2019t believe in checking up on people\u2019s work, but instead, trust that they\u2019re responsible and delivering on what their role requires. A culture of regular 1:1 meetings<\/a> helps ensure that managers and employees are in the loop on current progress<\/a>. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Face the realities of time change<\/b><\/h3>\n

Like it or not, employees who work remotely need to tailor their schedule around the office. Our West Coast employees, for example, wake up early on Tuesdays to join in our company All-Hands to compensate for the nine-hour time difference with Berlin (5 pm for us, 8 am for them). Or it could mean the occasional late night for someone working out of Sydney. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBeing in a different time zone also means missing out on a lot,\u201d Linda says. \u201cSometimes I would wake up and see decisions had been made without me having a chance to provide input.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Invest in tech and tools<\/b><\/h3>\n

Agree with your home office on a default video\/audio software, and make sure the whole company knows. This way you\u2019re not wasting the first five minutes of every meeting deciding between Skype and Google Hangouts. If technology is failing you \u2013 choppy video or dropped calls \u2013 talk to your HR lead, office manager or system administrator to make sure that you have the right tools in place<\/a>. Many companies say they\u2019re committed to creating a remote working culture but are using cheap speakers or out-of-date webcams. It\u2019s worth investing in higher quality hardware to keep communication lines clear.<\/span><\/p>\n

Get help from HR<\/b><\/h3>\n

Remote workers suffer one distinct disadvantage \u2013 little-to-no connection of the office culture. For some, it\u2019s a pleasure to come to the office and grab some fresh fruit and a cafe latte before starting work. For others, it\u2019s those conversations around the proverbial water cooler that are essential to unlocking mind blocks and solving problems. It also means missing out on things like office celebrations, parties, and Lunch-n-Learns. <\/span><\/p>\n

Olga Oulie, who heads up our People Department, has worked to integrate our remote workers into the Small Improvements\u2019 culture<\/a>. In addition to the annual four-week Berlin trip that everyone can sign up for, remote workers routinely receive small, Berlin-inspired goodie bags for their birthdays and are sent\u00a0Polaroids from office events<\/a>. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s simple. Everything that we do here, we should celebrate there as well,\u201d Olga says. <\/span><\/p>\n

Are we practicing what we preach?<\/b><\/h3>\n

At Small Improvements, our US team has been remote right from the start, and we have long encouraged all employees to work wherever they desire for a couple of weeks a year. We\u2019ve had developers fix bugs from locales like Laos, South Africa, and Italy. Customer Success has provided demos for potential Small Improvements users on the beach in Carmel, Calif. Linda went completely nomadic and has worked remotely for the last two years.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s also worth noting that remote work is not always glamorous. Sometimes the flexibility of being able to work from home because you need to pick up your kids from kindergarten outweighs the novelty of a beachfront coworking space in Lisbon. (Sometimes.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Giving employees the freedom to work remotely is something we value at Small Improvements. So we asked our seasoned remote pros for their best tips.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":6548,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[81],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-company-culture"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.small-improvements.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.small-improvements.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.small-improvements.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.small-improvements.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.small-improvements.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.small-improvements.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6539\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.small-improvements.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.small-improvements.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.small-improvements.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.small-improvements.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}