Searching for a Unicorn or How to Build an Effective Remote Team

Starting in 2020, remote work became mainstream. And as a next step for the remote work environment, many companies started hiring worldwide. It seems obvious: what’s the reason to limit hiring to a region when you can choose from a bigger market? Despite many pros for employees and companies, it soon turned out that regular on-site processes don’t work online. Without process adaptation, teams' effectiveness and performance significantly drop. Here are seven essential points for teams that help stay productive in a remote environment, based on my three years of experience building remote and distributed teams. 1. Work Synchronously Whenever Possible Based on my experience, having 4-6 hours overlap and working together during this time is the most effective option. It helps immediately solve most problems without waiting until tomorrow's overlap time. I prefer an “infinite group voice call” in Discord or Slack Huddle: all team members join this call and stay muted. It helps to break the “talk barrier”: when someone has a question, they can quickly ask everyone on the team and, in most cases, get an immediate response. Moreover, it creates an office-like space – the call quickly becomes the place where the team talks about all news, issues, and even gossip. It usually works best when applied to a small group – like team-wide. Cross-team and cross-department communication doesn’t require that many syncs and happens irregularly, so common video calls work better for these cases. 2. Watch for the Work-Life Balance It starts with the idea that everyone seems to work less during remote work so that we might control them more. Nevertheless, it’s a pretty rare case, while the most common problem is overworking. The time border separating working time from home has vanished. People start working immediately after waking up and finish right before going to sleep, which quickly leads to burnout. So, checking that work hasn’t allocated all available time is essential. Basically, regular checks of work-life balance during a retrospective or any other weekly/fortnightly meetings should be enough. However, it’s also a good subject to include in your company’s “Beginner’s Guide” and similar articles. 3. Do Video Calls MORE Remote work environments increase isolation which could also lead to burnout. Humans are social creatures, and we seriously rely on communication and being part of society. “Warm” contact helps in many cases: it’s much easier to ask for help from someone you know than a stranger (it’s also a reason why cold calling works that bad). Moreover, video calls are just more efficient: they transfer more information at the same time period, such as emotions, mimics, voice tones, etc. And also, regular face-to-face communication just helps you stay in a good mood and don’t burn out. For sure, any rule can be brought to the point of absurdity by excessive diligence. After all, even in collocated offline work, not every issue requires a meeting, right? 4. Visualize Everything With Whiteboards, Screen Share, Etc. Visual information is much easier to read and perceive. A screencast or collaboration on a whiteboard (like Miro) will be helpful, depending on the topic. Whiteboards help visualize ideas and involve everyone in the discussion. It also doesn’t require any specific skills – ordered stickers connected with arrows are good enough to explain things rapidly. Furthermore, the resulting board is a perfect artifact for the post-meeting: it will remain after the meeting, and you can easily find out what was discussed at the meeting. 5. Do Daily Meetings Twice This point doesn’t relate to distributed teams but works perfectly for synchronous remote teams. “Daily stand-ups” commonly take place at the beginning of the workday, rarely – at the end. In both cases, they indicate workday start and end for most people. Having two daily meetings might be an amazing trigger for workday boundaries. It also takes less than 10 minutes and helps stay synced and aligned. 6. Record Async Video Messages Whenever Possible As I mentioned above, not every question requires a sync video call or meeting. However, having a video part is a huge benefit when you need to share something. A perfect example could be sharing a bug reproducing steps, but it's not the only usage. You can find more creative ways to use this kind of recorded video, like having an async "sprint demo" or having simple "how to" documentation for common project tasks. A video provides more information per second, and it’s helpful for both – the speaker and the listener. In most cases, it’s much easier to present things rather than describe them, and it is also simpler to correctly understand when you have a visual artifact. There are several services that help in that, like Loom or Tella, that provide a super useful interface to record and share that kind of video quickly. Last but not least, recorded videos give a more socially involved feeling than text, which also commits against social isolation and burns out. Do More Informal Meetings, Including Informal 1-On-1, “Random Coffee”, Etc. The remote environment doesn’t provide any coffee points, which is absolutely important in an office. Since small talk doesn’t have any “business” value, it’s easy to miss them in remote work. Meanwhile, those conversations are essential – they help maintain relationships between colleagues, share news, or even gossip. And this actually matters more than expected. Apart from the social isolation problem I mentioned above, significant events from private life affect people's moods and motivation. 1-on-1 and “random coffee” might be a great opportunity for people to talk about a movie they watched last week or maybe the last book they read. During 1-on-1s, you also can find out that someone is having issues with their home mortgage or rent, for example, which definitely leads to a performance drop since almost no one would be focused on the job-related stuff when he's having living issues. Conclusion Of course, these points aren't a full list or a silver bullet to organizing an excellent remote working process. However, from my standpoint, most of them are essential if you want to maintain a productive process. These tips helped me organize processes in my remote and distributed team and solve the lack of live communication. And I hope it will help organize yours.