A Guide for Achieving Long-term Results for Remote Teams

The State of Remote Work Up to 2020 and Onwards

According to Buffer's 2019 report, 99% of respondents expressed a willingness to work remotely at least occasionally, emphasizing the desire for flexibility and the ability to work from any location. This preference indicates that companies not offering remote work options risk losing valuable talent.

As Generation Z, those born after 2000, enters the workforce, their familiarity with technology and adaptability to new tools will shape the future of work environments.

While remote work is prevalent in software development, it is not exclusive to tech roles. Professionals across various fields, including marketing, education, and healthcare, are embracing remote work, demonstrating significant productivity with just a laptop and an Internet connection. This trend is becoming the norm as industries open up to flexible work arrangements.

Some companies are fully remote or were founded online, such as Buffer, Doist, and Hubstaff. Transitioning to remote work is feasible for businesses of all sizes, as evidenced by the actions of tech giants like Google, Facebook, and Twitter during pandemic-induced quarantines. These companies have implemented extended remote work policies, showcasing the viability of remote operations.

The shift to remote work can alleviate challenges such as high housing costs in tech hubs by allowing employees to relocate to more affordable areas. Small companies can also transition to remote work and thrive, as seen with larger enterprises.

Let's explore the distinct characteristics of remote work compared to traditional office environments.

How Is Remote Work Different? Issues Associated with Telecommuting

In this section, we explore three major issues associated with telecommuting. Each issue can have both negative and positive outcomes, highlighting the need for awareness and strategic management.

Communication

Communication is often perceived as the most affected aspect of remote work due to the lack of physical presence. While face-to-face interactions can boost morale, remote communication requires effective use of digital tools to maintain connectivity.

The abundance of communication tools like Skype, Slack, Zoom, and Asana can be overwhelming. Selecting the right tool depends on your team's needs and preferences. Ensuring clear communication channels is essential, as some employees may struggle to express themselves without visual cues.

Remote work also lacks the spontaneous interactions of an office environment, which can lead to feelings of isolation. Loneliness is a significant concern, as it can affect mental health and productivity. According to research, loneliness is linked to depression, stress, and decreased cognitive function.

Online communication allows for setting rules and expectations, such as response times, and can reduce workplace interruptions. Video chats and informal channels can help maintain a sense of community and combat loneliness.

• Fears
  • Requires additional tools to sustain (messengers, video conference tools, etc.)
  • Difficult to explain things without personal presence
  • No 'cooler talks' and friendly connections
  • Loneliness and feelings of isolation
• Reality
  • There are far fewer distractions and more focus if all your communication is online.
  • There's almost no difference between a meeting in a meeting room or a video conference, so all your meetings and brainstorming sessions can be transferred online.
  • Friendly communication still exists (informal chats, online meetings, etc.) — it's a question of the corporate culture.

• Requires additional tools to sustain (messengers, video conference tools, etc.)
• Difficult to explain things without personal presence
• No 'cooler talks' and friendly connections
• Loneliness and feelings of isolation

• There are far fewer distractions and more focus if all your communication is online.
• There's almost no difference between a meeting in a meeting room or a video conference, so all your meetings and brainstorming sessions can be transferred online.
• Friendly communication still exists (informal chats, online meetings, etc.) — it's a question of the corporate culture.

Time &Remote Work Productivity

Productivity concerns often arise in remote work settings, as tracking and managing tasks can be challenging without physical supervision. However, this can be addressed by hiring self-motivated individuals and utilizing project management tools.

Remote work offers the advantage of flexibility, allowing employees to adapt their work environment for maximum productivity. Studies, such as the one conducted by Airtasker, show that remote workers often outperform their in-office counterparts.

Project management and time tracking tools like Trello, Asana, and Everhour help maintain accountability and ensure tasks are completed efficiently.

• Fears
  • The team won't be able to manage their workday properly (such as wrong priorities or too much time spent on a task).
  • It's difficult to control time and tasks online.
  • People won't be able to focus and working from home productivity will suffer (such as atmosphere or distractions).
• Reality
  • It's important to hire self-motivated people who can work without a "stick."
  • There are tools for tracking tasks (e.g., Trello and Asana) and time tracking software (e.g., Everhour, Timedoctor, Toggl, My Hours), which maintain control for both managers and employees.
  • Research shows that productivity increases when people switch to a remote setup.
  • It's still important to create a comfortable distraction-free workplace. It may be a separate room (or at least table) or a co-working space.

• The team won't be able to manage their workday properly (such as wrong priorities or too much time spent on a task).
• It's difficult to control time and tasks online.
• People won't be able to focus and working from home productivity will suffer (such as atmosphere or distractions).

• It's important to hire self-motivated people who can work without a "stick."
• There are tools for tracking tasks (e.g., Trello and Asana) and time tracking software (e.g., Everhour, Timedoctor, Toggl, My Hours), which maintain control for both managers and employees.
• Research shows that productivity increases when people switch to a remote setup.
• It's still important to create a comfortable distraction-free workplace. It may be a separate room (or at least table) or a co-working space.

Health and Habits

The Covid-19 pandemic has prompted jokes about weight gain and casual work attire, but these shouldn't be taken as the norm. Remote work can lead to unhealthy habits due to reduced physical activity and changes in routine.

Overworking is another concern, as remote workers may struggle to maintain boundaries between work and personal time. However, remote work offers the opportunity for healthier lifestyles, as employees can avoid stressful commutes and create routines that promote wellbeing.

• Fears:
  • Poor diet, lack of exercise, and poor sleep habits
  • Overworking
• Reality:
  • These things are personal, not dependant on the work setup
  • It may be difficult during the first few weeks because of a new system, but generally, people tend to maintain a healthier life and a better life/work balance when working remotely (sleep, food, sports, etc. — they have more freedom to adjust to their own rhythm and don't spend hours on transport)

• Poor diet, lack of exercise, and poor sleep habits
• Overworking

• These things are personal, not dependant on the work setup
• It may be difficult during the first few weeks because of a new system, but generally, people tend to maintain a healthier life and a better life/work balance when working remotely (sleep, food, sports, etc. — they have more freedom to adjust to their own rhythm and don't spend hours on transport)

While these concerns are valid, they are not exclusive to remote work. Addressing these issues requires personal responsibility and conscious effort, regardless of the work setting.

How to Build a Remote Team and Keep Your Employees Productive

Recognizing potential challenges and team weaknesses allows for strategic planning to address them. Here are some strategies for building a successful remote team and maximizing productivity.

Communication Is Key. How is it Established?

Brie Reynolds from Remote.co and FlexJobs highlights the importance of communication in remote teams. Regular feedback and interaction are crucial for maintaining productivity and engagement.

Step 0: Be easy to contact and the first to say hello

Initiate contact with team members to foster open communication and build trust. Regular check-ins show that you value their contributions beyond work output.

• Ask how they're doing personally and professionally because you care about them more than just as a work unit.
• Give honest feedback because if they're doing something right — they need to know, and if they're doing something wrong — they need to know.
• Encourage the good work they've been doing because online, there are no pats on the back or spontaneous praise like there is in the office, and stating that you know how good a job they're doing means more than you might think.

Being in touch, giving honest, constructive criticism, and recognizing good work all help create trust and, inadvertently, make it easier for employees to pick up the phone or write you in chat if they need to clarify something about a task or something does go wrong.

Step 1: Define communication expectations

Establish clear communication guidelines for response times, preferred communication methods, and message formats to streamline interactions.

• the response time
• what requires a phone call, a chat message, or an email
• format of a message or email

As for the last point, teach your people how to contextualize communication. For example, if an employee describes a problem, encourage her or him to include what solutions seem fit for the issue — this promotes self-organization and also means your team can deal with an issue when you're offline.

Step 2: Set up regular check-ins and meetings

Regular meetings and check-ins ensure alignment, identify potential issues, and provide an opportunity for feedback and support.

• Ensures your team is on track.
• Identifies where you are lagging.
• Ensures your employees don't take on more work than they can accomplish.
• Shows the bigger picture of when a project can realistically be finished.

Step 3: Set clear objectives by week, month, and year

Clearly defined goals and objectives keep the team focused and motivated. Breaking down projects into manageable tasks helps prevent procrastination and burnout.

So, any project or goal needs to be distributed into smaller chunks.

Step 4: Create a learning environment

Encourage learning from mistakes by treating them as opportunities for growth. This approach fosters a culture of continuous improvement and innovation.

Also, if you treat a mistake as something that can be remedied and is not the end of the world, people are more likely to admit that something is wrong.

Step 5: Encourage team bonding

Maintain team unity through informal communication channels and virtual social events. Understanding individual preferences for video chats ensures a comfortable environment for all employees.

However, if you decide to conduct video chats, it's a good idea to talk to all your employees one-on-one to determine if they are comfortable with that sort of arrangement. This makes sure you don't force them into a situation in which they don't want to be.

Tools for online communication

Various apps are available for maintaining online communication with your remote team, including email, chat, video call, and onboarding apps:

• Mailbird: for managing email accounts and business email communication
• Slack: for creating channels of communication, chatting to coworkers, audio/video calls
• Zoom or Lark: video conferencing with a chat option
• BambooHR: for onboarding new employees and keeping contact information

Time and Productivity. How to Reach Results?

Productivity is an elusive concept. A dictionary definition would say it is a measure of effectiveness in terms of input/output. While time is a factor in productivity, many people assess it by the amount of time spent working and not by the outcomes. With remote work, when you don't see people day to day, the results of their work come into the spotlight.

Are you a productive team lead?

Step 0: Focus on results, but time also matters

Have you ever thought that people should stop trying to be more productive and just show results? Some people are talented at seeming busy for eight hours straight, but at the end of the day, not much work is done.

One way to become productive at all is to break your tasks into smaller sub-tasks and measure the time you need to perform each one up to standard. On one hand, you are more likely to make progress on a task because you have a clearly defined algorithm. On the other hand, timing each sub-task will estimate the time required for similar assignments in the future.

There's a statistic floating around the web that humans have an extremely short attention span, even saying that it has decreased from 12 to 8 seconds in the last twenty or so years. But those figures are unreliable.

Psychologists say that it is difficult to measure the attention span of any living being. However, you can measure your ability to focus: use a stopwatch to time your work and stop it every time your mind wanders off-topic.

Step 1: Give your employees ownership of their piece of the work

Beyond that, let every member of your team see the bigger picture (project outline or roadmap, talk about it in meetings) and show how he or she fits into this picture. Responsibility comes not from orders or instructions on a task but from knowing that your work affects the outcomes of a project. This can be done by:

• Giving them the majority vote on a task — there's only one person who can be responsible for a particular task.
• Giving them a clear image of what "great" and "complete" looks like, and the scope of the task.
• Drawing a line between tasks where you can "safely" make mistakes and ones where there is little room for error.

Step 2: Prioritize the work

Doing the simpler tasks first instead of dragging them out forever, doing urgent tasks first because they are time-sensitive — that's logical, but knowing which task is urgent and what will or should take the least amount of time is not always clear. You can help your team prioritize by:

• Using statements like "this is urgent, please complete by…" or "this shouldn't take much time," and "let me know if you need help prioritizing your work for today."
• Adding a color code or words to the headline if you're using a task manager with Kanban boards.

Jira has a system of statuses for tasks, such as normal, urgent, or blocking the rest of the work. However, if you're using statuses, you should also define what each status means for your team. Like with communication etiquette, define your expected timeline for each status.

Another aspect of urgent work is that employees might have other, equally urgent tasks in progress. In an ideal world, such tasks wouldn't exist, but if they do in your team, make sure to:

• Ask what other tasks employees have in progress.
• See if any of them are urgent.
• Ask how much time would be needed to finish them
• Delegate to someone else.

Step 3: Limit work in progress

Some employees might plan more work per day than they can realistically handle. It can be discouraging if you planned to do five tasks but managed only one. It's also discouraging to other workers who counted on a task to be finished.

If you have employees who are the conqueror type — ones that deem every task as essential and want to tackle all tasks at once — work with them on prioritizing and create a table with types of tasks and time required to fully complete them. It may take some time to fill in the table, and you'll have to monitor it for some time to verify that the employees have learned to assess their abilities properly. If a 7-hour day is enough to only complete three tasks, there's no need to plan five.

On the other hand, you should monitor that your team members don't have too many open tasks (in progress) with roughly the same deadline. That's multitasking, and it shouldn't exist in the workplace. It's one thing to brush your teeth and watch TV and another to do two tasks that require cognitive function. Our brains aren't able to manage two things that require a lot of brainpower to accomplish, so if you try, neither task will be successful. Multitasking is an enemy of productivity.

Tools to use for time and productivity

Software has really changed how remote employees productivity is measured, and here are a few helpful instances:

• Asana, Trello, or Jira — task managers with Kanban boards, varying functionality, and price plans — offer flexibility for different workflows. For example, Jira supports issue templates for tickets, story points, and detailed task management with subtask templates and epic templates, making it suitable for teams that need advanced tracking and reporting capabilities.
• Toggle or Hourstack— for tracking time
• Zapier— for integrating different web applications

Taking Care of the Work Environment

An Internet connection and a personal laptop might be enough in some cases, but depending on the type of work your team members are doing, they might need more. For example, if one of your employees deals with customer support, make sure he or she has an appropriate headset and a small business phone system with VoIP software. For screen sharing purposes, many remote workers consider a co-browsing software as well.

No less important is taking into account the work environment a worker has at home. There are requirements in workplace ergonomics if we're talking about an office: the thermal conditions, humidity, lighting, and noise pollution. The standard acceptable thermal conditions are 23-26 degrees C in the summer and 20-23 in winter. This might not be appropriate for someone who always runs hot or has a medical condition, but the idea is to make sure that your team works in comfort.

As for humidity, for the standard temperature, the standard humidity is 50%. The Health and Safety Executive also says that a range of 40 to 70% should affect the perception of temperature, but once again, it will also depend on a person.

You've probably heard that one should get as much daylight as possible. That might not be possible depending on the living conditions of your team members, but make sure they know that the recommendation for normal office work and working with a computer is 500 lumen per square meter. This figure will help buy an appropriate lightbulb for the workroom.

Noise is another thing that some people might be more sensitive to than others. However, studies show that white noise — the kind of noise that oceans, forests, and, interestingly enough, some home appliances produce — can promote creativity and productivity. In fact, research indicates that 85 dB of sound is too distracting, while 70 dB is ideal for productive work.

So, if an employee lives in a hot environment, and there's no way for them to install air conditioning, it might be a good idea to send them an air cooler as an early birthday present, something that's affordable and contributes to an appropriate level of noise pollution and humidity.

It's also a good idea to offer partial or full compensation for a coworking space, as your budget allows.

Is Your House on Fire? Spy on and Eliminate Burnout

Burnout is real. The best way to prevent it is by leading a healthy lifestyle, eating high-quality foods, being physically active, going to bed at the right time, working on a schedule, and having sufficient rest. In reality, though, life is full of surprises, pleasant and not so much, and sometimes, you just go with the flow.

We don't need statistical data to know that most people are stressed, and this is translated into poor work performance.

Signs of burnout

• Increased irritability: snapping at others at work and home
• Falling performance: stress burns a lot of energy, and it becomes harder to do the same tasks with an equal level of efficiency as before.
• Overworking: overcompensating for the lack of effort
• Constant exhaustion: feeling like you've been running up a hill all day, but you can't fall asleep

Some things to help prevent burnout

• Open vacation policy: take a day off whenever you need as long as you don't drop off the radar while there are tasks that the project and other team members depend on.
• Mental health days: for a digital detox, when you need to reset your mind, recenter and deal with your anxieties without the pressure of work
• Options for a healthy lifestyle: a gym membership, therapy sessions, participation in sports events — anything that your budget allows
• Friendly environment and flexibility: an environment where your opinion matters, and you won't be yelled at if something goes wrong

Wrap Up

Switching entirely to remote work, integrating telecommuting opportunities, hiring freelancers — all these require adjustments to your ordinary way of managing a team. Everything from communication to how people manage their day, what they eat, and how much physical activity they get during the day influences how well they do their job and requires a different approach from what works well in the office.

Remote work has its benefits and limitations, but you can find a positive side in a lot of these limitations. Take communication for example. You can't physically go and see a colleague to discuss something, but you can text them in a chat, email them, write a comment on a related task in your project management tool, or call them if something requires their immediate input.

You can reach high remote work productivity on a digital basis by optimizing tools to improve remote productivity — using the right ones for task and time management, onboarding features, chat rooms, and video conferencing tools. And most of all, by developing a corporate culture where people don't follow rules just because someone says so but because they understand how their work contributes to the project and influences the work of other team members.

FAQ

Some studies show that people become more productive when they switch to remote work. They are also more likely to make healthy lifestyle choices.

When it's about your personal productivity, the best way to start is by organizing a dedicated place for work. You should also assess your online and offline environment — tools, stationery, a comfy chair — and make sure you surround yourself with purposeful items. However, the harder but more beneficial thing is learning to prioritize your work and limit the amount of work you have in progress.

Productivity can drop when working from home. This depends on your mental state, the number of distractions you have at home, and your experience with remote work. For example, if you have never worked remotely, and you have children, your productivity is most likely to drop. On the other hand, if you have worked remotely in the past and are highly disciplined, and your home is quiet for most of the day, then your productivity level can be even better than in the office.

Working remote would imply that you are doing your job while located in a place with a less concentrated population. Working remotely means doing your job without being present in a physical office. Either phrase doesn't change the concept of remote work — working from any place that has an Internet connection, be it your home, a café, or a personal office room.