Believe it or not, I’ve spent more time in the past fifteen years working on fully or partially remote teams than I have working entirely collocated with my team mates. As the COVID-19 landscape continues to shift how we all work, and how we are going to work over at least the next six months (if not longer), I wanted to share some tips and recommendations both as a manager managing a team of remote workers and as someone who has been both a successful (and not so successful) remote worker himself.
1. Establish a Routine
One of the biggest challenges of working remotely is scheduling (you’ll see related topics come up throughout this post). Are you working in your own time zone? I live in Seattle, but typically work central hours. I have a firm line that says I won’t take meetings before 6:30 AM my time unless “something is on fire.” And sometimes I’m on a call at 5am. Sometimes I’m on a call at 11pm. But I have clear boundaries in place and I make sure that I (as a manager) help support my team to hold up their own boundaries (and rely on my own manager to help support me). For me, this is great though. I don’t mind getting up early and I like being done early in the day. Or, if I have a lot of work that is going to require me to work a “long day” I’m still not up working super late (most of the time).
Make sure you have a plan that works around your life. Do you have kids that are doing remote school from home? Maybe you need to make sure you have time every couple of hours to help them with their own technology. Is your spouse also working from home? Do you need to coordinate times so that one of you can be with the kids off and on throughout the day? These are all realities in our world today and building a routine that supports your needs is critical to your success.
Whatever your routine is, make sure you communicate it with your team and your manager. Don’t be afraid to push back if someone tries to force you out of your routine, either. I tell customers all the time that “Hey, that’s 5:30 in the morning for me. Can we please do it a little later in the day? Otherwise I probably won’t be able to attend.” I would say 99% of the time this doesn’t cause problems. When it does, I have to gauge if it’s worth a fight or not. Sometimes, it is.
2. Remember it’s Still a Job
If you take a remote job as seriously as you would any other job, you will hopefully be very successful at it.
Show up to things you’re supposed to be at on time.
Get your work done.
Communicate with your team, manager, etc.
Be professional.
All good things to do anyway, right? At the end of the day this shouldn’t be any different than sitting at your desk in an office building. You just “happen” to be at home.
For me, I’m incredibly flexible as a manager. I don’t really care if someone needs to be off work for whatever reason. I just want to know about it. As long as my team is getting their work done and responsible about it, we’re all adults.
3. Make a Space for Work
Transitioning into a fully remote gig can take some effort mentally. There’s something transformative about commuting to work and back home again. Even on a short commute, you have a bit of time to get in the right frame of mind to pick up and lay down your burdens. If your work computer stays on your desk at the office you aren’t going to be on at at 9pm before bed (unless you’re still at the office). At home though? Everything is right there. It’s really easy to just keep working. It’s really hard to separate that work life from that home life when they’re all jumbled together.
This is even harder when you’re in a small space. I’ve seen so many stories from folks suddenly finding themselves working from home in major cities in small apartments while their kids at at school in the same space. And their spouse is also trying to work in the same space. The challenge is real and I am in no way advocating for adding a new wing onto the property so you have a wood paneled office. BUT! You should still try to carve out a space that is your “work” space. That may be bigger or smaller and that’s ok. But when you are sitting at the kitchen table or shut up in your office, you are “working.”
When I walk into my office I’m at work, even if I’m in that room on the weekend. When I’m out of that room I’m not at work, even if it’s a Tuesday morning. Keeping that separation helps me have a work life balance, even though I still get all the notifications on my phone that I would on my laptop. I can still draw a bit of a line in my head to help me understand when I’m working and when I’m not. I answer messages faster when I’m working. I ignore email almost entirely when I’m not. Physically I’m in the same building in both instances, but I’m not always “in the office.” Trust me, it helps.
The other thing I would recommend here (especially if you’re going to be working from home for the long haul) is to spend some money and make yourself a good space. Office chairs are expensive but you’re going to wreck your back if you just sit in a kitchen chair for the next six months. Standing desks are expensive, but they are so worth it. I’ve been really pleased with my chair and desk that I got from Ikea. I’m not an affiliate with Ikea in any way, I’ve just been really pleased with a $200 chair that has lasted for four years. I use the Markus chair and Bekant standing desk. I’ve legit never had a chair last me four years (for any amount of money).
4. Make Sure You Have the Right Tools for the Job
As I mentioned in #2, a good desk and chair are really important. A few other things I’d advise on the office front:
A good desk (standing is nice)
A comfortable chair
External Monitor, Keyboard, Mouse
Comfortable Headphones with Microphone (I use both of the following)
Apple Airpods (for wireless option)
Turtle Beach Ear Force Seven Gaming Headset (for music and long-term wear)
Obviously if your employer provides a stipend or any of these items, so much the better.
The other thing I’d call out here is how critical it is to have good collaborative and teleconferencing tools for your team. At Acquia we use Slack for chat, Zoom for conferencing, and the Google suite for Email and collaboration with documents / presentations, etc. Obviously there are many variations on this collection. But at the end of the day, you should have some way of communicating (both text and audio/visual), a way to collaboratively work on documents, etc. If you don’t, I would urge your company to make the necessary investment.
Finally, if you’re going to be working completely from home, look at things like your internet and cell phone. Are you going to run out of data? Do you have appropriate speeds for the job? Do you have the right wireless router to cover your entire home? We recently updated to the Google Wifi router and have been very pleased (but obviously, any mesh network will be of help to extend your coverage).
Obviously you don’t have to do all this all at once, but it is a potential investment in your home to support your office and all the stuff you need. I definitely would focus on the chair, internet connection, and headphones first, and the rest can come as time and money allow.
Protip: Remember that at home there may be more background noise than there would be at an office. Use headphones (for the benefit of anyone around you) and make sure you’re always muted on calls (for the benefit of anyone on the call).
5. Focus on Self Care
One of the first things I tell new hires at Acquia is that remote work is totally different than going into the office every day for a lot of reasons. You have to be much more intentional about everything you do because you’re no longer being driven by your commute, social graces, or other factors to force you to “take care of yourself.”
Pay attention to your body. If you’re hungry, make sure you have time between meetings to eat. Take time out of the day to get outside and go for a walk or do a workout. I have never been so thankful to have a Peloton as I have been this year.
When I worked at an office that was spread out across a fairly large campus, I used to be really intentional about when and where I would schedule meetings. “Oh hey, I can’t do that time because I’m back to back, and I have to get across campus for this next meeting.” That’s a totally legit reason to put padding between meetings. “Oh hey, I’m already back to back all morning and I’m going to need a quick break to refill my water and use the restroom,” is also a totally legit reason for putting padding between meetings. Just because you physically aren’t moving or restricted from something doesn’t mean you have to take down your boundaries.
Take time for your morning routine. Take time for breakfast, and lunch. You own your schedule and it’s totally fine for you to take time for you to be person.
Protip: use a smartwatch (or similar fitness tracker) to help you keep track of your steps, sit/stand/move goals, etc. This can really help you pay better attention to your routine and how you care for yourself (especially if you have a tracker that will nudge you every hour or two to stand up and walk around).
6. Take Time to Introduce Yourself to People
I admit I am still guilty of this sometimes, but it’s something I am constantly trying to improve. When you get on a conference call with people that you don’t know? Take time to introduce yourself to them and find out who they are. Find out why they are there. Find out what they are working on. You are never going to meet people by accident working remotely. You don’t bump into the same couple of people waiting at the microwave in the kitchen because you all eat lunch at 11:30 every day. You won’t run into the same people coming into the building, or walking out of the restroom. The only way to meet people you work with in a remote situation is to be intentional about meeting the people you work with.
By no means am I saying you need to be everyone’s BFF. I’m not saying you need to be super chatty and in everyone’s business. These can be quick unobtrusive social gestures. And they may be gestures that are outside your comfort zone (that’s ok). They are worth it. And I strongly recommend you take the time to do it!
7. Don’t Forget About Socialization at Work
Directly linked to meeting people is “doing stuff” with people. The last team I worked in an office with got together for happy hours or lunches or birthday parties from time to time. It wasn’t all the time. I wouldn’t say that we as a collective group of nearly twenty people were “always hanging out” and doing stuff together. But we still did team building activities and we still had fun as a group. You should do this with your remote team(s) as well.
Ever since the stay at home orders started in March, I’ve worked with my team to put a few new things in place. I think the consensus was, hey why weren’t we doing some of this stuff already? We were already an entirely distributed team.
One on Ones are perhaps the most important thing I do as a manager. I have ten direct reports and I take time (nearly) every week to sit down for at least a few minutes and say hi, see how my team is doing, and chat. Some weeks we have business to attend to that takes longer. Sometimes there’s a problem with a project or at home that we dig into. Regardless, I make time to be sure that I have a connection with my team. You should too. (Note: I was already doing these before all this happened, but I think they are even more important now than ever).
Game Night is now a semi-regular thing for us. We get together (usually Friday afternoon, despite calling it a game night) and do a round of Trivia or play some games. Geeks Who Drink livestreams trivia every week and the streams are available on Twitch to re-watch (warning: some of this content is explicit). We’ve also had a lot of fun with the Jackbox games (although these are tough with more than 8 people, and I have a team of 10).
Happy Hour is another super fun thing to do if you have a time of folks comfortable drinking (if not, have a coffee break in the middle of the day so no one feels pressured to drink alcohol.) While this is far from “as fun” as doing it in person, it’s still a ton of fun and a great use of time.
Coffee Exchange is another new thing we’ve started doing. There are usually 20-30 people who participate. Each person gets a buddy, and you order a bag of your favorite coffee to ship to your buddy with a $20 limit on cost. We’ve been doing this for 3-4 months now and continue to see interest. Once you get your coffee, you take a picture of yourself with the coffee and we include a slide with all of us alive and well with our new coffee in our monthly all hands.
Whatever the thing you do ends up being, make sure you’re doing something to form a connection with your team. It takes effort to form these bonds, but I can honestly say I have formed lasting friendships that have transcended shared employers with people I only worked remotely with. You can do these things, it just takes effort.
8. Don’t Forget About Socialization Outside of Work
This one is tightly coupled with self care. For me, as an extrovert, I absolutely have to have human interaction. I need to interact with people outside of my immediate family. Normally I accomplish this through our regular Dungeons and Dragons group and my martial arts. Obviously with COVID, this has become more challenging. I’ve found that playing video games online and talking on the phone still helps though.
Regardless, whether you’re an introvert (and you really don’t want to do it) or you’re an extrovert (and you’re in trouble if you don’t) make sure you find a way to replace the social interaction you’ve lost by working from home. I’ve been very strategic and intentional about this since joining Acquia and I’ve found it to be a much better experience than it was a decade ago while I was freelancing. I think if you’re attentive to the loss of social interaction and are proactive about finding ways to replace it, you’ll be just fine.
9. Turn on the Camera
I try pretty hard to have my camera on all meetings. I think it helps form connections between teams. I think it helps build trust that you are paying attention and involved in the meeting at hand. I think it also helps pull people into the meeting.
One of my previous gigs had a single remote person working on a very large team. It was very challenging for her to participate, because she was online and the “conference room” was online. So it was her on one line and fifteen people on the other. It was even worse when the camera in the conference room was off (or it didn’t have one at all). Having everyone individually connected to a call with their own cameras makes it a lot easier to interact, believe it or not. I would actually recommend this model even if you eventually get back to a model where “most” of your team is together and a few folks are remote. Having everyone around the conference table with their own computers and cameras on is much more inclusive for your remote folks!
10. Take Time Off
This has been a bit of a recurring joke this year. Taking time off when you’re locked up in the house and can’t really go anywhere seems silly. It’s not! Taking time to play video games or sleep in or read a book or see your family or whatever you do when you’re not working isn’t a waste of time. I’ve strongly recommended my team take long weekends and even “normal-ish” vacations this year. No one is really jumping on a plane (obviously) but at the same time, they aren’t working and they’re taking some time to recuperate and step away from work.
Bonus: Take Advantage of the Perks
You get to define your schedule every day. Remember, you’re not spending a ton of time getting from your home to your office. Do you sleep in a little bit later to have a more comfortable start to the day? Or do you still get up at the same time you did when you had to commute and get done earlier?
That five minutes in between meetings? That’s frequently laundry time. That frees up a ton of time on the nights and weekends because I am working on little tasks like laundry throughout the day. I feel 0% guilty about tossing a load of laundry in or taking my dogs outside to throw the ball around for a few minutes. Are you on 100% of the time during your work day? Do you feel guilty stopping to say hello to someone in the hallway, or running downstairs to get a cup of coffee? I hope not! Take advantage of the flexibility of working from home. The perks are truly incredible (even if you’re not working from home by choice). You might just discover you like it and want to keep doing it long term.
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