A comprehensive handbook to building and managing remote teams
Introduction
The past couple of years have driven a rapid—and in many cases, unplanned—shift to remote work worldwide. Organizations are struggling to rent office space and recruit great talent. Additionally, employees want more flexibility in their work. They want to be near family and bring down their commute to a minimum. The rising costs, hiring pressures, and the growth of cloud-based tools, have made remote work an excellent choice for many companies.
But remote work is more than just a one-time switch. It is an ongoing process with significant implications for employers and employees. Several blockers related to hiring, onboarding, communication, and collaboration across time zones can make remote work challenging. However, organizations can navigate this complex landscape with ease with the correct practices in place.
Guide Outlook
This guide breaks down the benefits of working remotely, shares tips to overcome the most prevalent remote work challenges, and outlines practical strategies for managing distributed teams. Simply put, it aims to help readers make the most of their remote work experience.
The remote work guide has something to offer for everybody!
- Employees and newly remote teams can find popular tips and tricks for adapting to the distributed way of working.
- Organizations looking to enhance their existing remote processes can pick up new ideas here.
- For managers, we’ve listed the best practices for building a high-performing team in a remote as well as a hybrid setup.
Table of Contents
Part One
Foundation
- Remote Work Benefits
- Remote Work Challenges and How to Overcome Them
- Major Remote Trends
- Remote Work Misconceptions, Busted
Part Two
Transitioning, Onboarding, and Training
- Making the Transition to Remote
- Best Practices for Onboarding Remote Teams
- Best Practices for Training Remote Workforces
Part Three
Management
- Which Type of Remote Team Are You?
- Managing Remote Teams
- Managing Hybrid Teams
Part Four
Employee Engagement and Wellbeing
- Mastering the Art of Virtual Meetings
- Keeping Employees Engaged in the Remote Space
- Mental Health in the Time of Remote Work
Part Five
The Boundaryless Landscape
- Boundaryless Companies We Admire
- Why Divogue Loves Boundaryless Work
- Divogue’s Boundaryless Work Values
Part Six
The Remote Work Glossary
- A-Z of Remote Work
- PART ONE
- FOUNDATION
Why Go Remote?
Top Remote Work Benefits Companies Should Know
Studies show that cost-saving, increased productivity and innovation, better hiring competitiveness, and less attrition are some of the principal benefits of remote work.
Here’s more:
Remote work leads to increased productivity and innovation
According to Global Workplace Analytics, remote workers are 35-40 percent more productive than in-office employees and deliver an output increase of at least 4.4 percent. Top companies have experienced the productivity benefits of remote work:
- Remote workers at Compaq and JD Edwards were respectively 20-25 percent and 15-45 percent more productive than their office counterparts
- A famous remote work experiment at the Chinese company Ctrip resulted in a 13 percent increase in productivity
- American Express workers produced 43 percent more than their office-based counterparts
- Qualcomm and Lenovo experienced higher productivity and innovation, with Qualcomm filing more patents during the pandemic than before
- Sun Microsystem employees dedicated 60 percent of their commuting time to work for the firm
Remote work helps companies save on operational costs
Six in 10 employers cite cost savings as a critical benefit of going remote. Global Workplace Analytics revealed that businesses lose $600 billion a year to workplace distractions. On the other hand, allowing employees to work from home just half of the time can save employers approximately $11,000 per employee. Moreover, companies that allow full-time remote work can witness average real estate savings of $10,000+ per employee. Remote work allowed several companies to reduce operational costs considerably:
- Google saved an annualized amount of $1 billion on travel, promotional, and entertainment cost
- IBM and McKesson saved $50 million and $2 million respectively on real estate expenditures
- Nortel saved $100K on relocation expenses per employee
- Sun Microsystems identified savings of $68 million a year in its real estate costs
Retaining remote talent is easier
Talent retention is crucial to operational success. Global Workplace Analytics reports that the cost of losing a valued employee can be between $10,000 to $30,000. Firms with some form of remote work policy experience 25 percent less turnover than firms with no WFH policies. Additionally, remote employees are 13 percent more likely than their in-office counterparts to say they will remain with their present job for the next five years. This increased retention applies not only to full-time remote workers but also to employees who occasionally work from home; they report higher job satisfaction levels, too.
Hire competitively from global pools of talent
The cost of hiring a single employee can range between $4K to $7K (or more, depending on the technical specialization of the role) and can take above two months. A fully remote company has access to a larger pool of talent and more possibilities, thus reducing the cost and time of hiring a particular candidate. Fully remote companies can take 33 percent less time—approximately 4.5 weeks vs. seven weeks—to recruit a new employee.
What’s more, almost two-thirds of employees claim that telecommuting ability is a “somewhat-to-extremely important” factor in their job selection process. As a result, companies wanting to stay competitive in the hiring process will gravitate toward remote work.
The Challenges of Remote Work
and How to Overcome Them
Despite having several benefits, remote work can prove challenging; employees often cite meeting fatigue, burnout, and loneliness as the cons of working remotely.
Here are some common remote work complaints and strategies to mitigate them:
Meeting fatigue
Studies have found that meetings capture a significant portion of employee hours. Sixty-three percent of remote workers participate in more meetings online than they would have in the office, with 30 percent spending two to three hours daily meeting on camera. Yet, in another survey, eight in 10 employees would like a day without meetings every week.
Solutions to meeting fatigue:
- Aabhas Sharma, Head of Engineering at Found, offered a solution at the Divogue Boundaryless: #ScalingPostPandemic Conference: his team prescribes a fixed set of meeting hours for employees across time zones while allowing them to work flexibly outside those hours.
- Kintan Brahmbhatt, GM, Amazon, said his team practices “no-meeting days or times,” wherein employees don’t schedule any meets on fixed days of the week or month.
- Aditya Modi, Senior Engineering Manager at LinkedIn, suggested consolidating as many meetings as possible and including only relevant team members. He also recommended periodic breaks between back-to-back meetings.
Burnout
In a Buffer survey, burnout emerged as the most common challenge remote employee’s encounter. Sixty-nine percent of remote workers have experienced burnout symptoms, whereas 27 percent found it difficult to unplug from work. A Microsoft study reported that remote employees worked longer hours remotely than in-office.
Solutions to burnout:
- Heather McKelvey, VP of Engineering, LinkedIn, offered a solution her company had developed: LinkedIn shuts shop twice a week each year. This year, when LinkedIn realized employees weren’t using paid time off due to the shift to remote, they closed for an extra week in April.
- McKelvey’s method for setting boundaries between work and play includes going offline for at least two 30-minute slots a day. Other colleagues, she mentioned, limit their working hours to just six a day. “Working six hours as a high-performer is better than working ten hours while feeling 50 percent,” she said.
- Paid time off, specially designated “mental health days,” and employee engagement activities like meditation sessions, healthy eating courses, and virtual workout sessions can also improve an employee’s mental wellbeing.
Loneliness
The Buffer survey also reveals that loneliness is a common challenge remote workers face, with 16 percent of employees experiencing it. In addition, research from Gallup suggests that loneliness can affect employees’ personal and professional well-being.
Solutions to employee loneliness:
- Hetal Shah, SVP of Operations, Cleo, highlighted the importance of periodic in-person interactions to engage remote teams. He offered his experience at eBay as an example: His distributed team held off sites at the beginning of every quarter. These meetings brought the team together to discuss critical strategies and exchange crucial feedback.
- Virtual coffee breaks, Slack channels dedicated to water cooler conversations, and similar casual bonding activities can help mitigate employee loneliness.
- Note: Read more in Mastering the Art of Virtual Meetings and Mental Health in the Time of Remote Work.
Remote Work Trends
Organizations worldwide have presented their employees with the option to continue working remotely indefinitely as the global sentiment shifts in favor of remote
- A recent study revealed that 76 percent of workers would be more willing to stay with their current employer if they could work flexible hours.
- Employees consider hybrid work arrangements a perk worth about six percent of wages.
- Moreover, 86 percent of workers agree that working from home is less stressful.
- Employers have been enjoying increased productivity of about 15 percent – 45 percent from remote workforces.
- Seventy-three percent of teams will have remote workers by 2028.
- Hybrid work environments – armed with several collaborative solutions – are rapidly taking center stage.
Remote Work Misconceptions, Busted
A record number of companies announced their switch to remote in 2020. According to a survey, the percentage of employees working from home will double in 2022. But despite the popularity of remote work, myths persist.
Here are five remote work myths to leave behind in 2022:
Questions
Are office workers more productive than remote workers?
Contrary to popular belief, several studies reveal that remote employees are more productive than traditional office workers. Many remote employees even say that they work longer hours than regular office goers. Although remote workers don’t have their managers monitoring their work throughout the day, they still get their job done because they’re motivated to perform their best.
Does remote work ruin company culture?
Company culture is a set of values, goals, and behaviors that characterize an organization. Many believe that culture is developed through employees spending time together at the office. However, that is not true. Remote organizations take extra efforts to create virtual environments that help employees bond over shared ideals. Regular all-hands meetings, virtual coffee chats, and annual retreats are great cultural contributors for remote companies. And so, remote work does not hamper company culture.
Questions
Does remote work threaten data privacy?
Organizations often worry that remote work jeopardizes sensitive information and leads to data breaches. Several cybersecurity strategies and software are available today that effectively prevent such cyber threats. Educating employees about the best data practices to adopt while working from home is a great way to ensure digital security and data privacy.
Does remote work mean poor communication and collaboration?
Most organizations establish clear communication standards for their remote teams. Remote workers are likely to be well connected with their team members thanks to apps that break down communication barriers and promote collaboration. And so, companies can ensure effective communication and avoid silos with the right processes and tools in place.
PART TWO
TRANSITIONING, ONBOARDING, AND TRAINING
Making the Transition to Remote
Transitioning to remote can be tricky without a carefully formulated strategy.
Here are a few points to accelerate the transition to remote:
Discuss, define, and document remote work policies
Start with your employees first. Discuss how comfortable they are working remotely and address their concerns. Next, identify what tools and technology will best support their transition to remote work. Then, develop a realistic and adaptable policy based on the feedback.
Create guidelines for employee attendance and reachability, including working hours, how and when employees should communicate, and how long they have to respond to important messages. Define essential and low-priority communication. Highlight employee expectations and the rules remote employees need to follow. It becomes easier for team members to understand how to conduct themselves with a clear and definite remote work policy in place.
Darren Murph, Head of Remote, GitLab, adds a few more pointers for first-time remote organizations. “So step one would be to pressure test any of your company’s workflows and cultural underpinnings to make sure that they are resilient and work outside of the office. By default, a lot of workflows are office-first. If you have something you rely on, you should audit that and convert it to a remote-first workflow,” he explains.
Build trust and transparency
Model trust and accountability by answering questions truthfully. Emphasize the importance of being open by encouraging team members to share their wins and challenges through real-time meetings or asynchronous forums. Promoting transparency also includes offering autonomy to remote employees, trusting their decisions, improving transparency through better communication skills, and holding them accountable for their output. Remote team members and managers must put their confidence in one another and stand together for a seamless shift to remote.
Start using communication and collaboration tools
No high-performing remote team is complete without excellent communication and collaboration tools. Opt for remote-specific communication tools that offer real-time messaging, video call options, and categorize conversations by channel, project, or topic. Set up a cloud-based project management tool that allows remote employees equal access to data, organize projects between different teams, and set timelines. Similarly, look for tools to enhance productivity, manage and maintain timesheets, and efficiently communicate across various time zones. Start using these tools before the transition phase to adapt to the new workspace seamlessly and achieve optimal productivity.
Secure company data
Data security is a significant concern for remote organizations. Employees may use home networks and personal devices to access business applications and platforms, making the organization vulnerable to cyber attacks. Organizations should develop a cybersecurity policy to inform employees of what’s expected of them when working remotely. Implement protocols to limit or contain the impact of potential cybersecurity attacks. This policy involves controlling access to digital and physical assets. They should also develop a response plan to restore any capabilities or services affected by cybersecurity incidents.
Best Practices for Onboarding Remote Teams
Effective onboarding practices are essential to integrate new joiners into the company. Research has shown that around 69 percent of employees will stay with a company longer-term if they had a good onboarding experience.
Remember, documentation is an integral part of organizational onboarding. Second, making tools accessible to new joiners empowers them. Third, social onboarding helps create a feeling of belonging in the new employees.
And thus, you can divide the onboarding process in three parts:
• Organizational onboarding
• Technical onboarding
• Social onboarding
Documentation is vital for organizational onboarding
A company’s primary responsibility in an all-remote setup is to get new employees acquainted with the company and its core values.
Your new hires should know the answers to these questions after the onboarding process:
- What are my primary roles and responsibilities?
- Who can help me get started with them?
- What is the organizational hierarchy like?
- What processes should I follow?
Remote companies need to streamline resources and make information easily accessible for smooth onboarding. Maintaining a live, comprehensive handbook that helps new joiners answer the above questions is vital in organizational onboarding.
At Divogue’s Boundaryless: #ScalingPostPandemic conference, remote leaders stressed the importance of documentation in the onboarding process. Aabhas Sharma, Head of Engineering at Found, pointed out that synchronous onboarding sessions can be difficult for teammates located in different time zones. Kintan Brahmbhatt, GM, of Amazon, added: “Increased documentation makes it easier for new employees to understand the organization’s rhythm.”
Darren Murph, Head of Remote, GitLab, agreed: “It’s important that organizations document early, create a company handbook, and create a single source of truth. So, it’s not enough to just say we value collaboration at our company. You have to write down how collaboration looks. It’s easiest to start this when you have a small team. By systematically documenting things, you would need fewer check-ins at each other’s desks to get a status update. These principles make the transition seem less daunting,”
Technical onboarding empowers new employees
Tools are an essential part of technical onboarding. Making tools accessible to new hires not only empowers them but also makes them more productive.
Remote organizations can build training modules with a list of tools for everyday use. Build these modules to familiarize new employees with the company’s culture and encourages them to identify areas of improvement.
Social onboarding helps create a feeling of belonging
New team members may be overwhelmed when joining an all-remote company, especially if transitioning from a traditional in-office setup. To help foster a sense of belonging, companies can create opportunities for engagement and interaction with the rest of the team:
- Put a communication structure in place: Leaders should design a communication structure that gives ample opportunities to new joiners to know their team members as well as members on the managerial and executive levels. Virtual meetings with relevant stakeholders or introductions on Slack and other asynchronous channels are great ways to get started.
- The buddy system: Companies can assign a ‘buddy,’ i.e., an old employee, to help new employees settle in. The buddy can act as the new hire’s primary point of contact, help solve any blockers they face, introduce them to other teammates, invite them to virtual hangouts, and make them feel part of the team.
In this manner, an efficient onboarding process should address the organizational, technical, and social processes that drive the company.
Best Practices for Training Remote Workforces
Remote training is a vital part of the remote learning and development process. According to a recent survey, nearly 60 percent of Human Resource managers said they hadn’t offered employees any training on working remotely. On the other hand, LinkedIn found that 94 percent of employees would stick with a company that invested in their training and development.
Critical pointers for training remote employees:
Identify the training needs and goals
Conduct a training needs analysis to assess employees’ knowledge, skills, and abilities and determine what training they need to move the company towards its goals. Then, draft a plan and highlight the short-term and long-term objectives of the training process.
Select a delivery model according to goals and objectives
Synchronous learning: Synchronous or real-time learning happens through various channels such as conference calls or cloud-based, computer-linked sessions. As the name suggests, it is a learning method that allows remote employees to learn in real time and is similar to classroom training.
Asynchronous learning: Asynchronous or self-paced learning enables employees to access learning content at their convenience, participate in activities, and take assessments based on necessary deadlines.
Blended learning: This combination of real-time and self-paced learning allows flexibility for various learners and learning circumstances. It works well for complex training needs.
Pick out the training tools
Investing in the right tools is vital for successful remote training.
- Learning Management Systems: An LMS is an integrated solution for building an engaging, personalized training course and tracking employee attendance and progress.
- Learning Experience Platforms: A learning experience platform is a portal that tracks training progress and administers certification like a management system. It enables trainers to tailor and update learning materials according to training needs. It also gives remote trainees the chance to learn according to their schedule.
- Project Management and Communication Tools: These tools are beneficial for tracking progress, collaboration, and assessing t
- he effectiveness of the training.
Prepare and deliver learning material
- Load the training materials into the training platform to create the slide deck. Include surveys or polls at regular intervals to improve participation and engagement. Practice delivering the training material ahead of time. Invite remote employees to sign up in a shared calendar. Create a monthly training schedule so employees can stay ahead of it.
Prepare and orient the employees for the training
Send out a training kit with these essentials:
- A checklist of the key points to be covered in the training session
- A schedule of the speakers
- Essential IT tips on handling audio and visual issues
- Support team contacts in case they face issues
- Details on how they can join the training (user ids and passcodes among others)
- A list of references they need to read prior-training
- A checklist of training etiquette like how to use the chat feature for questions, muting mics when not speaking, and raising a hand to speak
Track results and implement changes as necessary
It’s crucial to track the effectiveness of the remote training as it helps understand whether employees are absorbing the material and determine which courses are most successful and which ones need improvement. Regular one-on-ones, surveys, questionnaires, and post-training quizzes are practical tools for assessing training success.
PART THREE
MANAGEMENT
Which Type of Remote Team Are You?
It is essential to understand and identify the type of remote teams to support the needs of the organization and the employees. Each of the below-mentioned remote teams has different characteristics.
Most common types of remote teams:
The fully remote team
A fully remote team pretty much does what it says on the tin. Everyone on this team works from different locations—whether from home, a cafe, or a co-working space. In other words, a fully remote team has geographically dispersed team members who have the flexibility to travel to and work from different places. These teams often have no centralized headquarters as all the employees work remotely. Better work-life balance, time and money-saving, and environmental sustainability are some of the many benefits of being a part of a fully remote team.
The remote-first team
Remote-first is a strategy that makes remote work the primary option for most or all employees. But unlike fully remote organizations, remote-first teams can work from a physical workplace of some kind. However, most people on remote teams work from home or other locations outside of the corporate office. Employees in a remote-first group have just as much access to information, discussions, and decisions as their in-office peers. Remote-first teams reflect a culture that establishes remote work as the norm rather than something approved only in certain circumstances.
The hybrid team
A hybrid team is a partly distributed workforce. Hybrid teams cater to personal preferences; the members can create a work-from-home schedule at their convenience and have the option to connect with colleagues on their terms. Furthermore, hybrid team members may rotate between working from an office and working elsewhere regularly or semi-regularly, depending on the workload.
Managing Remote Teams
Chris Herd, CEO, Firstbase, shared: “What many companies are doing right now is replicating the office environment remotely, and that’s causing them to miss many of the benefits.” He notes that organizations should look at remote work as a ‘new thing’ and establish guidelines for managing distributed teams effectively.
The following steps can make the process easier:
Have daily check-ins and give regular feedback
Remote work is often associated with a sense of isolation. Asynchronous communication tools, although practical, can only go so far. And so, remote managers should conduct face-to-face check-ins whenever possible. Henrik Hussfelt, Director of Engineering, Proxy, said: “Managing is about people skills and understanding. In a physical office, it’s easy to see someone struggling with something and help them out. When you’re distributed, and you don’t enforce actual Facetime, you have zero interactions with your team. So, in a distributed environment, you need to make sure to engage with your peers naturally. You can do that by having frequent one on ones.”
Sixty-nine percent of employees say that they’d work harder if they were given regular feedback by their employer, whereas 79 percent cite lack of appreciation as their primary reason for quitting their job. In addition, giving timely feedback increases organizational transparency and provides a clear picture of what’s working well in the workplace and what isn’t.
Set clear goals and performance expectations
Emphasize objectives over processes to create clarity for employees. Collaborate at a mutually agreeable time and use virtual tools wherever possible. Equip remote employees with the flexibility to complete their tasks in a way that suits them best. Set boundaries, provide clear guidelines, and review performance for every task undertaken by the remote team. Set realistic and achievable goals to measure success.
Focus on the output instead of the number of hours worked. Allow employees to develop their own plan of execution. This practice boosts employee creativity and ownership. Avoid micromanaging as it is counterproductive. Prioritize mentoring over managing. Set up a detailed work schedule with tasks to be accomplished in a given time frame. Conduct regular one-on-ones with the team to track progress. Encourage innovation and provide safety for potential failures.
Mentor employees, give recognition and celebrate success
To achieve high performance, Heather McKelvey, VP of Engineering, LinkedIn, advised leaders to assemble and consult a board of mentors and sponsors. She explained that a mentor helps you identify your strengths and opportunities, whereas a sponsor promotes you within exclusive circles.
Establish employee recognition as a part of company culture. Embrace new ways of rewarding and recognizing employees to keep them motivated. Recognition helps employees see that their organization values them and their contributions. It allows employees to build a sense of security in their value to the company. It also serves as a strong signal to other employees of behaviors they should emulate.
Nothing encourages a work environment like celebrating wins as a team. Take the time to step back, acknowledge, and appreciate the effort that went into accomplishing goals.
Be mindful of boundaries
A productive, high-performing remote team is all about balance. Kelly Graziadei, Founder and General Partner at f7 Ventures, elaborated: “Everyone needs to feel respected. They should not think that [just that] one team should always have the team meeting at midnight. You need to rotate so that each time zone has to flex and give at different times.”
McKelvey continued: “If you’re going to maintain high performance, you should also maintain the ability to relax and turn off,” she said. “Remote work can cause burnout when team members don’t identify their limits and make them known,” she added. Instead, Heather recommended that managers enquire about their team’s boundaries and respect them. She also shared her method for setting boundaries: two 30-minute slots of going off-grid each day. “Working six hours as a high-performer is better than working ten hours while feeling 50 percent,” she noted.
Managing Hybrid Teams
Having a hybrid team offers plenty of advantages to the employees and organization, but it also presents some challenges. Subsequently, these hybrid setups require leaders to rethink employee engagement and vision for the organization.
Here are a few best practices for hybrid teams that ensure smooth coordination between in-office and remote employees.
Foster an inclusive work culture
An inclusive environment ensures that the employee experience is the same, whether in the office five days a week or entirely remotely. It’s a culture that accommodates all employees irrespective of their workplace and ascertains that in-office and remote employees have access to the same information and resources and are equally involved in decision-making.
Invest in tools that aid cross-team collaboration
The tools that a hybrid team uses have a direct impact on its productivity. Therefore, it’s a good idea to invest in software that allows effective collaboration between remote and on-site employees. In addition, this investment builds an inclusive organizational culture and discourages a ‘we vs. them’ divide.
Maintain personal relationships
Remote employees often feel disconnected from their in-office colleagues. And thus, it is essential to give equal attention and support to all the team members irrespective of where they work. Striking a balance between the needs of individual team members and the team as a whole is equally important. Encouraging casual dialogue between remote and in-office employees can help in fostering healthy relationships.
PART FOUR
ENGAGEMENT AND WELLBEING
Mastering the Art of Virtual Meetings
Employers should keep three principal points in mind to optimize virtual meetings: Virtual meetings, when conducted in moderation, improve worker retention and innovation. Excessive meetings kill employee productivity. Similarly, technical issues prove challenging to remote efficiency.
Here’s how remote team leaders can make virtual meetings more productive, cost-effective, and engaging:
Excessive meetings cost employers time and money
Remote employers may overcompensate for lack of face-to-face interaction with excessive virtual meetings. Gartner data shows that remote employees attend, on average, one more meeting a day than when they were in the office. However, excessive meetings can hamper employee productivity and efficiency.
Forty-two percent of respondents considered a constant stream of virtual engagements a severe distraction, while more than half wished they spent less time on video calls. More than 35 percent of employees found that they waste 2 to 5 hours daily on meetings and calls, but they achieve nothing to show. Another study showed that ineffective meetings cost up to $70 to $283 billion to the US economy.
Managers should consider themselves stewards of an employee’s time and plan meetings in moderation by implementing the following:
- Ask the question, “Could this meeting have been an email?”
- Go async. Transferring as much synchronous communication to async channels is a defining characteristic of remote teams. Moreover, workers are three times more likely to fulfill tasks assigned in writing.
- Seek feedback from employees.
A near-majority of remote workers want more engaging meetings
Forty-seven percent of employees surveyed by Slido consider virtual meetings unengaging. Nearly half of all respondents claimed they left meetings without speaking their minds. One in every three such employees considered a job change after exiting meetings.
Unengaging meetings threaten staff retention and kill ideas. Employees described the key characteristics of what they considered engaging meetings:
- Well-prepared organizers
- A meeting agenda
- Clear communication
- Decision-oriented discussions
- Thoughtful use of time
Strategies for improvement could include:
Employ the 50/50 rule, whereby managers speak for no more than 50 percent of the meeting (at the most) and reserve 50 percent solely for discussion and conversation among team members.
Use visual anchors, such as slide shows, project briefs, task trackers for project meetings.
Organize interactive tasks like gathering questions before the meeting, actively seeking feedback, and conducting polls, quizzes, and surveys.
Outlining well-defined action items for each team member.
Technical issues are prevalent in virtual meetings
Seventy-three percent of employees identified technical issues as the most pervasive challenge with video calls. During meetings, more than half of remote workers reported facing audio quality (57 percent) and video quality (56 percent) challenges. Fifty percent also experienced frequent issues with internet connectivity. Potential solutions could include:
- Organizing live training for using video tools and resolving common issues
- Maintaining a suite of online resources to explain and troubleshoot problems
- Having a tested backup plan ready
- Designating a dedicated tech support team
- Preparing to continue on a different platform
Keeping Employees Engaged in the Remote Workplace
Employee engagement is the emotional commitment an employee has towards their organization and its goals. A recent study reveals that remote work positively impacts employee engagement. Additionally, most remote workers have a stronger sense of belonging than their in-office colleagues. Despite this, remote organizations have a lot of opportunities to step up their game and boost employee engagement.
Tips to boost employee engagement in the remote workplace:
Send thoughtful care packages
A remote work care package is an assortment of gifted items to make remote employees feel appreciated. The components can vary widely based on the theme of the box. Care packages boost employee morale and keep them motivated. They also help maintain relationships over long distances and start new ones with employees that are onboarding remotely.
Ensure remote employees take regular breaks
Remote workers often find ‘switching off’ after work challenging. This inability to unplug can make them work too hard for too long, leading to physical and mental burnout. Ensure that employees take regular breaks from work. Providing access to health resources or wellbeing activities can also be an excellent way to promote positive employee engagement.
Recognize employee contributions
Remote employees put in more hours than their in-office counterparts, but they often don’t feel seen. Establishing employee recognition as a regular practice can help overcome this challenge. In addition, studies have shown that acknowledging employee contributions leads to greater employee engagement. One way can be to set up a dedicated online platform to give employees recognition in real-time. This recognition will help them feel valued and connected to the organization.
Show empathy
Remote employees feel more committed to the company and their role if they feel appreciated as employees and as people. And thus, managers should show empathy towards the personal circumstances of their team members and extend support wherever possible, especially with new hires. This empathy builds trust and transparency, which leads to greater employee engagement.
Mental Health in the Time of Remote Work
Despite its many benefits, unstructured and unchecked remote work can cause or intensify mental health struggles like loneliness, burnout, and demotivation. Here are the top mental health risk factors for remote employees and tips to tackle them:
Virtual breaks can reduce chronic loneliness and burnout
A survey by Buffer observed that 20 percent of remote employee’s report feeling lonely. A Flexjobs survey indicated that two-thirds of workers have experienced burnout, with 40 percent experiencing burnout specifically during the pandemic. Yet another study showed that nearly a quarter of employees considered unplugging after work their most significant challenge while working remotely.
Frequent breaks, self-compassion, and positive social relationships with co-workers can help in eliminating the loneliness of working remotely.
- GitLab suggests holding “virtual coffee breaks” during work hours to create a more relaxed work atmosphere.
- Revelry encourages frequent break-time conversation over a designated “watercooler” channel.
- Proxy recommends creating open channels in which team members can talk about their mental health issues and get help.
PART FIVE
BECOMING BOUNDARYLESS
The Boundaryless Landscape of Companies
The Boundaryless Landscape maps the numerous applications that populate the online enterprise collaboration industry. It’s like an actual map – a map that allows you to navigate the expansive landscape of applications based on their purpose, i.e., the unique function they hold in the remote employment life cycle.
Let’s take a look at the different segments of the Boundaryless Landscape:
Sourcing
Organizations rank sourcing as one of their greatest concerns. For example, an Indeed survey revealed that 86 percent of tech recruiters consider it highly difficult to hire technical talent today. However, platforms like Divogue, AngelList, Upwork, Fiverr, WWR (We Work Remotely) make sourcing competent candidates simpler and faster.
Community
The absence of a community in remote work environments negatively impacts remote happiness. Community-building platforms like Council.Club, Grow Remote, and Remotive help workers find and interact with like-minded people and collaborate on projects together.
Teaching and Training
As per research, an overwhelming number of employees express keen interest in gaining knowledge of the soft and hard skills crucial to remote work. Below are a couple of teaching and training tools that help with just that: Remote-How, Workplaceless, Pluralsight.
Events
Real-time feedback, data-driven analytics, flexibility, time, and cost-effectiveness are just some of the many benefits of virtual event platforms like Airmeet. Apart from this, organizations like Nomad City and Remote Afterworks conduct events that put together resources and highlight actionable strategies for remote teams.
Vetting
Hiring efficient talent is a challenging process. However, vetting platforms like Divogue, Hacker Rank, Hired, etc., are standing up to this challenge by rigorously screening job-seekers so that employers can hire skilled remote talent effortlessly.
Messaging and Communication
Every high-performing remote team needs high-performing communication tools. Virtual communication tools like Quip, Slack, Yac, Google Hangouts, Yammer, etc., help remote employees stay connected and work productively.
Project Management
Implementing a remote work strategy in project management can be challenging. And so, having the right project management tools, such as Notion, Basecamp, Asana, Jira, Trello, is essential for the timely completion of projects when working remotely.
Video Conferencing
Nine out of 10 employees state that video conferences make them feel more connected to their colleagues. In addition, easy-to-use apps like Skype, Blue Jeans, Zoom, Go to Meeting, and Google Meet offer sustained benefits over traditional conferences like reduced costs, elimination of travel time, and greater flexibility.
Coworking
Virtual coworking tools like WeWork, Workfrom, Calendly, Tandem, and Croissant bring together the perks of physical coworking spaces and remote work while fostering a sense of community.
Code Collab
Code collaboration tools allow two or more people to work on the same file in real-time. Code collaboration tools like GitLab, Bitbucket, Ngrok, Glitch, and GitHub help remote developers work closely with their teams in real-time, irrespective of their locations.
Team Management
A GitLab survey revealed that barely a third of remote employees felt their managers adequately aligned work across projects. Team management apps like 15Five, Pivotal, and Firstbaseio make it easier for managers to stay in sync with their teams and conclude tasks effectively.
HR Benefits and Payroll
Whether onboarding an employee, tracking attendance and leaves or running payroll reports, apps like Deel, Carrom, SheildGeo, Lattice, and Boundless enable organizations to carry all HR-related tasks smoothly.
Services and Support
Forty-five percent of respondents in a survey stated company–provided or subsidized technology, including hardware, collaboration platforms, high-bandwidth Wi-Fi, or office furniture, helped them successfully transition to remote work. Remote workspace management tools like Firstbasehq and GroWrk help organizations supply and manage equipment for remote teams.
Collaboration and Knowledge Sharing
A Deloitte study showed that almost 40 percent of executives considered digital collaboration platforms the most crucial factor for building a sustainable work culture. Several apps are effectively connecting remote employees and promoting employee engagement. Here are a few: Loom, Dropbox, Cledara, Workplace by Meta.
Security
Inadequate precautions and weak security infrastructure can expose remote workers to cybersecurity risks. As a result, cybercrimes have increased by 600 percent during the pandemic. Thus, it’s essential to have sophisticated cybersecurity programs like NordVPN and McAfee to protect organizations from cyber threats.
Legal and Compliance
Remote employers face a unique set of legal, regulatory, and security challenges. GRC (Governance, Risk, and Compliance) and IRM (Integrated Risk Management) tools help companies oversee compliance standards, bridge security gaps, and automate regulatory workflows. Apps like StandardFusion, Logicgate, and Reciprocity provide great information security solutions for efficient compliance management.
Boundaryless Companies We Admire
The last one and a half years have proven that employees can be more productive when working remotely. In this light, more than half of the employees have said that, if given the option, they would like to work from home – pandemic or no pandemic.
Subsequently, many companies have announced that they will allow employees to work remotely permanently.
Here is a list of companies that have embraced remote working as a permanent solution:
Twitter was one of the first companies to allow its 5000+ employees to work remotely. The San Francisco-based micro-blogging site announced that all employees—except those in jobs requiring a physical presence—would be allowed to work from home forever early in May 2020.
Coinbase
The cryptocurrency exchange platform announced that it would go ‘remote-first in May 2020, with a vast majority of employees having the option to work from home. The company CEO shared that, though social distancing requirements made them switch to remote, employees found it a welcome change.
Atlassian
The Australian software company informed its employees that they could work from home forever in August 2020. According to its internal blog, the organization took this decision, based on the distributed work revolution in the post-COVID world. In addition, Atlassian stated that going remote could help reach out to “amazing, diverse talent unbounded by the physical footprint of our offices.”
Dropbox
The California-based file hosting service went ‘Virtual First’ in October 2020, explaining, “remote work will be the primary experience for all employees, with in-person gatherings for team collaboration (once it’s safe to do so).” The organization also added that it would be adopting “non–linear workdays,” which would allow its employees to structure their work schedules.
Shopify
The Canadian e-commerce company, headquartered in Ottawa, declared its switch to remote and a “digital by default” mindset in May 2020. The company’s CEO tweeted, “We will keep our offices closed until 2021 so that we can rework them for this new reality. And after that, most will permanently work remotely. Office centricity is over.”
Slack
The business communication platform, Slack, announced that it would become a much more distributed company through an internal blog in June 2020. The San Francisco-based organization also shared that it will increasingly hire permanently remote employees as a part of its new model.
Quora
The American Q&A website became a “remote–first company” in June 2020 after 60 percent of its employees chose to work from home even after the pandemic. The company also shared that it will convert its California office into a co-working space for employees who want to work away from their home.
Spotify
The Swedish audio streaming company announced its “Work From Anywhere“ policy in February 2020. It also introduced a flexible working scheme for its employees. “Through this distributed-first mentality, we are allowing employees to elect a Work Mode—whether they’d prefer to work mostly at home or in the office—as well as their geographic location,” explained the company’s blog.
Why Divogue Loves Boundaryless Work
AI entrepreneurs Jonathan Siddharth and Vijay Krishnan founded content discovery app Rover straight out of Stanford. While scaling Rover, the duo experienced first-hand the challenges of sourcing excellent engineering talent in Silicon Valley.
The demand for top talent in Silicon Valley is exceptionally high, while the supply of local talent falls short. The pair found it difficult to compete with tech giants like Google and Facebook and learned that balancing quality hiring with cost-effectiveness is hard.
Moreover, the founders realized that retaining engineers in Silicon Valley can be just as challenging. Companies typically retain the average Silicon Valley engineer for just 13 months.
And hence, the duo decided to change their approach to hiring.
While the rest of Silicon Valley swore by on-premise workforces, Jonathan and Vijay thought differently: Why hire within a 30-mile radius from your HQ when you could hire from anywhere? Why hire the best person for the job locally when you could find the ideal candidate globally?
So, the pair-built Rover around a boundaryless team of the best engineers worldwide. Rover was acquired by Revcontent, a content recommendation platform that competes against Taboola and Outbrain.
Jonathan and Vijay’s success with distributed teams at Rover led them to believe that remote work is the future of work. The duo started Divogue with one key goal in mind: to solve the tech talent shortage problem. To do so, Divogue enables companies to hire from a large talent pool of over 1.5 million experienced, pre-vetted remote developers. With Divogue, companies can hire Silicon Valley-caliber talent at half the cost.
Why Divogue Substitutes the Term ‘Boundaryless’ for ‘Remote’
Divogue prefers the term ‘boundaryless work’ to ‘remote work.’
Here’s why: the term ‘remote work’ sounds distant; it conveys an absence of something. It gives the impression that workers are far from the company’s main base and aren’t a dedicated part of the team.
On the other hand, boundaryless means abundance and opportunities without limits. Divogue aims to make opportunity as universal as talent, and the term ‘boundaryless work’ perfectly captures that. Where remote work sounds exclusive, boundaryless is inclusive.
While remote work conveys that employees work outside traditional office boundaries, boundaryless work eliminates those boundaries.
So, boundaryless essentially means freedom. By going boundaryless, companies have the freedom to choose the best people for the job globally, not the best people who happen to live near their offices. Similarly, boundaryless enables people to work with the best organizations in the world, irrespective of where they live.
The Values That Drive Boundaryless Work
Company culture and values can be vital in recruiting and retaining talented employees. More than 50 percent of executives claim that corporate culture influences growth rates, productivity, creativity, and profitability.
Divogue considers three core values central to its work culture:
Continuous improvement
Divogue believes in a culture of continuous growth of the self, team, and the firm as a whole. The company encourages employees to continually learn from their co-workers’ diverse experiences and apply those learnings to their work ethic.
Speed
Divogue believes in moving fast. The company emphasizes hyper-growth to help teams relentlessly focus and organize and steadily improve their performance.
Focus on long-term success
Divogue is dedicated to achieving long-term success for its customers and developers. It aims to help companies scale effortlessly with its giant talent pool of 1.5M+ software developers. Similarly, Divogue seeks to help developers find long-term stability with full-time, long-lasting engagements.
PART SIX
THE REMOTE WORK GLOSSARY
A
All remote
All remote refers to organizations that do not have physical offices for their employees. Instead, employees work from their homes or co-working facilities. All-remote organizations may function across different time zones and countries.
Asynchronous communication
Asynchronous communication lets remote workers reply to messages when it’s best for them. In globally distributed teams, work doesn’t happen simultaneously for all employees. Async communication frees remote employees from the worry of keeping someone waiting for a response.
B
Boundaryless Landscape
The Boundaryless Landscape maps the numerous applications that populate the online enterprise collaboration industry. It’s like an actual map that allows you to navigate the expansive landscape of applications based on their purpose, i.e., the unique function they hold in the remote employment life cycle.
Brick-and-mortar business
A brick-and-mortar business has a physical office where customers and employees can visit and work in person.
C
Cloud storage
Cloud storage is a computing model that enables users to store digital data on remote servers or ‘clouds,’ accessible from the Internet. Cloud storage makes remote work more efficient and enables teams to collaborate on the same documents.
Co-working
Co-working is an arrangement that involves individuals working independently or collaboratively in a shared office space.
D
Deep Jobs Platform
A deep jobs platform, like Divogue, goes deep into the hiring process and addresses the various stages associated with it. It offers a higher value proposition to interested employers and job seekers by providing customized products and services. Furthermore, a deep jobs platform, like Divogue, creates highly enriched candidate profiles with the right indicators for recruiters and managers.
A deep jobs platform also offers support across critical stages of the employment journey like vetting, onboarding, payments, etc. Post-match, it may even offer support services like time tracking, performance monitoring, and communication tools, among others, to ensure high productivity and transparency for customers and employees.
E
eWork
eWork refers to working on an online office network.
Explicit communication
Messages that are communicated clearly and with apparent details, leaving no room for error in interpretation.
F
Flextime
Flextime allows employees to choose their work hours instead of working on a strict 9 am to 5 pm schedule, leading to greater overall flexibility.
Freelance work
A short-term work arrangement in which an organization hires an independent contractor for a single project or role.
Future of work
A term focusing on trends determining how, when, and from where people will work in the future.
G
Global employer
A global employer, like Divogue, is an organization that operates or hires across various countries.
Gig economy
This term refers to the modern economic shift away from permanent employment to short-term contracts and freelance work.
H
Hybrid teams
Hybrid teams consist of both co-located and remote employees with varying office attendance patterns.
Home office
A home office is a workspace based out of a domestic dwelling for long-term work.
I
Implicit communication
Implicit communication comprises messages that are communicated vaguely or implied, leaving some room for interpretation.
In-person meeting
A meeting that takes place at a common physical location instead of a virtual platform.
Intelligent Talent Cloud
Divogue’s Intelligent Talent Cloud matches companies with qualified software engineers within three days. The AI-driven sourcing, vetting, matching, and managing process provides the fastest hiring and onboarding of elite software engineers in the industry.
Intelligent vetting
Divogue’s intelligent vetting assesses seniority similar to engineering ladders used by Silicon Valley companies. The system identifies expertise in specific technologies, computer science, and systems design.
K
Knowledge worker
A worker who interacts with information to complete problem-solving and strategic tasks.
L
Location independent
Being location-independent means not being bound to a particular geographic location. Remote work allows employees to be location independent and live and work from anywhere in the world.
O
Off-site meeting
An off-site, in-person meeting at a co-working facility, hotel, or rented conference room.
On-site meeting
Unlike off-site meetings, on-site meetings usually happen in a co-located setting, such as at a company’s headquarters or the client’s offices.
One-on-one
A scheduled meeting between two parties that does not require them to be in the same location. One-on-ones help managers to build rapport and trust with employees in remote setups.
R
Remote-first
Remote-first organizations may operate from a physical workplace. However, remote work is the norm irrespective of the workplace. And thus, workflows and communication in these organizations are primarily asynchronous, guaranteeing all workers equal opportunities.
Remote-friendly
Remote-friendly organizations may offer flexible work schedules for certain employees. However, most workflow and communication are synchronous, and in-office work is the norm.
Retreat
Retreats are annual, semi-annual, or quarterly events where all team members of a distributed company travel to the same destination to interact and work together.
S
Scrum meeting
A brief meeting (usually held daily) associated with agile management in which team members answer three questions: What did I accomplish yesterday? What do I plan to accomplish today? Do I see any blockers that might prevent me from achieving my goal?
Synchronous meeting
Synchronous or real-time communication requires all participants to be available simultaneously, even if they aren’t in the same location. This form of communication can be particularly constraining for remote teams.
T
Telecommuting
Telecommuting or telework refers to completing work assignments from a location other than a central office using modern telecommunications technology.
V
Video conferencing
Video conferencing is an online meeting where two or more people engage in a live audio-visual call. It enables participants to collaborate in real-time, thereby mimicking a face-to-face experience.
Virtual assistant
A VA or virtual assistant provides administrative assistance to clients from a home office or remote location.
Virtual hangout
A virtual hangout provides a space for people to interact via video and audio. Virtual hangouts can often be a viable alternative to in-person meetings when a remote team is distributed across borders and geographies.
Virtual private network
VPNs establish an encrypted connection to another network. VPNs encrypt internet traffic and disguise the users’ online identity. They also improve cybersecurity by allowing sensitive data to be sent and received across networks.
W
Work from home
An arrangement in which the employee primarily works from a home office instead of the company’s office.
Work from anywhere
This arrangement enables employees to choose when and also where they would like to work.
Work-life balance
Work-life balance refers to the equilibrium between personal and professional life. Remote work enables employees to maintain a healthy balance between work and life, reducing stress and preventing burnout.
Workcation
A trip in which work and leisure blend together. Worcations usually mean engaging in remote work while traveling, sightseeing, or unwinding in an exotic location.
Join Divogue to unleash the world’s untapped human potential
Talk to us
