How Crossover makes remote work “work”

Original article was written by Malin Raman Delin

Ever since I was featured in the “People at Crossover” series (link to the video?here), I’ve had many ask what Crossover is and how it is to work there. First, the what. Crossover is a recruitment platform that sources, tests, and manages remote teams for various clients, including its affiliated companies Trilogy, Aurea, IgniteTech, and DevFactory. There’s a really unique take on work. If you’ve ever applied for a job, you would have gotten the first taste of this. How is it? Keep reading for a take on this unique approach to work, the tools used, and my personal thoughts on those. I’ll start with some context.

Most remote jobs suck

There seems to be a false utopia around remote work; having work-life balance, a flexible schedule, and the freedom to work from anywhere don’t always materialize in practice.

Research suggests that remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic came with a bunch of negative effects; loss of work-life balance, distractions at home, isolation, increased need for meetings, project management challenges, remote collaboration issues, productivity loss, lack of trust, time zone complexities… The list can be made even longer.

During the past two years, I’ve certainly learned firsthand how my “working from home friends” have spent their days on endless zoom calls and their evenings catching up on emails and everything else that has been happening all day. When they actually surface in their free time, they complain about collaboration challenges and lack of guidance and support from their managers. They also struggle to find motivation and manage their time with so many distractions at home, whether it is a working-from-home partner, kids, or Netflix. Many of them also feel more lonely than ever.

If the past two years have revealed anything, it’s that most companies are doing it wrong and that it is affecting employees negatively. Remote work is treated as an extension of the office when it’s really a different way of working altogether. But remote work can be awesome for everyone if done right. Crossover has been on the ride long before COVID and, from my perspective, does many things really well.

The Crossover way

Crossover’s way of working is both radical and innovative. Since they have been purely remote for over a decade, you could argue that they have a head start versus others embracing remote work during COVID. Crossover, though, also takes the lead proactively. They realize that innovation entails risk. Because someone always has to be the first mover and try things without instruction manuals or guarantees of success. Innovation may get uncomfortable, but breakthroughs are rarely reached without a few failures along the way.

Crossover may in no way be perfect, but they’ve had many breakthroughs and successes. In my view, the tools and strategies they use (their secret sauce, if you will) really contribute to overcoming remote work challenges. Let me walk you through them: WorkSmart, Asynchronous Communication, and Work Units.

WorkSmart

WorkSmart is Crossover’s time management and productivity tool. Crossover calls it “a virtual representation of the physical working world “to enable remote work to be effective. Employees log on to Worksmart when starting their work and log off when done. Depending on the settings agreed upon by the client company and hiring manager, the tool can take screenshots and snapshots via the webcam at regular intervals when employees are logged in.

WorkSmart seems to be the number one source of complaints about the company in online forums. While it may seem a bit intrusive at first, it is ultimately not so different from a typical office environment where people work alongside each other. Contractors also have full access to review their own timecards and can remove them. The tool is only active when you’re working; you’re free to turn it off anytime.

Personally, I’ve grown fond of WorkSmart. It helps me remain focused and productive as it allows me to distinguish between “work time” and my “personal time”. It also makes it easy to keep track of hours spent working (as opposed to manually creating timesheets or invoices or logging billable hours. I’ve worked as a consultant in an agency, I’m not a fan). I also think the tool reassures my manager that I am working the hours/week agreed upon and that my colleagues do the same.

Asynchronous communication

Asynchronous communication is communication that doesn’t happen in real-time (e.g., on the phone, in person, or during a live video conferencing meeting). In my field of work, asynchronous communication mainly occurs by collaborating in Google Docs or Sheets and tagging colleagues for any questions or discussion topics in the comment section. It is a brilliant way to ensure work flexibility since employees can easily collaborate while working at different times and across different time zones. Furthermore, it ensures that everyone is aware of what their team members are working on without feeling the need to take extra time out of their day to sync in real-time. All really useful features for me in my day-to-day work.

Work Units

Most companies design their jobs as small startups, requiring everyone to be a “jack of all trades.” Crossover does the exact opposite. Instead of designing the organization around broadly defined job descriptions, they are very clear and precise about what a job or position entails and exactly what it is supposed to deliver. They even take it a step further by breaking down EVERY part of the operation into building blocks and applying this building-block approach to all of their jobs. Their tool for achieving this is called a work unit.

The factory model for white-collar workers

A work unit is a concrete output that an employee produces. So each job comprises different work units. For example, solving an issue through a support ticket is a work unit for a customer support agent. Even the most senior executives at Crossover have work units. For example, a deep dive into a system outage to analyze the problem all the way to the code that caused the outage is also a work unit.

For the work unit structure to work, quality standards must be clear, and they are. Managers document each specific factor that makes a work unit great, and employees performing the work units receive coaching on delivering to those standards. Crossover calls this approach a quality bar.

These techniques (work units, quality bars, and coaching) are key to managers at Crossover. Since everyone knows exactly what work units to produce, managers can focus on improving quality, identifying gaps in deliverables, and coaching, rather than dealing with the alignment tasks that take up management time in traditional companies. One of the things I like about Crossover is how transparent everything is. You are monitored for success and get straightforward feedback without sugarcoating, but every decision and policy is documented.

Each work unit needs to be completed within a specific time frame; the work is timeboxed, if you will. Timeboxing?starts with the principle that deadlines matter. This technique establishes a sense of urgency and lets you focus on completing a task. You do it to the best of your ability within the time; then you stop, whether you have completed the job or not. I find that timeboxing helps me beat procrastination. By time constraining a task, I’m forced to ignore distractions and focus on its completion. It also ensures I take regular breaks during a work day to prevent burning out.

Each “work unit design” is described in detail in a playbook. The idea is that anyone should be able to understand and complete tasks following the playbook. Playbooks usually include a description of the problem that is being solved, how the work fits into the rest of the work done by the organization, the steps that need to be taken to complete the work, and finally, how the output of the work is evaluated. I find this way of working straightforward and transparent, and it helps get everyone aligned with what needs to be done and how. Playbooks are not static; they are continuously updated by managers and employees alike. This dynamism constantly ensures the most efficient ways to solve problems, and complete tasks are updated and improved. It is efficiency rooted in best practice.

Work units: the most radical difference in how Crossover employees work

Some may think there is an element of becoming a “cog in the machinery.” Because if anyone can do the work you do by simply following a playbook, how do you differentiate yourself from your colleagues? At Crossover, the answer is you do the job better than anybody else, and then you help improve the process. It requires someone to be competitive to thrive in such an environment.

But what most people seem to forget is that when anyone can do the work, not only does it help the company to scale, but everyone benefits from increased work flexibility. If you are no longer the only one who can answer a specific question or do a particular task, then you don’t have to stay up all night to adhere to a deadline — a colleague in a more convenient time zone can complete the task instead. This is specifically true for jobs with external dependencies, like customer-centric roles. For example, a customer support team can be available 24/7 with employees based in San Francisco, Dublin, and Tokyo. That’s nearly 24 hours of coverage without anyone having to wake up in the middle of the night or work over eight-hour days!

Performance is all that matters!

To get productive, motivated, and happy remote employees, companies need to allow their people to fit work around their daily life, not the other way around. Genuine flexibility is about more than getting to work from home on a Friday. It recognizes that employees are individuals who thrive in different environments and have many different priorities in life. This might mean starting early and signing off mid-afternoon to attend a kid’s football practice or perhaps even working from a different country. Or it could mean going for a long bike ride in the morning and then spending the rest of the day in a co-working space. The point is that companies get the best from their teams when employees feel trusted and empowered to shape their own working lives and circumstances. When done right, remote work enables employees and companies to focus on what really matters — performance. This focus, combined with actively striving to evolve and improve, means Crossover is pretty far ahead.

Original article was written by Malin Raman Delin