How To Make Remote Work, Work

It was Friday, March 13th in 2020. The five of us sat around the conference table in our shared office space for what would be the last time. The building was being repurposed, and we had to find a new place to meet. But we never did. The very next week, lockdowns were implemented, and Wildfire became a virtual company.

We had no idea how long the lockdowns were going to last, and as the company started growing we made the decision to lean into remote work and grow the team regardless of geography.

Now that we are so good at it, we would never have it any other way. Our team is more productive, more collaborative, and just plain happier than we would be otherwise. Our team has grown more than 10x, the company has grown almost 100x, and we are certain we can scale this business several orders of magnitude as a remote-only company.

The following are Wildfire's 11 keys to our success in making remote work, work:

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1. ?????Do not have an office.

For remote work to be successful, everyone has to be on equal footing, which means everyone has to be truly remote. Even though there are a good number of us in the same city, we do not have an office for them to go to. This ensures that we do not create “in groups” and the perception that everyone else is missing out on something.

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2. ? ? ?Provide personal infrastructure to everyone on the team.

Whatever it takes for each person on the team to be productive is shipped and paid for without question. Need a new computer? Done. Want a massive monitor? Oh THREE monitors? No problem. Standing desk? Specialized software? A really good headset? The point is that the cost of setting up your team members with whatever they need to be productive in their home office is an investment in their happiness that will pay dividends.

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3. ?????Use collaboration software for internal communication.

We use Slack, but there are other options. Some people love Microsoft Teams, and it is also a great product. Just use something. There are many reasons for this.

First of all, it enables the immediacy of synchronous communication, which is similar to the ad-hoc communication that happens in a shared office space. People can collaborate by creating threads with the appropriate people to make decisions quickly.

Secondly, it creates a searchable record of previous conversations, which becomes a knowledge base. We create channels by topic, by functional team, and since we are very client-focused, for each of our partners. We even create threads for backchannel communication during video conference calls.?

Make sure to include “water cooler” channels, too. For instance, we have a “random” channel, a “music” channel, and a “pets of Wildfire” channel for people to share pics and videos of their cats and dogs. We create silly emojis of each other, and we use memes liberally. It makes it more fun and less sterile.

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4.? ? ? Be a “video on” company.

It is culture and policy to have our cameras on when we interact via video conference. For remote workers, this is particularly important. It creates a warmer, more intimate communication environment.

For workers who are sitting alone at home all day, it is nice to see friendly faces. Our company is also growing rapidly, so it helps to put a name to a face, and the recognition makes our team feel closer.

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5.? ? ? Have internal meetings with everyone every day.

We have daily standups for every functional area of the company. These are 10-minute meetings where everyone states what they are working on that day. This few-to-few communication keeps everyone in the loop on what is going on, clarifies priorities for cross-functional teams, and creates shared accountability.

An added benefit is that everyone sees everyone else on their team on a daily basis.

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6.? ? ? Create virtual meeting rooms.

We use Google Meet because it allows for persistent meeting IDs. Once a meeting ID is created, it exists forever. This means you can bookmark that meeting ID and use it as a virtual conference room. When people have to get together to discuss something in the course of the day, they don’t have to put a meeting on the calendar, they can just send a quick message like, “Can you meet me in the BD room for two minutes to discuss?”

We have a bunch of these public virtual meeting rooms, mostly by functional area, but we also have secret rooms that only a few people know about for when they require privacy and don’t want to risk someone else dropping in accidentally.

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7.? ? ? Share calendars transparently.

Everyone in the company can see the full details of my calendar. This transparency provides context to them so they can decide whether to interrupt me. If they see I am in a meeting with a customer, their question may have to wait. If they are trying to put some time on my calendar and there is a block of focus time I have put on the calendar to just get my work done, then they can see that I would likely be flexible to meet at that time.

You can put whatever level of detail you want. If you are at a doctor's appointment and you feel that is too personal to share with everyone, no problem – just mark it as private or simply title it “out of office.”

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8. ? ???Have regular demo days.

Our engineering development cycle is a two-week sprint. At the end of each sprint, the entire company gathers in a meeting where the tech teams show off what they accomplished for that sprint. This keeps everyone well informed about the evolution of the product and technology underpinning the company.

On alternating Fridays, we do the same thing with the business teams, where we showcase interesting partnerships, new deals that have closed, effective marketing techniques, an update on key metrics, or anything else to inform the whole company about our recent work. This also enables us to showcase the contribution of each individual, which fosters respect.

It shows everyone that everyone is contributing to our success. Nobody gets to their turn and says, “I pretty much just sat around for the past two weeks,” because that simply is not an option the way our work is structured.

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9.? ? ? Get together in person periodically.

Working at a remote company structured properly doesn’t really feel remote or isolating at all because we all collaborate on a daily basis. Everyone knows everyone else because of the way we structure our work, and we genuinely like and respect each other. And so getting together in person is a great opportunity to strengthen bonds.

Once per year, we have a company retreat. This is not a work thing; we don’t have sessions or anything like that - this is an all-expenses paid vacation with your co-workers, and the only goal is to have fun and relax. We do activities together, sit around the pool, drink a little too much, and generally just have fun. The Karaoke night is getting competitive.

Then each functional area does their own offsite at a different time of the year. For instance, the entire tech team got together for a full week in a giant mansion in the mountains. It turned into a hack-a-thon, and some great collaboration came from it.

The sales team travels a lot together anyway, but we make sure to pick one conference per year where everyone is present and make sure we make the most of our time together.

The cost of these in-person encounters is far less than whatever you would be paying in rent, so don’t be cheap about it. Show your team that you value them. The management team has a full-day in-person offsite every 6 weeks, which is the perfect interval for strategic alignment.

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10. ? Encourage work/life balance.

One of the biggest benefits of working remotely is the ability to take care of personal responsibilities, so make it clear that the company encourages this. For instance, we do not have PTO. Everyone has an unlimited amount of time to attend to whatever they need to attend to. We courteously let our team know when we will be unavailable.

For long absences, like vacations, we have an out-of-office calendar so everyone else can easily see when someone is not available. Since everyone takes full advantage of this benefit, everyone is very understanding and respectful of when someone has to take personal time.

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11. ? Buy each other gifts.

We are liberal about our expense policy, and we consider small acts of giving to be well worth the cost.

For instance, someone did something awesome, so her team sent her cookies and milk. A developer had to work late against a deadline, so we bought him lunch the next day via Postmates. A co-worker had a death in the family, so I sent him a 6-pack via Drizly.

The point is that occasionally breaking the fourth wall of remote work to deliver a small token of esteem in the real world is a reminder that we are all actual people.

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If properly set up and maintained, the systems and processes to make remote work more efficient than office-based work are really quite simple and inexpensive. Not having a commute means people have more productive work time. Not having the overhead of physical presence and the constant interruptions that go along with it means people can focus on getting things done as opposed to talking about getting things done.

The personal freedom imparted by remote work comes with the responsibility to make the most of it; it is the responsibility of the management to ensure the environment exists for the team to do so.

There is nothing wrong with going to an office. But I have to question what happened with these companies who call it a “failed experiment” or claim that people need to be together to be creative and collaborative. I wonder if some of the companies pushing their employees to go back to the office full time have really put the effort into being a remote company.

As I outlined above, the systems and processes are fairly straightforward to make it work, but the culture that goes along with it is the glue that keeps it all together. If you don’t trust that your team members will do their work because you cannot see them, then you are going to be a proponent of making them sit in their cubicles so you can watch them. I can imagine that is pretty demoralizing for adult professionals.

On the other hand, if you do what I recommend, and you create a positive environment for people to exercise their freedom and responsibility within a culture of trust and respect, then you will have no reason to watch them. Lastly, half measures will not work. If you want happy and productive remote workers, you have to commit to it fully.

by Shawn Conahan