I had to stop messaging my team at 2 a.m. and falling asleep with my laptop - it was freaking everyone out!

When I first started managing a remote team nearly 10 years ago, I was a terrible manager - well, not terrible but I definitely had some things I needed to work on.

Back then, we were building our software and digital transformation company Six Ticks from scratch. I was in my 20's and it was a LOT of work. As a result, I was working long, loooong days.?

I’ve never been one to stick to a rigid 9-5 anyway and I work better later in the day, but in my new role, I found myself working into the night, frantically firing out caffeine-fueled emails to my team who were tucked up in bed.

It wasn’t good for me, and it really wasn’t good for them.

You can just imagine their delight when they logged in every morning to be met with a barrage of messages timestamped 1.55 a.m., 2.20 a.m. 3.55 a.m, etc, etc…

Looking back, I was probably a bit of a maniac for a while there! In time, I came to understand that working this way could negatively impact the team.

Why emailing outside of hours isn’t cool:

• It creates a poor ‘always on’ working culture where staff feel pressured to log in outside of working hours which is terrible for wellbeing and work/life balance
• Starting work only to be met with a million messages that weren’t there when you logged off last night is not great for morale
• Being bombarded by messages can mean they don’t get read properly or actioned - resulting in poor productivity

So, 10 years on, have I changed my ways?

I’ve learned a lot and I’m a much better manager, but I still regularly work outside the 9-5 as it suits my lifestyle. The difference is that nowadays I don’t freak my team out by emailing them at 2 a.m!

For one, we banned internal emails years ago! You can read more about that here.

For external suppliers, customers and some contractors, we of course still use email. So what do I do? I still write the emails or messages, but I either save them in drafts and send them in the morning, or use the scheduling tool so they arrive in their inboxes at a reasonable hour (sometimes in the afternoon of the following day!)

However, If I’m working late, we now have much more async-friendly culture and tools to help us.

[What is Async? Short for Asynchronous work which refers to the practice of working in a term that doesn't require team members to work at the same time]

Tools such as:

• Asana
• HelloHalo Intranet

I use our remote working Halo intranet to share important team messages and cut down on unnecessary interruptions - if I’ve got an important update, I post it on our team wall and it’s there for people to see whenever they want rather than getting lost at the bottom of their inboxes.

It definitely took some time to adjust my management style to suit remote working, but now we’re in a great place. I love managing a remote team and I wouldn’t change it for anything!