Making Remote Work Work
Working remotely together at Office Nomads.
Working remotely, even for part of the time, is here to stay. Our friends at Emergent Research recently shared that remote work is now the norm for independent Americans, and it's also the reality for nearly half of traditionally employed Americans.
That's a whole lot of us who are trying to get traditional office-based work done outside of a traditional office setting.
While remote work may be normal for the younger workers among us, for the broader culture of work this arrangement is still very, very new. As a broader society, we're still working out the best ways to make remote work really work for everyone involved. That means not only being productive, but forging real connections with coworkers, staying sane, and developing professionally over time.
No matter what your path was to remote work, if you're one of the millions of Americans attempting to be productive and satisfied with your job, you have some challenges facing you that others before you simply have not had to cope with.
We want to help.
We asked the wonderful members of Office Nomads – many of whom work on a remote basis for other companies – what they could share about their successes (and failures) as remote workers. We wanted to share some of what came out of those conversations.
So much comes down to culture.
Working remotely at Office Nomads.
We're going to start with what is not completely in your control: your company's culture. Whether you work for a company that is 100% remote or your company just moved to a "Work From Home Wednesday" policy, the culture your company has in place to support remote work has a lot to do with how successful you may or may not be.
Supporting remote work means having established norms in a company that help remote workers feel personally connected to their coworkers and the work they're doing as a team. Here are some great examples we heard from our members:
Communication is key. If employees are distributed, being sure that people are on the same page with projects, client communications, and team progress is paramount. Danyel says his company's norm is that all meetings get meeting notes, and even spontaneous hallway conversations that are noteworthy will get summarized on Slack to be sure coworkers are kept in the loop. While it may be difficult to keep up on every bit of written documentation, it is valuable to have a reference point if you need it.
Be intentional about socializing. While traditional offices have water coolers or kitchens to hang out in, remote teams need to be more intentional about getting to know one another. Nearly every remote worker we talked to had examples to share of how their teams made social time even if they're not in the same room:
Josh (of cloudrun.io and MixedInKey) works on a team that regularly jumps in and plays Minecraft together - we "dig into the cobblestones of each other's personal lives" while playing, he says.
Longtime member Bobby works on a team that schedules several "open channel" calls each week that do not have an agenda other than catching up.
Similarly, Danyel's team has weekly "coffee hangouts, when people meet remotely and chat about their weeks."
Help employees set (and maintain) boundaries. It can be hard to know when to call it a day when there are fewer physical boundaries between work and home. Companies that help their employees to not be "on" all the time are doing it right. (Side note, one of our former Nomads regularly writes about creating healthy work boundaries on Twitter and you should follow him if you don't already.)
Bobby reports "I'm forbidden to have anything work-related on my personal laptop or phone. Additionally, I've set my own rules: my work phone and laptop stay in the office when I'm done working for the day. I used to always check my work email as soon as I awoke in the morning, but at my current job I don't check for work notifications until I'm actually ready to start working for the day."
A pager system can help. It's common in many software companies but it can be valuable outside that realm as well: whoever has a pager is "on call" for emergencies, and that responsibility rotates to spread out the responsibility. If you're not on the pager, then, as Josh reports, "when we're off, we're off." The importance of valuing "offline time" cannot be overstated. Setting the tone for that is a company-wide responsibility.
Carve out time for heads-down work. When you're distributed, meetings can naturally increase – it's normal. But there needs to be balance. Danyel reports that "no meeting Wednesdays" are part of their company-wide habits designed to minimize reliance on in-person collaboration. Having an entire day each week that is laser-focused on project work can let employees have the time they need to actually get their stuff done.
Support employees getting out of their homes and into coworking spaces. Clearly we're biased, but the research also shows that people who go to coworking spaces are happier, less lonely, and feel more sane. Any great company that utilizes remote workers will help them be at their best by supporting them with a coworking membership if they want it.
Get together in-person when you can. Even if it's only once a year, seeing your coworkers in person and spending time IRL is important.
Here's what you can do:
Find some IRL support as a remote worker. It really helps.
Beyond your company's culture, there are things you can do as an individual to help make your experience working remotely far more enjoyable. Most of the advice that our remote working members had to share on this front were all about relationship building from afar. Because without the benefit of in-person time, Bobby says, it can be "hard to remember that the pixels on your screen and sounds coming out of your headphones are actual, real people with real hopes, dreams, and struggles. Sometimes work can get very methodical and the human connection slips away."
Here are our members top tips on how to make remote work actually work:
Be yourself. You have to put yourself out there if you want to build rapport. Showing your personality and being yourself is the easiest way to get started. "I don't know what it means when you feel comfortable emailing a client a bunch of puns, but they still apparently want to work with me, so the jokes must not be too bad," says James.
Be curious. Getting to know your coworkers is equally as important. Josh says: "Take the time to socialize with your coworkers. Ask them personal questions. It's easy to see it as wasted time, but having a personal connection eases tempers when there are disagreements, and just generally makes work more enjoyable."
Get outof the house. "Avoiding becoming a weird mumbling shut-in is always a challenge. Coworking spaces solve this though!" says Josh. Juan echoes this, and says one of his favorite parts about working remotely is "getting to stay in the neighborhood during the day, and feeling like I'm part of my community all the time, not just nights and weekends." Whether it's your neighborhood cafe, library, or coworking space, be sure to get out of your house regularly. Your coworkers (and your friends and family) will thank you.
Enjoy the flexibility, have a routine. All of our remote worker members reported that flexibility was one of the biggest perks of remote work. For Bobby, it's paramount: "If I want to commute to a coworking space I can, but I can also just roll out of bed and start working if I'm feeling like I need a day or two at home. With so many coworkers in different time zones, my focus time comes in the afternoon when it's quieter on the west coast."
Flexibility is awesome, but having some sense of a routine can also help keep away the work-from-home blues. Juan calls it a "consistent-ish routine," and it's one of his top recommendations for people new to remote work. It doesn't have to be rigid, but there should be some rhythm to your week to keep you motivated and refreshed.
(One of our favorites for work-from-home days is to actually build in a walking "commute" – get dressed, take a 10-15 minute walk in your neighborhood, then return to your place for work. Works even better with a dog.)
Thanks so much to the members who contributed their thoughts to this post! You can find Danyel Fisher here on Twitter, James Gaines here, Bobby Watson here on Twitter, Josh Noe's work at Cloudrun and MixedInKey, and if you're a remote company looking for an experienced, customer-centered designer, check out Juan Valera's work.
Did we miss anything? We'll keep this post updated with additional tips as you share them with us.