silvana comanici-stoianov

Due to globalisation and technology, the world is rapidly changing and so are the values and expectations in the workplace.
According to Mercer, 51% of employees want their company to offer more flexible working options. And one of those flexible options is remote working.

With remote working, people have the possibility to work outside a traditional workspace and tackle their tasks in an environment they wish to.
And technology enables us to do just that, by having us connect to people from all around the world, in real time.

Now, we can think of remote working in different ways:

• Completely working outside of the workplace
• Combining the work outside the traditional workspace with office work
• Either of the above in the context of various teams in the same situation

In spite of all the benefits, working remotely and having remote teams or team members is not easy. It requires additional effort to make the team feel connected, less remote or excluded and to keep everyone in the loop.
For this, we have to keep in mind a few things:

• Keep information accessible online
• Use a stable communication tool accessible to everyone
• Regular sync-ups and catch-ups
• Be mindful of timezone differences
• Be mindful of cultural differences and maybe have the team be aware of those

Keep information accessible online

Documentation is sometimes deprioritized. This is due to little time, poor planning and also because it is interpreted as too much overhead to the actual work.
When it comes to little or no documentation, the issues show up with time, team increase and remote working. I will not touch on why documentation is important long-term or within larger teams, but with remote team members, accessible documentation is essential.
Let’s take team A, located in timezone x, and team B, located in timezone x+8. When team B are getting to work, most of team A are getting home. Having the results from team A communicated and documented online will help team B resuming, putting on hold or changing their approach altogether.

Since the internet is a wonderful space, and great people already thought of and created spaces for keeping and sharing information, why not use some of those to our and our teams benefits?
We have to look for apps that suit us best, but most important: we can write or upload our documentation, share it, restrict it, and keep it protected.
There are very few free of charge options, so a paid version can combine appropriate protection with various features and sufficient storage space.
A few examples I could think of are:

Google Docs
It has free or paid versions. Using the free version is not advisable when we want to keep our customer’s data to ourselves.
The benefits of Google Docs is accessibility. Also, the similarities with MS Office makes Google Docs very intuitive.

Microsoft Office Online
These can be used across devices, all included in a monthly or early subscription.
Most people are very familiar with these apps, so for basic usage little to no training is needed.

Apple Pages
Although for Mac and iPhone users, this app comes default, this is also a downside, that being the restriction to that set of devices. Also, additional storage might be needed on the creator’s account.

Confluence
I have to admit I have a soft spot for confluence, me being so used to it. It requires a paid subscription, but it supports creation of pages, offers templates, sharing and restricting spaces, upload of media and other file types.
Also, it is available in different environments: Web, iOS and Android.

Podio
This one is free for up to 5 users, which is good for small teams. In addition to adding documentation and attaching files, it also enables users to create tasks and has a default calendar for those tasks.
I have to admit I did not use this one extensively, but it seemed a bit difficult to organise the documentation the way I would have wanted.

Dropbox Paper
This one really picked my interest while I was researching. It has a free personal version, as well as a paid one for teams, and it can come with the Dropbox account.
It has its own set of templates and it allows us to connect our documents with a calendar event. The downside of this is it seems it is integrated so far only with Google Calendar and Office.

Box
This app is similar in many ways with Dropbox, and has an individual account free of cost, but for a team it will have to be paid.
It is mainly for upload, update and share of files between team members, as well as external.

Worth mentioning:
SharePoint: this is again under the Microsoft umbrella, so a paid service. Unfortunately, although I used it for over a year, I believe that due to bad set up, it was difficult to use and clunky, making me push more and more towards a complete transitions towards Confluence.

Use a stable communication tool

Having a stable tool for communication between the entire team is essential. It enables not only for us to reach out to the team, but also communication amongst themselves.
Ideally, it should offer chat, history, calls, screensharing, file share, creation of groups.

Some examples of potential apps:

Skype
This is maybe the app that is highly used, especially the Business version, in various corporations. At the same time, regardless of how used I am with Skype, it is the app I have to admit I am not fond of.
This app is, indeed, widely used, so pretty intuitive when there is not an odd update pushed.
What is disturbing about this app is its unstable updates and the issues with connecting people using different versions.

Slack
So far, it seems as one of the best communication apps I have used, with both free and paid version.
It is stable, and offers multiple integration possibilities, such asJenkins, Jira, etc.

Zoom
Zoom can be used as a combo between a communication app at business level, as well as have online meetings.
It offers both paid and free of cost options, the free one having a call limitation to 40 minutes, while the paid is stable and at a better price than some of its market equivalents.

Aside from the above-mentioned apps, I have to mention e-mails. E-mail communication is important and should not be ignored, but most times seems to be too formal and should be used for official communication, reminders, invites and cases when a response is not needed as soon as when reaching out via a communication tool.

Regular sync-ups and catch-ups

I cannot even define how important is having regular sync-ups with the team members. Without such meetings, we loose contact and we do not find out about their tasks, progress, possible issues, insatisfactions and most important, we are missing the chance to build a connection and trust.

At the same time, the people within the team have to communicate constantly between themselves and we have to help them connect as a team. They have to have trusting relationships, as none of us, when we are inside a team, should feel as a lone wolf. We need to help each other out, as we sync or swim together.

Timezone differences

We have to be aware and sensitive of timezones, especially when we set up calls. Ideally, all these timezones should be communicated and documented somewhere for the entire team to find it easily.

One thing that I have to add and that I have been guilty of myself is writing to people when they are outside their work schedule. Although we can think people will ignore it, most times people do not, especially in this day and age, when we are constantly connected through our mobile devices. And I have to say, I had a few team members I noticed were stressing out. Instead of writing exactly then, I would just add for myself a reminder and send it when we would overlap.

This is something that not always can be avoided, more so when the timezone difference is very large, but we can try to do so often.

Cultural Differences

Last but not least, let’s be sensible with the cultural differences between our team members. We can find differences within the same country, so it is unavoidable if we have from different countries or continents.

For a starter, you can check out these post series I wrote: here on Cultures around the world and their characteristics

If you have some ideas or want to share your thoughts on remote working and how to handle it, please drop a few lines on say-hello@projectmanagementlifopedia.com