As companies shift to virtual policies over the weeks ahead, we thought we’d share what we’ve learned working with some of the best-in-class fully remote teams in the country over the past few years. Historically, the primary obstacle to going remote has been uneasiness around how to maintain team focus, productivity and connection with a more distributed workforce. Here we address common concerns and provide some pointers to help you shape a successful remote framework:

1. How do you make sure nobody misses a beat or feels far away from the decision-making table?

First and foremost, employees need to have full access to a tech stack of virtual communication tools; this means all conference rooms should be equipped for remote attendees with a screen and webcam and everyone must be comfortable using platforms such as Slack for instant messaging and Zoom for video conferencing.

2. How do you ensure employees are still “on” during work hours if they’re not in an office environment?

Remote-flexibility is often conflated with work-life integration, but the two are wholly separate. It’s true that these two approaches are sometimes coupled together, say for parents who flex their schedules and work from home in order to meet their childcare responsibilities. To keep things simple for now, let’s assume everyone on your team is keeping the same 9-5 hours.

During these hours, a general rule of thumb for all employees should be that, wherever they are, they should be able to jump on a video call. This means, no working in PJs (unless that’s compatible with your company dress code), and, unless employees have already agreed on an arrangement with their manager, they shouldn’t be away from their laptops taking laundry to the laundromat, or hitting the grocery store before the post-work rush. Of course, in such cases where employees are busy, you know, actually working, they can make use of other tools such as status settings in Slack to share that they’re “on calls until 3:00pm” or “offline crossing things off the to-do list.”

Trust is the bedrock of a good employer-employee relationship. When you trust your employees to get their work done on time and to the highest standard, you give them a greater sense of personal responsibility and confidence taking initiative. Personal accountability for sales people is pretty straightforward, since they’re incentivized to be productive with commission plans. For other functions, it can be trickier to ensure that employees are staying on track and not falling down a rabbit hole of Youtube Vine compilations. A simple strategy that can help keep employees on track is to have employees post goals at the beginning of the day (we’re big fans of recurring slack prompts set to a specific time, such as “today will be a successful day if:”) and catch up on a quick video call at the end of the day to report on that day’s events and progress towards goals.

3. How do you foster personal connection when all employees no longer have the physical proximity enabling them to tap each other on the shoulder and share a joke or snippet of helpful info?

Like it or not, we’ve already been moving steadily towards virtual relationship-building in our personal lives, even with those closest to us. Few words make us feel as truly seen as a text that reads: “this meme reminded me of you.”

A few helpful, and fun tips to help continue to drive that sense of connection and camaraderie include:

Start meetings 5 minutes early! This gives employees time to connect and chit-chat and share about their lives and weekends.
Start meetings with a game, such as a quick round of catch-phrase or, our team’s favorite, Zoom Pictionary. Not only will everybody be focused in after the game, it starts every meeting off on a light note (use your own discretion to determine when a game is not appropriate before a meeting…).
Use technology to let your team express their personalities. For example, set recurring prompts in Slack such as “send a giphy/emoji to describe how your day has been going so far…”
Encourage employees to jump on video calls with each other, even just to talk through minor things. Don’t over-rely on email and instant messaging!

Are you busy crafting your distributed office plan? Give us a shout at careersteam@cfwcareers.com! We’d love to help you shape a remote plan that works for your company.