Fully Remote

“Distributed workforces will give businesses the opportunity to hire people from a wider range of backgrounds, locations and experiences.”

How do you get fully remote teams to work effectively side by side?

Powerful question. But lets take a few steps back.

From a business perspective its clear … One of the positive effects of the pandemic has proved to the world is that remote working is possible. In fact, its more than possible, its effective if done right. Its also provided new insights in how we hire, who we hire regardless of where they are located in the world. We now see the possibilities of attracting talent across the oceans to work for us. This was always possible. We just needed a pandemic to prove it :)

This is great for Business and people. But are we ready for it? What does it look like from the fully remote worker? The actual work days not at the office like the rest of the business? Its more complex when the rest of the organization is not fully remote vs an organization who is fully remote.

Locally based, there are less complexities to consider vs globally. Where time zones, different cultures come into play. As an individual in a new fully remote role, most people’s reaction to my job is… “Wow! That’s great! No commute to office, save on petrol, less office distractions, and you get to be in the comfort of your own home vs dealing with people interrupting you all day in an open office.”

Yes it has its advantages :) However, remote working is not for everyone. Based on your personality or how you generally get work done and manage online communication, remote working can either be as some say, “Great!” or “more Stressful”.

Some advantages

• No office commute
• Less distractions
• You create your own space
• You get to see your loved ones more often[for some thats a disadvantage! ;-)]
• Healthwise…it worked pretty well during the peak of the pandemic
• Can adapt your work and house admin because you at home so running to shop in lunch or hanging washing out in lunchtime saves time on the weekend [of course there’s responsibility and discipline around this]
• Get to hear about my daughter’s day when she gets back from school —vs at the end of the work day after a long commute [sometimes this is a disadvantage too — if you have as much drama at school like I hear about ;-) ]
• Start dinner earlier in lunchtime[I still haven’t mastered the art of this one!]

Some disadvantages

• If you have FOMO like some people I know, missing out on office or team events, coffee chats, hallway chats etc. can make you feel disconnected from the rest of your colleagues
• Because you remote, sometimes you not included in those hallway or water cooler chats — you miss communication or connection on topics
• You don’t have the luxury of IT support or someone next to you to ask for help on either a hardware/software issue. We try to resolve it ourselves or use the existing process of asking for help [and hopefully the process is fast and robust]
• Things need to be couriered to you — not easily dropped on your desk. Co-ordination across departments and generally being an organized individual will keep you sane in these situations.
• Your home is now your workplace too. Maintenance of your house, contents, electricity, insurance etc. is even more important. This is stuff that organizations worried about. Now, your home is also your work space. Clear boundaries and ensuring you have an organized home maintenance is crucial. After all, for most of us, this is our biggest asset.

There’s probably more advantages/disadvantages. These are some of my views.

Work can feel like you not working. This is what I always set out to achieve… to make the workplace better — when I first encountered Agile and Scrum. Nowadays, when people get that feeling, its frowned upon as if you not working ‘hard enough’. Strange. The world of work has changed. Is it too late to change mindsets?

A day in the life of a fully remote worker

• 5:50am wake up
• shower, brush teeth, dress [bottom part of body too even if not needed ;)], do hair and add a touch of makeup
• coffee and slice of toast
• drop daughter at school [yes, I still have to commute]
• get back home — power on the laptop — 2nd cup of coffee ;)
• feed the cats and hope they don’t interrupt me [this is about the biggest interruption I get other than hardware going wrong at home]

• check communication chats
• greet team in the chat [like I would if I were at the office]
• update to-do list from yesterday — create new to-do list
• meetings to attend
• tactical and strategic work to be done
• check my to-do list [what did i get done or didn’t / what got added to it]
• end of day I’ll say my goodbyes [I admit, now only some days — not all]
• shutdown and walk away from my work area [which is just outside my kitchen area]
• cook dinner [as I would when I came home from a work commute]

I’ll say this again… create clear boundaries about your work times upfront. I was very clear that if I’m offline, it means I am offline and will answer the next day. If you need to get hold of me urgently — you can phone [Most people don’t]. Depending on your role and mostly, what you teach people, your experience may be different to mine. There’s a saying that goes… “you teach people how to treat you”. I’ll leave it at that.

Other important tips…

Visibility of your work — lean on your processes. Make what you working on everyday visible with your team and your manager. Whether its using a Kanban board or whether via light documentation. Or both. Documentation is record of what happened so it can help future colleagues and learn from the past so we don’t have to reinvent the wheel where we really dont need to. This new way of working where people can’t physically see you working at the office is still in a transition. If there’s one thing I’ve learnt about transformation is to make your work visible. As well as…

Frequent and clear communication [if you don’t know how to do this — learn it. Its a skill that can be learnt if it doesn’t come natural. I have very little patience for people who use this as an excuse not to communicate or worse, feel that communication is not part of their job.

Create clear expectations in your role and responsibilities AND make it visible to all. As a Scrum Master especially, where my role is unclear most of the time — and as a fully remote worker — this is my number one priority with my manager. If I don’t do this, it creates confusion around ownership, duplicated effort by people doing what you suppose to do [vs pairing up and collaborating or owning it myself] and doubt in what I’m doing or not doing which affects my performance reviews and if kept unattended, can affect confidence levels of oneself. Self-awareness and keeping notes of what I’ve achieved or didn’t and need to improve — can be valuable.

Keep complex explanations visual. If you can’t explain it in simple terms to a three year old, then draw a picture. Like the good ‘ol caveman. And dont tell me “I can’t draw”. Can’t is not good enough. Learn it. Stick men are good enough. Shapes are good enough. Mind maps are easy. Why are humans so stuck on perfection these days?

These are some of the things that can create effective fully remote teams. With building Trust at the top of your list. That’s another topic in itself. Building trust.

Everything I’ve learnt from the 18+ years as a designer to the 6 years as a Scrum Master, has maybe — somehow — prepared me for this kind of role. A fully remote worker.

Remote working is not for the faint-hearted nor the reactive type of character. Disciplined, pro-active, responsible, organized, communicates clear and everything above is — in my humble opinion — some of the things it takes to be an effective, trusted, and productive remote worker. I still have lots to learn. Hope to share more of those learnings.