Until recently, it was common to go to the office every day and have your favourite photo and cup with highlighters on your desk. Today, it is unimaginable for many to return to the office for full time. In the article, we will discuss full remote cooperation in detail and present proven tips on how not to go crazy and be effective.
We will not present work in the office or in the employer’s premises. We’d better take a look at the remote collaboration. We can translate it as working over a distance, where you are not obliged to visit the company’s premises and you can work from wherever you want. Maybe from another geographical zone, like Tomáš, whom we asked about his experience working for a company based in the US (you can find the interview with him at the end of the article).
Thanks to the pandemic, today you can encounter a hybrid model, which is a modern trend. It combines remote working with office work, thus eliminating the disadvantages of home office while providing a high degree of flexibility. You may encounter a different number of days that the employer allows you to spend away from the office. For example, Microsoft now has a 50:50 rule set for company and home office, respectively.
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How to improve remote collaboration not only for yourself, but also for your colleagues?
We have some tips for you that work best for our ability to work remotely and for the satisfaction of the team.
- Think of the connectivity. For working remotely, the alpha and omega is the quality of the Internet connection. A bad camera image, disconnected calls or a too slow network may soon start to upset not only you, but also colleagues who need to rely on you.
- Organize your day. Just like when you come to the office, you have a clear time when you are engaged in work and when you can, for example, go shopping, do some housework or chat with neighbours, etc. Try to set your working regime at home. Over time, you could get used to getting distracted and believe us, your work would soon become overwhelming. For example, perform repetitive activities always at the same time and sort the tasks according to the priorities.
- Trust and communication tools. Just as you want other colleagues to believe that you are working on the assigned task, so you should trust them. Be sure to update your online calendar or your status on the communication platform so that others know if you are currently available or when they can contact you.
Trust is what every relationship is about. And to strengthen it, don’t forget about regular online communication. Try to share with the team everything that is needed. This avoids the situation when someone asks for information over the table while those who are at the home office miss the information, because they use Teams as the communication interface instead of the table.
See which 6 online tools you can use and which we highly recommend.
- Videocalls and mood. Few things motivate employees to perform better than connections and closeness to others. Proximity breeds trust, which, as we already know, is very important. In the office, proximity occurs organically during lunch, when making your coffee, or whenever you smile at each other. But how to induce proximity when working remotely?
You need to communicate more. Ask questions, be interested in your colleagues and be proactive. The need for communication is more important than ever at this time. Videocalls with the camera on are certainly helpful here, as you can clearly see how colleagues look. - Together, determine the rules for videocalls. Because many calls can be toxic, always try to approach them efficiently and quickly. Try to plan your videocalls in one block at a time, so that you have more undisturbed time to work during the day.
- Tell the team what you’re working on. Even if you are working on a different activity than other departments, tell the team what you have done and what you are currently working on. You can be sure they’re interested. Because even if you get, for example, feedback from support that does not tell you anything at the moment, it may come in handy in a week, when it inspires you to something or you better understand the needs of your users.
- Assume a positive reaction from colleagues. It is one of the most important points. Online communication can easily lead to misunderstandings, interactions can be cold and misinterpreted by you. You can’t see a person’s face or body language, and if they don’t use enough emoticons, you often can’t even feel the mood of the whole message. Learn to recognize these situations, and if they occur, you better call immediately to avoid overlapping multiple contexts with different meanings. Another way to avoid misinterpretation is to assume from the beginning a positive intention with which the person tells you something.
- Get comfortable. Be sure to enjoy your work at home. Table, quality chairs, appropriate devices… working outside, in a café, or in silence? Find what suits you best so that you are not distracted from your work. For the brain, it is important to have space that can actually be divided into ‘I work’ and ‘I do not work’. Even if you can’t have a whole room dedicated to your job, find a corner that will serve only for your working. Trust us that this place will become a stimulant for your brain to work more efficiently.
- A surrounding that doesn’t distract you. Children or animals during calls will raise the mood in the team in the short term, but you be confronted with the fact that others will have to really convince that you are at work and do not play with the dog outside in the garden. For instance, we have also tried working with colours and when we have an important call or we really need to concentrate, we put a red post-it on the door so that other members of our household do not come to talk to us or ask for help with something.
- When to call it a day? Research shows that workers who work remotely often tend to work longer than if they are in the office. At the end of the day, try to ask yourself if you are proud of the amount of work you have done that day. Then you should finish your working day. Great work is not about the number of hours spent on a task, but about quality and meaningful performance.
- Experiment with the music you listen to while you work. Try ambient sounds that support your brain activity.
- Get dressed. Just like when you actually go to work. Because if you spend all day in your pyjamas, it’s hard to convince your brain that it’s a working day. And maybe it will make other colleagues who see you on the phone in your pyjamas a little more confused.
And what is it like to work for a company in the US from the Czech Republic? We asked Tomáš Agler, who has been working in an American team full time as the only Czech since 2020, for a few details.
What position are you in right now?
Currently I am in the position of UX developer and I develop components (buttons, form fields…) for other teams under Randstad. Our main vision is to make a modular component system that downloads style data from Figma for each brand. The same code will look different for each brand without the need for intervention by the developer.
What is different about working for a team in the US? Do you perceive that there are different people’s characters or that they have different work processes than you were used to?
Work processes are standardized for the entire company, so there are no differences. When it comes to the nature of people, there are small differences. In general, it seems to me that my American colleagues will be much louder when they are satisfied or excited about something, while Czech colleagues will be much louder when they are dissatisfied with something.
Do you encounter any communication problems? How do you solve them?
The team is purely American + me. The biggest problem in communication is the forgotten ‘mute’ button in Teams. Fortunately, colleagues are lenient about the minor grammatical mistakes I make in English, otherwise communication is trouble-free.
Small stumbling blocks are teambuildings that we have online and where we play various Jackbox party games. If the ‘us-centric’ setting of questions and topics stays on, I usually have not much chance. :)
Surely the big question everyone is interested in is the time difference. How have you set your daily routine to be available to others? Have you discussed different working hours with your partner, in your family?
There is a time difference and it is not a small one. I’m 6 hours away from my East Coast colleagues, 8 hours away from my West Coast colleagues. This has both advantages and disadvantages. Ultimately, the company wants me to finish my work and it does not matter how I schedule my day.
All meetings together take place at 2 p.m. (8 a.m. on the East Coast) at the earliest, so if I need to arrange something in the morning, it will not disturb anyone’s plans.
My colleagues and management and I have an unwritten rule that I am available for meetings between 2 to 5 p.m. I usually get off work at 6 p.m., sometimes a little earlier. If they need to have a meeting later, I usually don’t have any problems with it, I just need to know it a certain time in advance in order to be able to synchronize it with my personal time.
My partner and I haven’t discussed it too much, I usually finish my work around the time she arrives from her work. If my work stretches into later hours, I do everything I can to make sure that it does not happen too often and that it does not interfere with something already planned.
Is there anything you do regularly at the company to maintain relationships?
Every day, my colleagues and I talk on the phone, sometimes for 1 to 2 hours. We deal not only with work, but also with matters outside work, we discuss everything that we find important and how we feel. And, of course, Slack is priceless.
Remote working is mainly about discipline. One must learn to organize and plan time much better in order to be effective.
More tips:
Remote: Office Not Required - a book from people from Basecamp who have been working remotely full time for over 15 years
Q&A with Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson - 2-hour recording, where the authors of the above-mentioned book answer questions
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