By: Jeff Robbins

Amid the COVID-19 outbreak here in the United States, it seems like every news outlet is talking about remote work. To mitigate financial disaster amid the health crisis, many companies are embracing remote work and trying to allow staff to work from home. Yet most of these employees have never worked remotely before.

In addition to running Lullabot, a fully-distributed 65-employee digital agency for 11 years, I’ve interviewed over 80 leaders of other remote-friendly companies on the Yonder Podcast. I’ve learned a lot about remote work over the past 15 years.

Dale Bertrand of the Boston-based digital marketing agency, Fire&Spark, recently asked me to point him to a “concise article on how to work productively remotely.” I’ve certainly seen a lot of articles flying around this week, but none of them seemed to hit my highlights. So I’ve put together my top seven tips to help new remote workers.

1. Make space for work

I've said it before and I'll say it again: “Working from home is living at work.” Yet, we need to be clear when we're working and when we're not. This can be as simple as putting on the headphones to block out distractions, or it might mean having a dedicated space or a desk in the guest room. If it's not clear to you and your family that you're working, you will find the distractions difficult to ignore.

For the first 5 years of Lullabot, I worked with my laptop propped up at the kitchen counter in the open living area of my house. When I was sitting there with headphones on, my wife knew I was working and she left me alone – often cooking dinner right next to me while I worked. She knew I was working. I knew I was working. So did my son. It worked.

2. Overcommunicate overcommunicate overcommunicate

My spell checker is going nuts. Apparently “overcommunicate” is not a word. It should be, so I'm sticking with it. Let’s just define it as “communicating more than necessary.”

Peripheral communication happens accidentally in an office. We usually know what our coworkers are doing because we overhear snippets of conversation, we celebrate triumphs, or we see them struggling. Entire books have been written trying to increase office productivity by blocking out peripheral communication in meetings, email, and offices.

By contrast, peripheral communication needs to be intentional in a remote working environment.

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS OVERCOMMUNICATION IN REMOTE WORK.

I always tell new remote employees to “cc liberally!” To me, “cc” means “I just want you to know about this. There is no obligation to reply.” Post in Slack. Send emails. Set up conference calls to check in, brainstorm, or just talk about the weather. Communicate more than you think you should. It's all good! And it's all IMPORTANT.

Remote work is a constant effort to be visible.

Managers need to know what people are working on. Staff need to know that their work is being seen. People who are struggling need to know they can ask for help. People who are being successful need to know that their efforts are being recognized.

In this way, less targeted communication is important, too. Tools like Slack are great for transparent public/private conversations, allowing everyone on the team to see a conversation between two or three people without creating an obligation for everyone to participate.

This communication goes both directions. Managers need to hop in and overcommunicate too. Appreciation, recognition, and support go a long way in any company. They are especially important for remote workers who can feel lost without feedback.

Overcommunication builds trust in a remote work environment.

3. Seek purpose

All remote workers need to self manage to some extent. No one will be looking over your shoulder when you're working from home. In order to self-manage, we need to know our purpose. Where do we fit into our team? Into our company? For that matter, where does our company fit into our industry?

Company core values, mission statements, and ongoing vision can help to outline purpose at a high level. But remote workers should feel free to take initiative and ask questions of their managers so that they understand their purpose and have the necessary information in order to get work done.

Some questions you might ask:

* When is this due?

* Who else is working on this?

* What will I be working on after I finish this task?

* What are the other tasks that others are working on?

* Who will be reviewing this?

* What will make the stakeholders happy?

* How does my work fit into the long-term goals of the company?

Overcommunication will help fill in some of these gaps. If everyone on the team is overcommunicating, many of these questions can be answered by scrolling through Slack or wherever this peripheral/public communication is happening.

4. Pick up the phone

A lot of people think remote work means that they won't talk with their coworkers – all of their communication will happen through email, and they will be lonely and isolated.

While it's true that it is usually easier to find great swaths of uninterrupted heads-down “work time” as a remote worker, there are also a lot of tasks that require real-time interaction in order to get things done.

Generally speaking, tactical work usually happens asynchronously – a.k.a. not in real time – a.k.a. “leave me alone to get my work done!” Tactical work is the “work work” or maybe the “grunt work” such as production work, coding, designing, and writing. Asynchronous communications tools include email, message boards, issue queues, and voicemail.

Whereas a lot of strategic work happens better synchronously - a.k.a. collaborating in real time - a.k.a. “let's hop on the phone and hash this out.” Strategic work is the “planning work” which includes everything from daily/weekly check-in calls, to project planning, client check-ins, one-on-ones, brainstorming calls, and anything that you could call a “sync up.” Synchronous communications tools include telephone, conference lines, video conferencing, and to varying degrees: text messaging, and group chat (a.k.a. Slack).

Trust happens synchronously. If you're losing trust, pick up the phone!

Note: In order to properly respect the synchronous work that people are doing, to minimize context shifting, and to respect the {sovereignty} of people's flex time, I recommend all phone calls be scheduled. Even if it's just a Slack message saying, “Can we talk at the top of the hour?” people working from home may need a moment to finish their lunch, or wrap up the email they're writing, so they can check their hair before jumping on a “quick” video call.

5. Embrace the flex

In an office, employees often put on “professional” clothes and pretend to be infallible for 8 hours at a time. After which, they know they can go home, put on sweatpants, collapse into the sofa, and be human once again.

When we're working from home, we're allowing our employer into our private space. Employers need to respect our time and allow for a certain amount of humanity. Let's stop pretending that we're not human. It is possible to be BOTH professional and human at the same time. Employees need to defend their non-work time and speak up for their human needs. Need to go to the doctor? Pick the kids up from school? 

As long as people are able to get their synchronous work done synchronously – a.k.a. make it to their scheduled meetings – employers should trust remote workers to find their own points of maximum productivity. Some people are really productive working after dinner and late into the night. Others would prefer to stick to the 9 to 5.

The most important thing is that the work is getting done and that no one is feeling disconnected or confused.

6. Be vulnerable

Okay, more about that “human” thing. 

In office, we can see when people are struggling with all sorts of nonverbal cues from body language to microexpressions, sighs, and groans. Managers often become very attuned to these cues in order to understand how their team is functioning and where to assign resources, so that those who need help can get it.

If your company has an “alpha” culture that doesn't allow employees to be vulnerable and share their difficulties as well as their victories, remote work is going to be VERY difficult. Since it usually takes a lot of struggle in order to achieve any given task, more than half of employees’ work will be completely invisible.

In order for "remote" to work, we need to communicate completely (see #2 above). In order to communicate completely, we need to be vulnerable and speak up about struggles, difficulties, and frustrations. This isn't weakness, it's humanity. And we all have the same goal of being successful with our work. By speaking up like this, we can get the help we need, we can learn, we can collaborate, we can become better at our jobs. It's good stuff!

It is possible to be both confident and vulnerable at the same time. In fact, true vulnerability is a sign of confidence. It says, “Yes, I know I'm good at my job. I usually know what I'm doing. I just have this one thing that is currently a problem. I know that when I get help, I will be back on track.” So don't worry that your employer will lose confidence in you if you show some vulnerability. In a remote work environment, they're more likely to lose confidence if you're superficially "great" all the time. That doesn't help anyone.

7. Be intentional 

Remote work is autonomous work. Let’s just embrace that. Micromanagement is completely impractical in a remote work environment. But autonomy is not the same thing as isolation. We can take control and be responsible for our work without needing to be disconnected from our coworkers. We just need to be intentional about connecting. 

Admittedly, this doesn’t happen as easily as it does in an office setting. But by being intentional about our connections, we can be clearer, and create more meaningful, longer-lasting connections. We can’t high-five a coworker as we walk by their cubicle. But we can send an email or Slack message saying how happy we are about their latest success, what it meant to the company, and how much we value having them as a coworker. 

It’s a little more work. But it’s a lot more meaningful.

Still have unanswered questions about helping your team make the transition to working from home? You can message us directly with any comments or specific questions here. We’re here to help!