In part 1 of our series, Values of a Remote First Company, we dove into the differences in having remote team members versus having a Remote First organization. So what does being a Remote First organization mean? Basically, it boils down to first and foremost communicating with your team members outside of the office and including them in the decision making process. By having clear expectations and working rules, both remote and onsite team members are on an even playing field.
But Face-to-Face Provides So Much Value!
One of the most scrutinized points of why remote won’t work is the importance of face-to-face communication, and the breakdown that can ensue within remote teams. Yes, it absolutely does! Of all people, I am very aligned to interpersonal interaction. I have an extremely high EQ, my DISC profile is a C – Collaborator, my Myers Briggs is ENFP, and I’m a Libra. I love people, happiness, and having everyone aligned. That said, I am much more productive when I can work at my own pace and in my preferred space. I probably value face-to-face more than most of my colleagues in technology. Yet, I recognize the value of personal preference.
“In person” and “face-to-face” are not the same thing. Remote First organizations create opportunities for, and require, “face-to-face” time daily. At Modus, we accomplish this through one simple videoconferencing rule: if you’re on a meeting, video needs to be on. Period. This starts within our interview process and extends to all client calls and internal calls. We are all “face-to-face” but not “in-person.”
OK, So I Meant “In Person” is Important!
Yep. Right again. “In Person” meetings and collaboration are awesome to help build relationships and trust within your team. Is it required? Nope. We have had teams work together for years who have never met in a professional setting and still have cohesion and deliver high-quality results for our clients. We absolutely love it when we do get the opportunity to meet “In Person”.
In a Remote First team, you focus on the most important thing: building trust. You create trust by delivering results and having a highly collaborative, interactive, and psychologically safe environment. Results happen when you have the best team possible working toward a solution. Meshing is easy when you feel like everyone has your back. When we finally do have the opportunity to have an “In Person” meetup, everyone already knows and values each other.
We Already Have Communication Issues. Remote Won’t Help Those!
No, it won’t help. Over the course of my career, one thing has been a common theme: Communication is hard. In a past life, while working for an awesome local company in an office, I facilitated team retrospectives across the organization. There was a recurring theme: We need to improve our communication. I consider myself a strong communicator most of the time, so this was always perplexing to me. Communication is not something easy to teach, especially to an entire team.
Communication is always, at minimum, a two-way street, and regularly much more complex than that. You’ll only be as strong as the weakest communicator. There is not a “one solution fits all” answer. So how do you fix this? It starts with intentional hiring. As a Remote First company, soft skills are extremely important as teams form, storm, norm, and perform. When the majority of team members are remote, it’s a required skill. Having all team members improve and focus on soft skills is beneficial across the organization. You wouldn’t hire an engineer that couldn’t write code. Why would you hire someone who can’t communicate with team members?
Well We Already Have an In-Office Team We Love. Remote Might be Hard.
It absolutely will be. This is where deciding to be a Remote First company comes into play. Remote communication cannot be an afterthought. It has to be the forethought. The company must make the decision and move forward and embrace it. If your current team loves the office, that is awesome! They can keep coming in daily. As you add remote workers, logistics matter.
That conference room software that’s never worked well while your team was in one building? It’s a bigger issue now. Tools and software become a really important factor. Also, it’s important to set the stage for all employees, not just the people outside of the physical office.
If you’re hosting a meeting at your HQ and also have remote attendees, have all participants call in from a laptop. This seems trivial for a lot of reasons, but the vulnerability of everyone being on your personal laptop video sets the stage. The remote team shouldn’t be an afterthought. I’ve met many people who are in this situation, and their biggest complaint is that they feel like their company doesn’t remember they work there. Meetings are run in a room with poor remote setup and using whiteboards, etc. rather than software that is available for all team members to participate. There are tons of great whiteboarding and collaboration applications available today, and an added bonus to using these is you get to save the results with no effort.
Why Should We Go Remote When We Can Just Hire Local?
As more and more companies go remote, they’re at risk of losing their top talent. I’m not a talent expert by any stretch, but based on data within Modus and my personal network, hiring local talent will continue to become more expensive and harder to find, especially for experienced, senior roles.
Remote employees from all markets are able to demand salaries that do not necessarily resonate with local salaries. This is good and bad. It will drive companies that require onsite talent to reassess what salaries are for a given role. On the flip side, many people are willing to negotiate salary for the perk of working remotely. Remote rates will continue to affect local hiring for experienced talent. Prior to COVID-19, low unemployment rates were seen across the globe. Now that options exist, people will continue to vet what is best for them.
Going remote, or even global, opens you to find the BEST person for any given role, not the best candidate in your area. For niche roles, this is extremely helpful. There is no longer a need for people to uproot their families and lives to move to a new city or state – at your company’s expense. In addition, organizations can demand excellence and do not need to settle for anything less. Also, by expanding your hiring net, you can add diversity to your team you may not be able to find in your local talent pool. Modus never set out to be a remote company, but we did set out to hire the best talent and becoming remote was an inevitable result.
And ask yourself this question: do you think limiting geography is opening you up to hiring the absolute best-qualified individuals for the job?
How Would a Company Start With Remote Workers?
Having the correct hiring processes in place for a remote team is a critical first step. A talent acquisition team that understands the global market can identify and push strong communicators quickly through the hiring process without sacrificing quality, and their ability to share your company’s vision separates good hiring teams from the great ones.
Clearly communicating to all applicants what expectations your company has is not trivial. At Modus, we require all team members to have 3-4 hours of overlap with US East Coast morning hours, as this is the one time of day we can count on everyone being online. This does stop us from hiring some people, but it becomes a candidate’s personal choice, not a company policy. We have people working from Los Angeles, CA to Thailand and each person has had this expectation set before moving into the official interview process.
If you’re not ready to hire full-time remote team members, another great option to test the waters is to start with a couple of consultants that are well versed in remote work. Ensure key decision-makers are ready to support and promote the work the remote team members will be helping deliver. Most organizations will have a few naysayers looking for ways to make this fail. This is common. The best way to help with push back is to allow the naysayers to present their fears and create action plans to ensure their perceived risks are being heard and managed. It may be especially helpful to hire an experienced consultant that is comfortable walking the fine line between the technical and business teams and can provide immediate support to the team and direct feedback to management. Change is always hard, but it’s not impossible.
Like any change, don’t get in over your head. Trying to move too quickly, not having a well-defined plan, and pushing a large change without getting any buy-in can derail your success. Moving to a Remote First organization can be hard and all team members won’t be successful. It’s important to understand the concerns of your current team. If they want to continue to be in the office, great. If others want to work from home, etc, that is also fine. As a Remote First company, it’s management’s role to set the direction of the organization. Allowing your team to help define what success looks like and create the team working rules and agreements will help people get excited to be part of the movement. At Modus, we’ve found that it’s easy to accommodate most people’s preferences, but it absolutely takes planning and flexibility both from the organization and the team member. And worth stating again, clear expectations are absolutely required for everyone to be successful.
How Do We Assess if Remote is Successful?
This is the hardest question to answer. Modus has worked with companies with strict US Banking Regulations, Fortune 500 companies, Pharmaceutical companies, startups, etc. Remote has never been the killer. Lack of trust and failure to manage expectations is the most common way to kill a project from being successful. Becoming Remote First requires expectations to be clearly stated and defined ahead of time, team members to assume positive intent in all interactions, and clear communication channels to be created from the onset.
Success will be defined in many ways, and differently across companies. Defining what success means for your organization upfront will help your team create metrics to successfully track against.
- Are you becoming a Remote First organization to improve employee satisfaction?
- Are you looking directly at cost savings from not having to support a full office?
- Do you want to accelerate the hiring process by expanding the number of qualified candidates you can source from?
- Do you want to have 24/7 overlap and implement a “follow the sun” model for continuous delivery?
Allowing data and metrics to define your success is important and will speak louder than the loudest voice in the room. Allowing yourself to fail as needed is OK, as long as you quickly identify each failure as an opportunity to learn and shift. Be clear with your desired outcomes and how you will measure them. Give yourself enough time to actually measure if your Remote First experiment was successful. If it doesn’t succeed, introspect and find out why – change is almost always an iterative process, not a linear one.
Conclusion
Transitioning and identifying as a Remote First company won’t be easy, but if your organization can take the time to properly create a plan, define communication and team working rules, and use metrics to track your success, it can definitely be worth it and provide value. Creating a network of people locally, regionally, nationally, or globally to learn from, personally and professionally, is extremely rewarding. If your organization is thinking of experimenting with remote work, Modus can help support your transition. Our team has the experience and breadth to help transform your organization and walk through each step with your team.
