COLLABORATION

Why Remote Work Thrives inSome Companies and Fails inOthersby Sean Graber

MARCH 20, 2015

PHOTO BY DIETMAR BECKER

Since people began telecommuting decades ago, companies have been excited about the

prospects to increase productivity, reduce costs, and gain access to a much larger talent

pool.

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But has remote work lived up to the hype? In some organizations, yes. Automattic (the

creator of WordPress) and the U.S. government are two good and very dierent

examples.

A completely distributed company born out of the open-source movement, Automattic

doesnt make anyone come to the oce and most of its employees choose not to. Theyre

given state-of-the-art technology, $2,000 to build a home oce, and a large travel budget

so they can meet up with other team members twice a year in beautiful, exciting places

such as La Paz, Mexico, and Amsterdam. Ultimately, these perks help the company source

the best talent, which is often found outside large technology hubs like Silicon Valley and

New York.

In the U.S. government, though adoption varies by department, the Oce of Personnel

Management reports that remote work has increased job satisfaction, reduced employee

turnover, and cut costs on several fronts, including real estate, utilities, and travel

subsidies.

Elsewhere, though, its been a dierent story. Marissa Mayer famously declared the end of

remote work at Yahoo! about two years ago, citing the need to improve the speed and

quality and benet from the decisions and insights [that] come from hallway and

cafeteria discussions. In the wake of her controversial decision, several high-prole

companies including Best Buy and Reddit followed suit.

Why are some organizations reaping benets but others not? Conditions are seemingly

ideal: More and more people are choosing to work remotely. By one estimate, the number

of remote workers in the U.S. grew by nearly 80% between 2005 and 2012. Advances in

technology are keeping pace. About 94% of U.S. households have access to broadband

Internet one of the most important enablers of remote work. Workers also have access to

an array of tools that allow them to videoconference, collaborate on shared documents,

and manage complex workows with colleagues around the world.

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How tools are changing the way we manage,learn, and get things done.

So whats the problem? The answer is simple:

Many companies focus too much on

technology and not enough on process. This

is akin to trying to x a sports teams

performance by buying better equipment.

These adjustments alone might result in minor improvements, but real change requires a

return to fundamentals.

Successful remote work is based on three core principles: communication, coordination,

and culture. Broadly speaking, communication is the ability to exchange information,

coordination is the ability to work toward a common goal, and culture is a shared set of

customs that foster trust and engagement. In order for remote work to be successful,

companies (and teams within them) must create clear processes that support each of these

principles.

Communication. In a virtual environment, it can be dicult to explain complex ideas,

especially if people arent able to ask questions and have discussions in real time. The lack

of face-to-face interaction limits social cues, which may lead to misunderstandings and

conict.

In one of my companys workshops, we use this simple exercise to illustrate some of the

pitfalls: After dividing participants into groups of three, we show one team member an

image and ask him or her to describe it to another team member over the phone (without

naming it outright). That person, based on the description, e-mails the third team member

with instructions on how to recreate the image. As you can imagine, this produces a lot of

laughs and a lot of strange drawings.

The way to avoid miscues and misinterpretation is to match the message with the medium.

To eectively share information that is complex or personal, you often need to observe

body language, hear tone and inection, and be able to see what youre talking about. For

those purposes videoconferencing is the next best thing to talking face-to-face. At the

other end of the spectrum, small, non-urgent requests are best suited to e-mail, instant

messaging, or all-in-one platforms like Slack. Although this seems commonsensical, many

people instinctively default to their preferred method of communication, which can lead to

misunderstandings, conict, and lost productivity.

Frequency of communication also matters. Providing regular updates, responding to

messages promptly, and being available at important times (especially when colleagues are

located in dierent time zones) reduces the likelihood of roadblocks and builds trust.

Although communication happens at the individual level, companies can establish norms

and provide training for their employees. The CEO of El Mejor Trato, an Argentine travel

comparison site, went even further and banned e-mail for internal communications. In its

place, he provided custom project management software. Employees resisted at rst, but

after a three-month trial period, they were hooked.

Coordination. At times, coordinating remote workers can feel like choreographing a troupe

of blindfolded synchronized swimmers. Everyone should be working in harmony, but

people often dont know what others are doing and how everything ts together into a

larger routine.

Thats why its important to create formal processes that simulate the informal ways

we touch base when we are physically collocated stopping by a colleagues desk, for

example, or eating lunch together. These interactions serve as course corrections. In their

absence, its much more likely that people will wander astray.

To mitigate this problem, which is compounded when the entire team is virtual, managers

should not only clearly articulate the mission, assign roles and responsibilities, create

detailed project plans, and establish performance metrics they should also document all

that in a repository thats easily accessed osite. There are plenty of tools that will help you

with coordination, such as Basecamp and Asana, but you also need to be disciplined about

keeping documents up-to-the-minute and thats where process comes into play. Teams

must know how and when individuals should provide updates, review deliverables, and

make decisions.

Merely having processes isnt enough. Managers must model and enforce them until they

are completely assimilated. They also need to evaluate team members on how well they

adhere to protocol. Otherwise, theyll revert to old habits. It might be easier to send a quick

e-mail to say a task is almost nished, for example, but people will inevitably get left out of

the loop. Operating outside the established processes will undermine the teams cohesion.

Culture. This principle is especially critical for virtual teams but also important

for individuals who work remotely. Since these folks rarely meet with their teammates

face-to-face, they tend to focus on tasks and ignore the team. This may work for a while,

but you must develop a culture in order to foster engagement and sustain their

performance over the long term.

The rst step is establishing trust. Addressing communication and coordination problems

will shore up cognitive trust (based on competence and reliability). But aective trust

(based on feeling) is trickier to build virtually you may need to bring team members

together for short periods of time.

GitHub, which makes a platform for collaborating on software development, brings its

entire team together once a year for this purpose. It also requires new hires to spend their

rst week in its San Francisco headquarters so they develop an understanding of the

companys culture. GitHub also rallies around its online platform with rituals that feed the

culture and provide recognition for employees. One example is its #toasts forum, which

functions as a virtual water cooler. Employees post major accomplishments to the forum,

and colleagues from around the world post seles toasting them though theyre usually

not drinking water. In the end, these photographs are made into a short video and

uploaded to a shared repository. (To see this in action, check out this talk by a GitHub

employee, at 15:25.) For remote workers located around the world, this type of quirky

activity provides a connection to colleagues and to the companys unique culture.

If in-person meetings arent possible and a virtual water cooler seems contrived, you can

schedule regular informal calls either one-on-one or as a group. They may not be as

eective as spending time together in person, but they have the same objectives: to

recognize remote team members as human beings, understand how they are feeling, and

learn about their lives outside the oce. It may feel awkward at rst, but building a shared

identity and personal connections will lead to greater engagement and better performance.

Implementing remote work successfully is dicult; it requires a thoughtful strategy and

reliable execution. But when its done well, the reward is high: increased productivity,

happier employees, and cost savings (which you can invest into building a better business).

With major shifts in the workplace, such as the large increase in Millennials and the fading

line between work and life, remote work will become an even more critical tool for

recruitment and employee engagement. Companies like Yahoo! can try to reverse the

trend, but theyre better o reevaluating what issues led them to ban remote work and

putting the right processes in place to address them.

Sean Graber is cofounder and CEO of Virtuali, a training rm that helps companiesdevelop and engage Millennial leaders.

Related Topics: PERSONNEL POLICIES | TALENT MANAGEMENT | WORKSPACES

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Robin Bull 25 days ago

Sean, you are absolutely right. Communication is vital. I represent Mikogo.com and our CEO, Mark Zondler,wrote a piece last year about why he only supports some work at home arrangements. I thought you mightnd it interesting. https://www.mikogo.com/2014/11/13/why-support-work-from-home-arrangements/

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