The ability to work remotely for the IT sector has never been something special and, even, was some advantage.
Today, during the period of exiting quarantine and returning to the usual regime, a slightly distorted attitude is noticeable and a not entirely clear understanding that the sudden compulsion to work without visiting an office and a systematic approach to organizing a remote work process are fundamentally different things.
Fashion trends and hype, which began to be perceived as an opportunity to dramatically reduce a number of office costs, cannot be an ultimatum reality for any team. Actually, the transition to remote work is not always a simple decision and savings, in fact, it is a rather serious process, but, in fact, a project that should be implemented with the active involvement of HR, project managers and teams.
1. Analyze opportunities:
1) Make sure that each employee is ready by discussing directly with each team member, and have a personal introduction to the leader, trusting your own feelings.
It should be borne in mind that everyone has their own approach to self-organization and opportunities to work outside the office. For some, this can be an excellent opportunity, but for others it can be an extremely uncomfortable process with a corresponding loss in efficiency.
2) Space for work outside the office (first of all at home), it is not just a physical place where you can sit for work, which means:
A. It is necessary to clarify with the employee whether it is possible to allocate a place for comfortable work at home, whether there are any annoying and interfering factors, whether working at home will create discomfort, both for him and others.
B. A comfortable workplace is a necessary tool and a working condition:
- For some, a laptop is enough for work, but development teams often need a full-fledged PC or a laptop-monitor bundle.
- Ergonomics of the workplace - whether the employee has a comfortable table, office chair or armchair, or additional support is required.
- Availability of communications - headphones or headset, webcam.
- Communication availability (Internet, mobile communication).
- Easy access to internal systems.
After assessing all the possibilities and needs, it is possible to understand whether such a format of work is really possible for the whole team or selectively, and also to provide the necessary conditions if necessary.
2. Full-fledged remote work differs significantly from the usual format in the office and requires new approaches in communications and processes:
1) One of the key problems is the determination of the time frame of the working day, which is achieved by basic control and simple rules of self-organization.
Morning greetings to the general group as work starts, as we all used to do in the office.
Informing about “leaving” for a break or the need to go away on business, which will greatly help to simplify the moment of feeling of a constant working regime, and it’s easier to have a quiet lunch when no one writes to you, does not call and does not expect an urgent solution to your work issue.
End the working day “saying goodbye” and, possibly, summing up a quick summary in the general group, thereby forming the actual end of the working period.
An interesting case was shared by colleagues from one product team, when every day at 18.30 he and his wife began to watch the series on one of the video services, thus ending the virtual working day quite clearly.
2) Regular communication, always with video, creates the feeling of familiar office stand-ups, adjusts to work processes, does not allow you to relax, and reminds of the usual rituals of office work. In this mode it is very good to feel the state of the atmosphere in the team, both in successes and vice versa, in problems.
In some teams, this format received an even more advanced format, thematic calls, which gave even greater involvement and added positiveness to the process.
3) Periodic one-on-one communication to understand the mood of everyone, directness in discussing possible problems and assess whether everything in the team is normal or requires separate elaboration.
4) Chats, calls, video communication - in approximately this order of popularity, we use communication channels. It is important that many tasks and questions can be simply identified with text, thereby fixing their essence, and then easily transferred to tasks or backlog. More detailed questions are better solved promptly by voice. For one-to-one communication, it is more convenient to use a telephone connection, a voice call to a telegram or a vibe.
5) Problems, important points should be solved only by voice, it is extremely important to convey and understand the mood, give a clear message without distortion and not leave misunderstandings.
For discussion of issues with the participation of several people, it is quite simple and affordable to organize a group call using regular telephone communication (which many do not use).
6) For collective discussions and presentations - screen sharing by the speaker, during discussions using online tools, like an analogue of a flipchart offline.
7) It is especially important for project / team leaders to pay attention to feedback and actively use personal communications for motivation, especially in problematic issues.
3. Informal communication, habits and needs, a significant part in team communications:
1) OpenSpace / Kitchen / Smoking room is a familiar space for everyone to discuss both work and abstract topics of interest.
Can be provided by various online tools such as virtual rooms at discord.com (kitchen / smoking room effect, hobby rooms, ambience and openspace background).
2) Tet-a-tete communication, which can be actively developed and stimulated.
For example, a telegram bot was developed for the Vodafone Ukraine team - a situational project for the development of online communications within the Vodafone company during quarantine
3) Development of online activities - games, quests, joint views, etc.
4) Organization of regular offline meetings.
Conclusions from the current situation, analysis of necessary steps and existing examples in the transition to partial or complete remote work can be the following:
1. Teamwork remotely or in the office - these are two, different in their approaches, formats that take place.
Office work is not old belief or lack of managerial competencies, as it sometimes sounds reckless, but a well-functioning format of team interaction.
2. The remote format of work in teams, in whole or in part, can be implemented with the understanding of such a possibility or as needed, but in any case requires elaboration, analysis, preparation and thoughtful step-by-step implementation, but not following trends or “fashion”.
The most effective option is and will always be flexibility and variability of approaches, thoughtfulness and meaningfulness in any decision.