How do you approach communication as a remote team? 🤔

Question

I'm working on a remote guide to communication and would appreciate your insights. Would love your answers if you're on a remote team, Product Hunt or otherwise! :)

* What are some best practices for keeping everyone on the same page regardless of location?

* How can distributed teams prevent a hierarchy that leaves remote team members at the bottom?

* How do you deal with the time difference between places like SF and London? (i.e. video calls, collaboration, etc)

* How often do team members meet face-to-face?

* How much travel should remote team members expect when working on a distributed team?

* How should remote team members remain visible and connected to their office-bound colleagues?

* What tools do you use for remote communication and documentation?

Julie Chabin · Accepted Answer

Hey Fadeke!
I can only answer some of the questions, but I hope it'll help.

To keep everyone on the same page, it's essential to do regular syncs where we can have an overview of all the ongoing work.

At Product Hunt, we have a weekly team call, during which the entire team discusses ongoing projects. We also have weekly project calls where smaller teams can discuss the projects in more detail.

It doesn't have to be complicated, but communicating is the key. 
That's why we also have channels dedicated to projects on Slack, where we can share ideas and discuss in an asynchronous way.

We also do a written weekly update on Slack. Everyone shares what they worked on the previous week, what they are working on this week; if they are taking time off or are facing any difficulties. 
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For your second question, I assume you're talking about teams with on-site and remote teammates. For this, I can't really answer as I don't have enough experience with this issue.

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For the time difference, we try to be mindful of everyone and pick times when people can join meetings. Being myself in Europe, it means that most of my meetings are at the end of my workday when it's the morning for my teammates in California.

Depending on timezones, meetings can be scheduled pretty late for some teammates. This is a risk we pick when we join a remote team, but many perks outweigh it. We have to be mindful of people's location and schedule meetings at the most appropriate time for everyone.

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We officially meet "on-site" twice a year, but it's not surprising for us to do smaller gatherings just because we like visiting each others' countries ;)

It's excepted that, being a remote employee, we should meet with our team at least once a year. Travel can be very tiring (and expensive), especially when you're coming from far away.

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For this question, I don't have much experience, but I'd say communication is vital. Sharing personal stories unrelated to work is also important. It's not that complicated to reproduce coffee-break talk on Slack or any other messaging app.

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Slack to stay connected.
Quip for documentation.
Dropbox to share files.
Zoom for video calls.
and other more specific apps for design/engineering/sales.

MEKH · Answer

Hi Fadeke, I agree with most of the answers. The chalenge that you have to deal with, is the local workforce legislation. For some countries you have to pay the over hours (especially when they work out of the legal work hours to match time zone with other teams), for some other countries you have a minimum number of weeks for vacations...and another aspect you have to keep in mind is the culture.  For example, some countries's culture like the team work for others the individuality is most valuable for them. hope this help.
Good luck ;)

Fadeke Adegbuyi · Answer

@syswarren Thanks for the thoughtful responses, Julie!

Interesting to see how the team balances asynchronous and synchronous communication. We have the exact same Weekly Update practice at Doist. :)

Brett Warren · Answer

Hey @fadeke_adegbuyi, we've just written about this very topic — https://www.float.com/blog/10-essential-tools-for-remote-teams

We're a 20 person remote team at Float.com. We wrote this to explain how we communicate, document things throughout the creative process and ensure everyone's on the same page. Hope it helps :)

Bennet Piecha · Answer

Hi Fadeke here is what I can contribute:

* What are some best practices for keeping everyone on the same page regardless of location?
Establish scrum and stick to it. Sync via Scrum Events does the heavy lifting. Can't stress this enough: Do not try to save money on webcams and especially microphones.

* How can distributed teams prevent a hierarchy that leaves remote team members at the bottom?
Try to focus on the agile manifesto. And meet at least twice a year for at least a week, better one sprint.

* How do you deal with the time difference between places like SF and London? (i.e. video calls, collaboration, etc)
No idea we are just an hour apart

* How often do team members meet face-to-face? 
Twice a year for one week

* How much travel should remote team members expect when working on a distributed team?
Yeah how much it takes to see each other twice a year

* How should remote team members remain visible and connected to their office-bound colleagues?
We mostly connect via Slack, Jira comments and scrum events. Calling would be even better.

* What tools do you use for remote communication and documentation?
Jira, Conflunce, Swagger, Slack, Hangouts, GDrive, ProductBoard.

Conrad Ehinger · Answer

Hi There,

Thought I would offer you insight into how we handle our remote teams (I am not actually one myself but we have many).

* I would agree that communication is key. Our remote employees still attend their team's daily morning stand-ups and we often hold "remote-friendly" meetings where everyone calls in from their desks even though many people are in the office together. It is often hard to hear an entire conference room full of people when you are the only one calling in remotely.

* How can distributed teams prevent a hierarchy that leaves remote team members at the bottom?

* We obviously make use of Zoom video calls, trying to actually view each other as we talk as much as possible. With massive time differences, we often take turns for recurring meetings - so if one week it is outside of normal work hours for one of the locations, we switch the next one and so on.

* We like to have our remote employees visit our headquarters at least quarterly (usually for our quarterly company meetings). We then always try to schedule some kind of team even while they are here so they can have some time to do something fun with their co-workers and build strong relationships.

* Teams with remote employees should almost make it a point to OVER communicate. Use the collaboration tools, never be afraid to call if you have a question rather than send confusing emails, take the time to ask about each other's home life just as you would if you worked next to that person at a desk.

* Tools we use: Slack, Zoom, Devops, Basecamp, Microsoft Teams, Office 365 (Onedrive for sharing files)

Emem Rita Usanga · Answer

@fadeke_adegbuyi Great write up on the tools you're using @yeahbrett. Milanote is exactly what I've been looking for our collaborative creative process

Abadesi · Answer

Hi Fadeke!

Our weekly updates keep us all on the same page - it happens on Slack as well as Zoom.

We don't really have hierarchy so perhaps it's by design of the reporting structures/roles that helps to present this.

We only have a few scheduled group things usually early morning SF time - it's unavoidable that folks further East will have to do a late one. Open to suggestions on how this can be better.

F2F meetups happen 1-2/times a year, we don't travel that much.

We rely on Quip, Slack and Zoom mostly :)

الحاج عبد الكريم حمداوي · Answer

اشكر

Fadeke Adegbuyi · Answer

@abadesi Thanks for the details, Abadesi! Much appreciated. :)

I imagine navigating timezones is unavoidable for most remote teams. We simply have a minimal number of meetings and keep about 80% of communication asynchronous.

Fadeke Adegbuyi · Answer

@aboubakr_mekhatria Thanks a lot! Cultural considerations are so important here. :)

Fadeke Adegbuyi · Answer

@conrad_ehing Makes sense, thanks for the context!

Fadeke Adegbuyi · Answer

@conrad_ehing Thanks for the awesome responses, Conrad! Love the tip on everyone taking video calls at their desk so everyone is on equal footing. We're big fans of the "over-communicate" maxim too.

I'm curious, why do you use both Slack and Microsoft Teams?

Fadeke Adegbuyi · Answer

@bennetp Thanks a lot Bennet, this is helpful! Thanks for the insight on scrum.

We also meet twice a year. :)

Fadeke Adegbuyi · Answer

@yeahbrett Thanks for the list! Float looks cool, we currently use Timetastic. Also interesting to see more and more companies using Notion for documentation.

How do you approach communication as a remote team? 🤔

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