All teams that work remotely: How do you improve your company culture?
You barely see in person and sometimes, when you are international in different time zones, you are barely on video meetings + some people working at home can lack socialising.
How do you fix this?
I can see many companies offering some:
– yearly in-person meetings
– meetups at conferences
– co-working allowance
But all of those above mentioned can be difficult financing, especially when you are a startup.
Do you have an approach that can help with remote company culture?
Replies
We're remote/hybrid at Bolto.com!
Here's what we have that makes this work:
Quarterly meetings as a team in person
Clusters of employees in the same area who commute in office together
Really high standards (this is most important). We set high standards and hold each other accountable. In this environment, it doesn't matter if you are in person or remote, as long as your work is getting done!
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@jakejohnson21 Where do you do your quarterly meetings? Is it any different place from where you have offices?
We are a remote first company at atono.io - but we are build a dev tool to compete with Jira - so...what we're building has to facilitate all work styles (in person, hybrid, remote-first, etc). We have tried to do several things to minimize the impact of not being physically together:
1) We try to recruit from the same time zone if possible;
2) We get together in small groups (based on location) at once per month for an all hands, retros, etc., but mostly for lunch or dinner and to spend time together
3) We have rented space at Regus/wework to work together on projects
4) We agreed on "cameras on" for our stand up every morning and agreed on 9:15am so we can all be ready to go
5) Quarterly we all get together for a day (celebrate accomplishments, plan, break bread, etc.)
6) We actively communicate in slack and encourage "random" channels for non-work relationship building
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@troy_mcalpin1 You are the first company starting 9:15 :D Many I know start at 10 :D TBH, the sooner, the better :)
@busmark_w_nika ha, early bird gets the worm
Teamble
We rally around key "game days". Even though the team is remote, one significant milestone esp an event makes us operate like a "professional sports team" who preps for "the game day"
This could be a product launch, a client demo, a major meeting. We rally the team a lot more effectively when we create these set events with a common objective, you can't do this all the time but I think a major event monthly would set a good pace.
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@erbil_yaman So are you meeting in person once monthly (even people from another countries)?
Teamble
@busmark_w_nika no we are not meeting once monthly, some of us haven't even met in person yet.
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@erbil_yaman aaa, sorry, I misunderstood it then. 😅
I used to work for Airbnb during Covid-19 when Airbnb came up with the liberal policy of being able to work from anywhere. That was a superb company that valued the love and development of each employee.
We had a monthly global all-hands. Besides we used to remotely celebrate anniversaries or birthdays in Zoom specifically for our colleagues and would organize interactive games online.
I remember once we had Zoom's cartoon character avatar effects on to do a head nodding dance or complete a drawing together in a shared document, and organizing the occasional online game of "Mafia" was a great way to bring people closer together.
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@effie_yi7_hotmail_com Wow, that sounds well-organized. Did you have to switch back to office culture?
@busmark_w_nika Yes. Now I left airbnb and nearly stay at the office ten-to-nine :). While I prefer work at office instead of WFH.
Time zone awareness is critical subject for remote workforce and using Microsoft teams and other tech giants poducts helps in overall maintenance of connectedness without requiring significant financial investment.
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I would like more companies to be open to international cross-time-zone collaborations. But mutually those time zones and different tax laws are the problem.
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I admire the tip number one. To be more curious about the personal problems of others even tho it is a sensitive topic.
We’ve seen that remote teams often struggle with workflow bottlenecks, especially when managing email-heavy tasks. One thing that’s worked for us: automating repetitive admin work so teams can focus on deep work.
Curious what’s the biggest workflow challenge your remote team faces?
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I cannot say what team faces as everybody has different approach but sometimes I am seeking human connection. :)
We operate on EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System), so we're very goal/team oriented at Capwave.ai despite us all working remote in very different time zones.
Some things that have helped:
Daily standup meetings w/ direct reports
Weekly product meetings (everyone on the call)
Monthly All-hands meetings (everyone presents their own progress + goals)
Virtual happy hours w/ games to decompress & celebrate the wins!
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When are your all-team meetings are? E.g. when everybody needs to be present and you operate in different time zone (and someone has a night)
I worked remotely with a startup for a year. Fortunately, everyone was in the same timezone so it was easier to coordinate. We hosted a weekly Culture Circle every Wednesday for an hour. One person would volunteer to lead. We were a group of facilitators at an edtech company so it was easy to get people to lead as well as participate. It involved some activities that would help team members showcase their talent, quirks, stories and experiences. I used to roll my eyes for taking an hour away from my work but I look back at it fondly. I made some good friends along the way and until this day, it is not awkward running into my ex-colleagues because I've had the chance to get glimpses of them as individuals outside of work.
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Were those hours paid? 😅
@busmark_w_nika haha, yes they were!