How to Effectively Use Asynchronous Communication in Remote Work

I’ve been thinking a lot about how we work here at Moves, and what are some key reasons we are able to adapt to and thrive in a remote culture. I wanted to share some of our engineering processes and mistakes that we have learned from. One thing to note is no matter how well you function in a remote world, it will never replace in-person connection. It’s not the same and it’s not meant to be.

Since the start of the pandemic many organizations have become 100% remote. My organization had to go through this transition as well. In fact, I joined Moves in the early months of the pandemic (I haven’t yet met most of my colleagues in-person). My worry was how do you build trust with your colleagues, get alignment on things and collaborate on the important decisions. Sure they see me in a video conference call indicating “I’m here.” Then there is the green dot on Slack, indicating “I’m here.” But there are other tools, like code repositories, document managers, and task trackers, that don’t have this green dot, but have another indicator last updated to tell your colleagues “I was here.”

I’m sure by now you get what I’m talking about is the importance of asynchronous communication. There is an underlying method to communicate which is not instant but can work wonders if done properly. Email is a classic example, but most people have replaced it with live messaging tools. These tools still can’t replace the power of a document, and its ability to communicate and cultivate collaboration.

Asynchronous communication

At Moves we define asynchronous communication as a method of communication that is not restricted by requiring immediate attention or response. Meaning the person or people communicating are not restricted by being “here” at that very moment in time to communicate.

This is quite a common practice in the open source community. A person opens an Issue on a code repository, some people respond, someone implements the proposed solution, maintainers will review and merge the code. Now the open source tool is better! And all of this happened without the restriction of everyone being “here” at the same time.

I gave a very specific example that we know has worked for decades, so what about other types of work? I can only speak to the way software development works in an Agile context, as that is what I’ve mostly applied this to, but I can list more examples of what other meetings (that required being “here”) we have applied this to:

Tl;dr

Any meeting where only one person speaks can easily be asynchronous.

Use documents to convey thoughts and facilitate discussion on the topic.

Some processes might need to be synchronous, but certain parts of that process can be asynchronous.

• Weekly team updates — We now send a video instead of having everybody drop what they’re doing to attend a company wide call.
• Standup — We have a doc where everyone enters what they’ve done, will do and blockers, with links to tasks that they are working on. Caveat: The tasks hold a lot more information about the work, so you also have to write good descriptions and not just the titles.
• Initiative kickoffs — Video that people can watch and comment on in a document. The beauty of this is that questions and answers also get documented.
• Grooming — We actually have a mixed model for grooming. The technical lead starts off with a synchronous meeting with Product and Design to scope out the work. Design prepares all the artifacts required and a video walkthrough; feedback is gathered asynchronously using the comments feature. Once the final designs are ready technical grooming is done synchronously, during which we create technical documents containing all their proposed changes that need to be implemented, stories are pointed and grooming is complete.

Caveats

Our first reaction was, “This sounds great, let’s apply it to everything.” Yeah… that was a bad idea.

The main impact asynchronous can have is on creativity. In the office there were watercooler conversations, which led to interesting ideas and solutions. These have taken a different form in a remote setting, and can be a 1:1 or a sync meeting with a bunch of people, to just chat without agenda. So don’t replace those 2 to 4 people synchronous calls. They are important!

Another place where you shouldn’t use it is when something unplanned, urgent or unforeseen comes up. If you have to react quickly to a situation it has to be synchronous. It’s worth calling out that if you have risk mitigation strategies in place or proper firefighting protocols, then async works for those too. Basically, if you’re strategic about planning work, this is a rare case.

Sometimes the nature of the topic demands lengthy discussion, which means a synchronous meeting. What’s important now is how effectively you run that meeting (a topic for another blog). The big indicator for this is when you’ve tried asynchronous in many different ways but if it’s still not working it most likely needs to be synchronous. Experienced people will also get a feel when something requires real-time discussion, instead of spinning your wheels trying to get feedback on something.

What does asynchronous mean for Moves

Moves takes inspiration from its members. A gig worker needs to be adaptable to be successful, and so do we.

We adopted asynchronous methods to adapt to the new normal of remote work, which has become part of our team’s culture. Meetings can drown out certain voices — it’s normal for some people to be more vocal than others in front of a large audience. Also, people need time to think and consume the information. Asynchronous changes this significantly, as everyone has the time and space to consume the information at their own pace and participate at their will.

Since gig workers choose to work outside the norm of 9–5, we build financial products to adapt to their lifestyle, and asynchronous is one tool in our toolbox that enables that.

As we’ve learned and grown, we’ve adapted to new ways of working with our colleagues, many of whom have never met in real life. Written communication is hard, and requires practice and help. It’s important that we adapt our culture to emphasize compassion, feedback and mentorship to help everyone get better at it.

Adapting new ways of working is a gradual process requiring a lot of trial and error. There’s no “one size fits all” — it depends on the company, culture, employees, nature of the business, etc. I hope I’ve given you some inspiration to try in your own workplace — please reach out to let me know!