The importance of daily stand-ups in a remote world

I can remember being so excited for my first daily stand-up 7 years ago. I had long worked on teams so small that a daily stand-up wasn’t a requirement or even a thought. When I got the chance to work on a creative team that met daily to review tasks, risks, and how we could help each other, I was ecstatic.

This was long before the COVID-19 pandemic, so it was a requirement that our team meets, away from our desks, literally standing up. There was a couch in the area we met and it was a joke that this was not a ‘sit down’, although we often sat on the couches and bean bags were strewn about. It was a break in the day that allowed us to get up and away from our desks, to see each other face to face. It often resulted in us realizing we could help each other on a problem and breaking off into smaller groups to work. It was something that naturally occurred when we all existed on one team, in one location.

As time went on, this company grew to support remote working more and more. At first, it was one team member working Tuesdays and Thursdays. It grew to many of us working a few days from home, to team members moving to different cities and states. One of the key things that kept us together was the moments where we could hop on for a few minutes and focus on nothing but updating each other on what we were up to. Being in different locations was not a barrier. Our team still felt close, and we could celebrate things like pregnancy and engagement announcements together, while apart.

At my next workplace, I struggled with not meeting with my team for a few minutes daily. While we were a small team based in the office, our daily meetings were scarce, often skipped, due to overwhelming schedules. There was an effort to make these happen, but the feeling of being a team loosened, and those meetings fell from occurring once a week, to stopping altogether for months.

When I joined RingCentral, I was excited to see my team daily. It gave me the opportunity to quickly learn about my new team and connect with them. It made me remember the key reasons why this simple meeting was so important.

1 — It reminds people their team is human.

This may seem silly, but creating a small meeting to see how everyone’s day is going, to discuss any wins or any blockers, and to see how people are doing keeps at the top of mind that everyone is human, with real feelings and emotions. Without that connection, it can be easy to become very transactional at work, making a collaborative role in design very difficult.

2 — It helps engage team members, especially new ones.

As someone starting a new company during a pandemic while working remotely in a completely different time zone, these meetings were essential to my onboarding process with RingCentral. It allowed me to see how the team worked, understand their processes, and get to know my teammates. Despite being remote, I was actually onboarded faster to this team than most of my other 8 workplaces.

3 — It helps collaboration.

Without these daily stand-ups, the ability to build on what someone else is doing is lost. The ability to get ideas from what someone else is doing is lost. Even just reminders about an upcoming task sparked by someone else working on something similar are lost. That collaboration happens so easily in an office where we can visually see what is on someone’s desk but needs to be manufactured in a remote environment.

4 — They keep the good parts of work alive.

I think this is the most important part: they highlight the good parts. On a good team, it’s nice to talk with people and celebrate life — moves to new homes, vacations, etc. Without the smaller setting, we lose the ability to celebrate as individuals get lost in a larger group or task-focused meetings. It needs to be created in the workplace to avoid burnout and keep spirits up.

I’m all for clearing up unnecessary meetings, but that 15 minutes of talking with your team about what’s going on in your world, both work and personal, is one of the most important meetings I have on my calendar.