Leading a Remote Workforce

Without a doubt, discussions around the merits of a remote workforce in software development are a hot topic at the moment. More and more companies around the globe are evaluating this model for their businesses.

Over the past couple of years, I have had the opportunity to work remotely, and while it is lovely to roll out of bed and saunter over to my workstation in pajamas, there are a lot of nuances that go into effectively leading a remote team.

A lot of articles go into this topic from the employee angle, but I want to tackle it from a leadership angle. In particular, I want to share concrete examples of how you can make a remote workforce effective for your business. These are techniques and practices I have either personally led or taken part in during my stints working with remote employees.

Let me first say that these practices can apply to both a partially remote workforce and a fully remote workforce.

Perception vs Reality

• Perception: Progress is slow due to lack of face-to-face interaction.
• Reality: There are so many great virtual workspaces available now, this really doesn’t need to be a problem. In my experience, keeping an open chat channel such as Discord, Slack, or any of the other myriad tools out there allows the team to be in constant communication. In addition, virtual rooms such as Zoom, Skype or Google Hangouts allows for face-to-face interaction and screen sharing. I always kept a channel available to any team members who needed to collaborate and even saw several of my staff effectively co-develop in this way.
• Perception: Performance problems are difficult to detect.
• Reality: It’s actually the opposite. Assuming you have good development practices such as Scrum in place, an underperformer sticks out like a sore thumb. When I had morning standups with my team, staff who didn’t show up to the meeting or showed up unprepared to give a basic update contrasted starkly against the rest of the team who showed up ready to work. I gave these folks a week to get with the program and if they didn’t, they were cut.
• Perception: Communication is cumbersome.
• Reality: While the benefits of turning to your neighbor and talking through a problem are obvious, the prevalence of meetings in typical onsite companies suggests that communication is a lot more problematic in a shared office. I’ve worked in companies where meetings from 9 am to 9 pm were normal and where everyone walked out with a different perception of what was decided in those meetings. Out of necessity, communication with a remote workforce is more structured. When I worked remotely, we used our team chat to communicate news, announcements and key decisions with the team. We had a dedicated Announcements channel and everyone set it to notify them whenever we wrote anything in it. While it took a little more effort from the outset, communication was more precise and fewer misunderstandings occured because what was said was in writing.
• Perception: An office adds legitimacy.
• Reality: While this argument may appear to have merit on the surface, my experience is that business and client meetings seldom happen in the office. More often than not, business meetings occur over a meal, at a conference, or even over webcast. Nowadays, every city has a myriad of workspace locations that can be rented for business meetings and planning sessions. This is a whole lot less expensive than paying rent on a dedicated space, building it out and maintaining it. Better to use those funds for salaries, marketing and other more valuable business needs.
• Perception: There is little to no social time with team.
• Reality: The first time one of my team members suggested a “Happy Hour” with the team, I thought he was off his rocker. But we gave it a try and one Thursday evening, we met for drinks in our vidcon room for an hour. Six months later, ”Thirsty Thursday” was still going strong. Everyone would bring their beverage of choice and shoot the shit together. We didn’t talk about work and instead we got to know each other better, talking about everything from hobbies to home improvement to our children and everything in between. We broke down the barriers of geography and became fast friends. Our one rule: No CEO allowed.

The bottom line is that most employers struggle with trusting their remote staff. My solution to this is a commitment-based work model. Call it Scrum or Kanban, but ultimately, it comes down to this: let your team (remote or otherwise) commit to a set of well-defined deliverables and let their commitment be a “contract” with you. The term “commitment” carries heavy implications, the most important of which is that the work was chosen by your staff, not dictated by you. Your role is simply to make sure you prioritize what you want done in order (the “what”) and let them worry about the delivery (the “how”). The “when” is your time box (milestone, sprint, etc.). This obviously requires a lot of discussion between you and your team, but as a leader, this is the part you play. And the better your communication with your team, the more precise their commitments will be.

When I led a remote team, missed commitments were easy to spot and under-performers self selected themselves out quickly. More quickly, in fact, that I ever saw in a typical office environment.

Benefits of Remote Work

There are numerous obvious and some not so obvious benefits to a remote workforce. This list is not exhaustive, but these are the benefits I found most valuable to both the company and the team.

• Potentially less expensive workforce — If, like many tech companies, yours is based in California, it is likely you are paying a premium for staff. A remote workforce can be recruited from less expensive locales, even within the US, allowing business leaders to stretch their finances.
• Fewer meetings — When meetings do happen, they tend to be more focused small group breakout discussions or one-on-ones. No physical meeting rooms means half-baked all-team sessions don’t happen and your staff can keep their heads down on their work.
• Better global coverage — With a team across the continent, or even around the globe, there is a greater opportunity to provide extended product support throughout the day.
• No commute = Better productivity — When I had to commute into my office in the city, my drive time was more than an hour in each direction. I suspect it’s the same for a lot of people who work in a big city. That time is not spent working, whereas, staff are more inclined to give a little more when they don’t have to leave the comfort of their own home.
• Potential to attract higher level of talent — By forgoing a brick and mortar office location, employers are not constrained by a potentially competitive local job market. In addition, high performing veteran talent may prefer the freedom of a remote workplace.
• No office politics — A staff who works from home avoids the friction that can occur between personalities. In my experience, a healthy respect is maintained when staff are not in each other’s presence constantly.

Logistical Challenges

Setting up a remote workforce is not without its challenges. Thankfully, more and more technology and resources are available to prospective employers of remote staff. Here are a few examples of challenges that need to be overcome with a remote workforce:

• State-by-state (or in some cases country-by-country) employment laws — In the US alone, you need to contend with 50 different sets of employment regulations. Beyond the US, there are even more. Thankfully, there are services that are able to set you up as an employer in any state and make sure you are in compliance with state laws. Employees outside the country should be placed on contract, unless you’re prepared to work through the challenges of setting up a corporate entity in other countries.
• Payroll out of country — Within the US, electronic transfers are relatively easy, but as an employer, you need to account for taxes and other logistics for transferring money. Work with a payroll company to assist with timing and taxes for international transactions. There are some great companies out there such as ADP and Trinet that can assist with payroll and employment legislation. Many of these are experienced with remote employers.
• Equipment and software — Most remote staff will need to use their own computer systems. Be sure to utilize cloud-based software such as G Suite to make cross platform compatibility simpler. You can, of course, purchase and deliver equipment to your team, but it’s important to understand the costs and other associated considerations. For example, you’ll need to document hardware inventory and location. You will also need to include stipulations for returning company equipment into your hiring agreements.
• Virtual workspaces — Chat and webcast software can be hit or miss. Research the best tools for your team and be prepared to pay for licenses. Thankfully, there are some great solutions out there and increasing competition means decreasing costs. Make sure you have dedicated meeting spaces for your team whenever they need it, even if its just to “hang out”.
• Offset hours — While increased global coverage can be beneficial for product support, time zones can differ wildly. It is important to create at least some overlap across the team every day. This may govern where you hire or require different core hours for each location. What I found worked well was to ensure everyone could attend our 15 minute daily standup and our hour-long bi-weekly sprint planning session. Beyond that, team members were at liberty to have breakout meetings on their own schedules. If you absolutely cannot overlap work hours, make sure people on opposite sides of the world, who are unable to meet daily, work on separate projects.

Ultimately, all of this culminates into a single question: Is a remote workforce as effective as an office-based workforce?

My response is, with proper logistics in place, it can be even more effective. The level of productivity and commitment I saw in my team surpassed anything I have experienced in all my years in the workforce. I cherish the relationships I have built with colleagues around the globe and I unequivocally recommend a remote workforce to any leader willing to make the leap.

Look for my upcoming book on Leadership in the Game Industry to be published in the summer of 2019. Subscribe to my blog for weekly updates: https://medium.com/total-kinetic and check out my website to learn more about my services: https://www.totalkinetic.com/.