What a year of working remotely for TransferWise has taught me
A year ago, I joined TransferWise as the PR Manager looking after Australia and New Zealand, but I prefer to go by the prestigious title bestowed on to me by my team lead Nick Lembo: Komms Kween from Kenya.
In a nutshell, I have the task of raising our company profile by educating consumers and the media about TransferWise’s mission to make sending money instant, convenient, transparent, and eventually free.
Most of what I do now is identical to what I’ve done for the last 5 years of my life — building relationships with journalists, writing press releases, researching and mining data to find quirky news angles, securing speaking slots for spokespeople and creating accompanying briefing documents, attending events and conferences myself and representing TransferWise as a spokesperson in the media.
The only difference is that I’m working remotely. In fact, I’m not even in the same time zone as most of my coworkers. I’m one of three people based in TransferWise’s satellite office in Sydney and ahead of my one year anniversary, I thought I’d share some of the good things about working remotely and how to overcome some of the challenges.
Working remotely vs. working from home
Now, I should caveat that working remotely shouldn’t be put in the same bucket as working from home — which I also occasionally do. I’ve worked from home in a previous company, but working at TransferWise was the true definition of working remotely, and to be quite honest, I wasn’t sure what to expect going into it. Ultimately, I wasn’t sure if it would be as easy as others made it out to be, or if I would find it counterproductive to working, learning, and performing to the best of my abilities. Here’s what I’ve learned:
- Be as available and proactive as possible — Things move quickly at TransferWise, so I’ve made a conscious effort to be someone who is quick to respond (within reason). I try tee up calls with different team members from offices all over the world to get an understanding of what they’re working on and aim to make the short 24-hour journey to our Tallinn or London offices to get face time with various teams every quarter. At TransferWise, all teams submit their focus areas in monthly open plans which are shared with 1200+ employees, spread across 11 offices all over the world. I’ve made it a habit to read those that are relevant and of interest to me. We’re incredibly lucky to have such transparency and access to these and the more proactive and eager you are to hear the latest developments on projects, the less out of sync you’ll be.
2. Overcome time zone differences — In addition to the challenges faced working remotely and being away from all the action, add in the layer of working in a timezone that’s a day ahead of everyone and it can be virtually impossible to align with anyone from London or New York! So, I’ve come up with a compromise to find balance. If I have calls with colleagues from London (which are usually after 7pm my time) or New York (which is early morning for me), I try to carve out personal admin time during the day, so that I’m not falling into the trap of working 13-hour days and inevitably burning out. One very important thing to be mindful of is to adjust and manage your expectations accordingly when it comes to deliverables and deadlines. Planning ahead and taking into account weekends or public holidays is key to ensuring I have a strong working relationship with everyone.
3. Turn on your camera — Even with an abundance of technology at our fingertips, nothing can replace a good old face-to-face conversation. However, when you’re working remotely, this is often not an option. Most of the time I’ve been working with people I’ve never met before. Email and Slack messenger chat can only go so far, so I find it’s super useful to have a video chat on Hangouts, Zoom, Slack video calls, FaceTime, whatever it might be.
4. Be human — Something I was told right from my on-boarding was to “grow your TransferWise network”. This has been one of the most valuable pieces of advice I’ve received. But, I would add to that and say that the networks you create shouldn’t just be about work. Since I’m not around to hear the day to day office banter, Fika breaks or Friday drinks conversations, the onus is on me to foster relationships within the company. For example, while visiting the Singapore office about three months into joining TransferWise, a couple of colleagues invited me to join them on an impromptu weekend away to Indonesia — something that happened after ten minutes of meeting them for the first time — a true testament to the fantastic culture we have.
5. Be accountable for your work — When you’re working remotely and away from your lead, coupled with the autonomous culture we have at TransferWise, it can be hard to have any sense of accountability. This usually swings one of two ways. Either, you feel like you always have to justify your commitment to work, or you can seriously struggle with motivation.
I find it’s best to keep some sort of routine to help with accountability — and to prevent myself from overworking. Like I said before, I try to start and finish work at the same time where possible, but one thing I’ve found helpful is to send my lead an email on Monday morning with my priorities for the week to confirm what I’m working on. We then discuss our priorities together on our weekly 1:1 video call in the afternoon and map out our week. This ensures I’m transparent about my work. Being far away from the rest of the team, I try to share any wins and celebrations with the wider team — no matter how big or small.
Hopefully this has given you some insights and top tips for working remotely for a global company.
P.s. if TransferWise sounds like an interesting company to you, we’re currently hiring for a number roles in our offices around the world. Check out our openings here. .
