How to implement remote working at your charity
CAST has moved to remote working. We take a look at how it can benefit your charity, and how to make it work well.
You may have noticed a trend on job ads from CAST and other organisations that remote working is supported and enabled.
This isn’t a trend towards asociality. Far from it! It’s more an acknowledgement that the tools and practices required to support remote working are now so good that it would be foolish not to use them. The benefits for both an organisation and its staff are significant.
Remote working has many advantages. It can enable work for people caring for small children or ill/elderly relatives. It is more convenient for those with disabilities and allows people to live where they choose, rather than dictated by closeness to a place of work. It makes it easier for organisations to hire the right person with the right skills. It can save you money because you need less office space. It saves your staff money because they don’t have to spend a fortune on transport. And finally, it can help with the environment and land use with people commuting less and office space being less needed.
At CAST we have fully embraced remote working. We come together as much as possible as a team on one day per week, since there is still an enormous value in face-to-face meetings and time spent physically together. The rest of the week we are remote, dispersed around the UK and as far afield as Spain.
One thing that’s important is that we make time to talk, a lot. We use a tool called Slack to chat, and we have frequent calls with one another to make sure knowledge moves around. We use Zoom video conferencing software (other video conferencing software is available) to speak in twos and threes, and once a week, we hold a meeting involving all staff. At the moment we have around 15 staff, working a mixture of full time and part time, and we typically spend a little over an hour a week on our full-team meeting.
One decision that we have made is that if one person is remote in the meeting, we all act as if we’re remote. To an outsider this may seem odd, but it means that we create a level playing field. You don’t have the scenario where the one colleague who has called in via video-link can only see half the room and everyone forgets they are there.
In order to do this effectively we have set up the office so that it works effectively for Zoom meetings in terms of sound and vision.
We’ve also developed a practice around the use of hand signals so that there is less of a cacophony of noise for those remote and they are not disadvantaged when wishing to make a point or agree/disagree with what is said.
Starting with the sound and vision aspect there are a few components that we use which allow us to effectively capture the meeting:
A computer with an ethernet connection connected to a large monitor.
In our case this is a standard spec MacMini connected to a 4K TV. The 4K TV can be used for sharing presentations or media with the team. The wired internet connection here is important as this machine acts as the meeting host. It’s transmitting the sound and high definition video to the team, and also displaying all of the team’s faces in gallery mode.
We found that when using the same WiFi connection as the rest of the office the audio from this machine took on a rather robotic tone. After a few tests we discovered that it was a problem with the data throughput of the wireless network and since switching to a wired connection no one sounds like a Dalek.
A good high definition webcam.
It doesn’t need to be a hugely expensive one, just one which has at least 1080P resolution for video. Ours cost under £25 and is this model. Other makes and models are available. Some of them are exceptionally expensive, especially known-brand ones, and are often not worth the increase in price.
Some omnidirectional microphones.
These are important to pick up the audio of all of the participants in the room equally. If you had a small team you could use a simple single microphone solution, such as the Snowball from Blue Microphones. However for a larger team/space we recommend some omnidirectional microphones, such as these from Samson. The sound quality from them is exceptionally good and there is often little need for the team to use anything other than indoor voices. We use two of them and we raise them above the desk/table so that laptop screens do not act as walls to block the sound from reaching the microphones.
An audio interface.
If you’re using the omnidirectional microphones, you’ll need an audio interface both to power them (they require what is called Phantom Power in the audio industry, which is a 48v power supply over the microphone lead), to provide some gain controls (turning up and down) and to connect them to the computer that is the host for the meeting. We use a PreSonos AudioBox interface for this and it gives good performance. Other USB audio interfaces are available, however it must have gain controls and provide Phantom Power. The audio interface and the webcam are connected to a USB hub which allows other people to control the meeting from their computer if they wish too.
A wireless access point.
One of the things we do is to have all of the team connect to Zoom from their machine so that anyone who is remote can both see the room and the faces of their colleagues. It helps make the meetings feel very real to those who are remote. This takes a reasonable amount of bandwidth and it’s not fair to put that over the wireless network of a co-working space (or one used by colleagues not in the meeting). Any wireless access point will do for this. It’s important if possible to not plug the host computer into any of the wired ports on the back of the access point as that will put that machine’s traffic through the access point which is already doing a large amount. We’re growing as a team and so often we’ll pair up, one laptop between two, as there isn’t space around the table for everyone to have a laptop open.
Final notes
One really important thing to note with this setup is that only the host computer should have the microphone and speaker enabled. If anyone else has their machine’s microphone and speaker active it can lead to some fairly spectacular feedback, varying from a reggae soundsystem style echo to piercing feedback, neither of which is good for those remote, especially if those remote are using headset microphones or headphones.
Another important thing is to label cables as best as possible, this means that if things get knocked or unplugged it’s easy to get things back in order quickly.
One final thing, since this is a shared computer, do document the password in a place that everyone can find it. The author hangs his head in shame for this, having left the password on a sticky note (not recommended) and found that said sticky note had somehow disappeared.
Watch out for a blog post about password managers soon!
