How we run a fully remote team of 13 people: All the gory details
By: Kiri Masters
Tags: Remote Working, Women In Business, Work From Home, Digital Marketing Agency, Female Entrepreneurs

How we run a fully remote team of 13 people: All the gory details

Reflecting on the year 2016, I notice that all of the milestones and accomplishments were due to one thing: people. And I have found the best people for Bobsled Marketing all around the world — all working remotely.

There are only 2 people I’ve met in person from Bobsled. One happens to be my husband Tom, and the other is a contractor who lived close by and I also met up with at a conference in Bangkok.

Me and Brent, one of just 2 people I have met from Bobsled Marketing face-to-face.

Everyone and everything else in the company is managed remotely, online. Tom and I recently moved from the US back to Australia to have our first child, with no disruption to the business.

I hesitate to call remote working a “trend”, because I believe it to be much more than that. Big, systemic changes are shaking up the workforce. Millennials prioritize lifestyle and meaning in their job above a secure salary. Parents are done with choosing between their career and their families. Reliable, fast internet and cloud software tools mean that we don’t have to be working in the same place, at the same time, to be hugely productive.

So how does remote working actually work in practice at Bobsled? Here are some of the top successes and challenges I’ve faced in building a remote team of 13 this past year.

Thinking & hiring remote-first

Many established companies need to reverse engineer their remote working arrangements. They have and office with employees who commute, and may decide to offer telecommuting as a perk. Something I’m grateful for in retrospect, but was simply a necessity at the time, is that remote work was the default when hiring team members. There are 2 benefits to this:

The reality is, one can access an entirely new pool of talent by making positions available to work remotely. Many accomplished professionals are looking for such positions.

It also allowed me to build the company to run fully remotely right from the beginning, making remote work the default, rather than an exception or a workaround.

Best in class cloud software tools

As a service based company, communication between team members and with clients is paramount. There are two tools which are indispensable to what we do: Asana, a project management tool, and Slack, a chat tool.

Asana allows us to set up projects with detailed timelines, easily link to resources, and who’s responsible for delivering each component. Managers can easily see how much work each team member has on their plate and can re-distribute tasks.

Slack took the online business world by storm in 2016 and it’s easy to see why. We pay for a premium subscription so that we can add clients to a single channel and communicate with them there. Having an asynchronous chat tool like Slack:

Eliminates chains of emails between the team, as well as clients

Creates an audit-able record. If there’s a “he-said, she-said” situation internally or with a client, we most likely have a written record on Slack (or Asana) of what conversation actually took place.

Is a conduit to our team culture. “See you around on Slack” is a frequent sign-off from team calls, since it’s now our default communication channel.

Other tools we use:

Google Drive for file storage and documenting Procedures

Toggl, time tracking for contractors

Payoneer, for paying non-US staff and Gusto for managing payroll of permanent US-based staff

Hey Taco! A Slack plug-in that allows team members to recognize & reward each other. This has been huge in building a shared value of “in it together”

VPNs, for folks working in coffee shops or outside of a secure home network on occasion

Clear roles & reporting

For a while, we had some team members “float” between Project Managers to help manage projects. My reasoning at the time was so that the team could easily cross-pollinate knowledge. In reality, it created issues with accountability and unclear expectations. What’s clear now is that reporting lines need to be crystal clear. Now, we have 3 “pods” on our operations team, with a Project Manager who’s accountable for driving results on each account and managing 2 direct reports.

Defining the exact responsibilities of each role, as well as the capabilities (more innate, but often still coachable personal qualities) only happened recently. But it made an enormous difference in helping people understand where they should be spending their time and energy. Identifying responsibilities & capabilities by role allowed us to promote 2 team members and help them move forward in their careers. Setting concrete KPIs for each job type is a goal for next year.

Creating and maintaining a culture

This week we had a virtual year-end awards ceremony, where we gave each person on the team awards like, “Most prolific use of emojis”, “The Sherlock award”, and “Most likely to be cooking an elaborate lunch”. It was a fun way to recognize all the personalities on the team and shows how you really can build meaningful relationships even if you only know someone in an online context. I also had a cartoonist create characters from everyone’s profile pics for them to use on Slack and elsewhere online, and gave them out at the awards ceremony. Here’s mine!

Everyone wants to work somewhere where they feel their talents are recognized and valued, and that they’re making meaningful contributions to customers. That’s certainly the case for me, and something I’ve been very deliberate to build at Bobsled.

The chit-chat and morning teas in a traditional work setting exist for a reason. They do help to quickly develop a culture and relationships amongst a team. You have to be more deliberate and persistent when creating a remote culture.

Challenges with a remote team

Conference calls. We’ve tried Skype, Slack group calls (unfortunately these are still super buggy), Uber Conference, Zoom Meeting, and Google Hangouts. We seem to have a 50% hit rate when it comes to team conference calls. If anyone has a suggestion here, please let me know!

We’ve tried Skype, Slack group calls (unfortunately these are still super buggy), Uber Conference, Zoom Meeting, and Google Hangouts. We seem to have a 50% hit rate when it comes to team conference calls. If anyone has a suggestion here, please let me know! Getting a read on how people are doing. In an office setting, you can “walk the floor” and pick up on the energy of the team. You’ll learn about people’s hobbies & family, how they work, etc, just by observing them in action. In a fully remote environment, there’s less room for visual observation of your colleagues. For better or worse, we all have to be a bit more candid with each other, because you just can’t pick up facial cues or body language in a chat app. For some people it’s a relief to just get on with their work without the distraction of office chit-chat and morning teas. But it’s still important to do a digital ‘drop-in’ and make sure people have what they need to be productive and that they’re not burning out.

In an office setting, you can “walk the floor” and pick up on the energy of the team. You’ll learn about people’s hobbies & family, how they work, etc, just by observing them in action. In a fully remote environment, there’s less room for visual observation of your colleagues. For better or worse, we all have to be a bit more candid with each other, because you just can’t pick up facial cues or body language in a chat app. For some people it’s a relief to just get on with their work without the distraction of office chit-chat and morning teas. But it’s still important to do a digital ‘drop-in’ and make sure people have what they need to be productive and that they’re not burning out. Scheduling. With just under half of the team in the US, me & Tom in Australia, and everyone else in Europe, it’s hard to schedule team calls at an ideal time for everyone. We’ve all had to become masters of calculating international time zones. Generally there is a couple hours’ overlap of everyone’s working hours, which is critical to getting things done. The same goes for working with clients who are in different time zones. Truth be told though, it’s nice to have a few hours each day when not everyone is online and you can get on with your work with less distraction.

With just under half of the team in the US, me & Tom in Australia, and everyone else in Europe, it’s hard to schedule team calls at an ideal time for everyone. We’ve all had to become masters of calculating international time zones. Generally there is a couple hours’ overlap of everyone’s working hours, which is critical to getting things done. The same goes for working with clients who are in different time zones. Truth be told though, it’s nice to have a few hours each day when not everyone is online and you can get on with your work with less distraction. Distractions at home. I’ve called this out as a challenge, but it’s only a short-term one. When you’re first adapting to working at home, you might see distractions everywhere. But once you set up your space, get into a groove, and realize that this stuff just has to get done, you do just… get it done. And as a manager you have to trust that others will also get to the same place. It will be pretty clear if they can’t.

Julie, our Operations Manager, and I were chatting recently (on Slack of course) about how much more efficient working at home is. There’s no commute, you can often choose when and where you’re getting work done. For me, I’ve really been needing my afternoon nap. My naps don’t affect anyone negatively because I can get started a bit earlier or work a bit later. The same goes for parents going to school recitals or picking up a sick kid from daycare. As long as the work gets done, clients and colleagues are kept in the loop — it matters less where and when work happens.

Having said that, it takes time, effort, trust, and a dedication to the concept to make remote work, ‘work’ for your company.