My takeway from the GitLab remote playbook
Tags: git, gitlab, remote
Published: 2021-08-24 09:29:05

Basically a copy and paste of what I found really interesting: a TL;DR of https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/

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- Document the culture.

  If you do not have a living, evolving company handbook, start one now. Consider each aspect of your company culture that is unwritten or implied, and document them. In a fully remote setting, there are no daily in-person interactions where cues are absorbed. It’s vital to over-communicate in detailing values that company culture is built upon.

- Structure the company as if every team member is remote.

  If you intend to hire remotely but still maintain any physical office space, you must take added care to ensure that the usual downsides of hybrid-remote (see page 5) are not tolerated.

To empower your people to make decisions and create a more productive future for your team, it's vital to prioritize documentation. It can be easy to procrastinate documenting something when urgent tasks are competing for your attention, but the more this becomes second nature to your team, the more productive and efficient you’ll be. This is something all companies should be doing, though it is even more crucial in an all-remote organization.

- Look for qualities that make a strong remote employee.

  Those include timeliness, dependability, respect, collaboration, perseverance, empathy, kindness, and ambition. Look for candidates with excellent communication skills and an appreciation for self-learning, self-service, and autonomy.

- Use video calls to engage with candidates.

  Knock down some barriers to communication with video conferencing. Inform candidates ahead of time that the call will be through video, to give them time to prepare and ensure a stable internet connection.

Good communication habits enable team members to feel connected to others and aware of business decisions and operations. Communication is the solution to ensuring that teams don’t feel isolated and lost.

## async work

In a remote setting, mastering asynchronous workflows is vital—even more so than in a co-located environment. Make it a priority to implement “async” work in order to increase efficiency and avoid creating dysfunction. The prerequisite to async is creating strong documentation. At its core, async ommunication is documentation. It’s  delivering a message in a way that doesn’t require the recipient(s) to be available—or even awake—at the same time. If your organization has no standardized method of documentation, establish that first.

Async also means you’re not expected to immediately respond if, for example, a colleague or even your boss emails you on the weekend. Just reply on Monday. If something is urgent, team members can ping someone on chat whenever—that’s how people can filter through information to know whether something is urgent.

Meetings are more easily made optional when each one (even social calls) has an agenda and a Google Doc attached to the invite. This allows people to contribute questions or input asynchronously in advance, and catch up on documented outcomes at a later time.

## informal communication

In a remote environment, leaders should formally organize informal communication, and to whatever degree possible, design an atmosphere where team members all over the globe feel comfortable reaching out to anyone to talk about topics unrelated to work.

## Gathering in person

Even in a 100% remote company, leaders should be intentional about planning in-person elements as a way to build relationships and bolster culture. This is especially important in the post-pandemic world, when 1 in 3 workers say they feel disconnected from their peers. Whether it’s at an annual company summit or local coworking days, there are many ways your team can connect in person to build relationships that will help you operate even more effectively when you’re not physically together.

Here are a few ideas for in-person gatherings:

	1. Meetups
	2. Conferences
	3. Annual or regular summits
	4. Holidays and celebrations
	5. Local coworking days
	6. Travel budget for team members to visit one another
	7. Coworking excursions

source: https://gist.github.com/DavidGerva/f5171be872bf2e21b93e659f2a770a67