Automattic and a few of my colleagues were recently featured in an article on the Wall Street Journal titled “Why Remote Work Can’t Be Stopped”:
“…data indicates that the remote-work trend in the U.S. labor force is inexorable, aided by ever-better tools for getting work done anywhere.”
I’m a huge proponent of remote work, and I do think it’s the future of work in many industries (not just tech). The tools are improving at a lightning pace removing the disparities between in-person and remote collaboration.
One piece of the article I disagreed with is this quote from Steve Price, chief human resources officer at Dell:
“Engineering, leadership, R&D, sales and customer support—those are roles that don’t lend themselves very well to remote work.”
I lead a remote customer support team so I check two of those boxes. I think there are many processes you can put in place to solve the leadership piece for remote work. In no particular order:
- A consistent approach to one-on-ones that encourage accountability for both parties. I just switched to using Lighthouse for managing these.
- Weekly all-team hangouts with rotating call lead responsibilities. Longer team calls every quarter to cover goals and reevaluate how we work as a team.
- A consistent process for tackling feedback including feedback for the manager/lead from the team (I wrote about leadback surveys here).
- Non-work related hangouts to encourage team bonding and camaraderie. I wrote about how we do this here.
By the way, we’re hiring. Come work with me!