Hi there, how many folks have issues managing remote contractors?

We're a fully remote positive team and have found a few things work well for us:

• Fully asynchronous working relies on super specific and straightforward to understand task management. It works well if people are 'owners' of their own dedicated area and don't have to crossover with others' work. Sometimes people work best without any meetings, and sometimes it's because of a bad previous experience of useless meetings that are wastes of time. Interaction is important to develop rapport.

• Daily standups make a huge difference, especially for remote-based people, and they need to be respected. The worst thing is to have long rambling meetings with no end - it corrupts the point. Short, specific standups where everyone is involved and is available are really helpful

• Not being afraid to jump on a call - back and forth on Slack might be great for the day to day, but when there's an issue (especially across timezones) you can sometimes go days without getting to a resolution after a constant back and forth of "think i fixed it" "it still doesn't work" etc. Drawing a line and asking folks (especially stakeholders) to jump on a call and articulate the challenge and work through the issue together live saves so much back and forth. Obviously don't do this all the time, but we've found it super helpful.

• If 1 person's remote, you're all remote - Even though we have several people who work in our office, if we're having a meeting with anyone over zoom, all of us will have our webcams on and share a microphone.

• Weekly or fortnightly 121s where you don't talk about work - 30 minutes max with your direct reports. It's really beneficial to establish rapport and get to know how someone works and what their life is like.

• Finally, we all make 'Guides to Us' modelled after the user-manual idea. https://medium.com/@thisislizziebrough/10x-your-company-culture-with-this-one-tool-3709f3eeca79

I work with developers in Vietnam and India, the main issue I run into is lack of complete understanding in regards to the requested task or project. There are a few steps we take to prevent long turn around times when working with others in different time zones and from different cultures.

1 - Ensure documentation is full and complete with as much visual detail as possible:

I personally use Nimbus to take videos and screenshots to better explain my requests and what's the be expected. We use google docs to share and collaborate individual projects but there's other programs that can help everyone stay organized such as Asana, Trello, Airtable.

2 - Leave little room for questions/interpretation:

If everything is clear and your instructions can't be confused then work is done quicker and quality is better as well. If you leave a lot to interpretation or assume missing points will be worked through there will be more follow up questions and even the simplest tasks can be delayed. There should be little back-and-forth if you document your requests correctly.

3 - Understand you're working with humans who have priorities:

Families, other jobs, holidays and obligations that you might not have considered. Be understanding and realistic and you'll find more contractors willing to go the extra mile.

4 - Invest in finding the right one:

You don't have to spend a lot of money to create a small project and find out how a contractor communicates and performs. Even if it isn't related to exactly what you want to get done it is best to see if a contractor is the right fit by actually having them do some work for you.

Most people I know struggle with remote contractors. I've had several bad hires, but in general they have worked great for me. Some pointers:

• Spend a good amount of time up-front finding the right person - if using Upwork, use filters for skills, ratings, locations etc, individually invite good candidates. Once people apply for jobs, I track top candidates in a spreadsheet, compare some of their details and choose.
• To be safest, stick with contractors that have made money ($10K up), have strong ratings (95%+), have positive feedback on 3-4 relevant jobs. That will decrease the size a lot, but is worth it.
• Query with good questions to start - eg. how are they going to carry out the work, what design do they have in mind etc
• Test staff and/or be willing to cut staff early. If you are immediately getting bad signals like poor communication, misunderstanding, cut them. Good staff exude competency almost from the get go.
• Set clear expectations - just ask them when they will do X milestone, and hold them to it
• Use Upwork's tracking features (time and images) or a tool like Hubstaff. Trust but verify that work is getting done appropriately.
• Write a clear, testable spec. More detail is better than none, so the expectations are clear.
• It helps to have competency in what you're recruiting someone for. If you want a technical person, it would help to have a technical person you know write the spec or give pointers. It can be just as irritating for a freelancer to have a boss that is not clear on the work that needs to be done, it's a two-way street.

We run a fully remote operation. This is the case for team members and clients.

What works:

• showing up via video regularly (I share "monologues" and walkthroughs via Droplr/CloudApp)
• deadlines
• asynchronous work schedules and communications

What can be improved:

• sharing more "body language"
• room to occasionally talk about random topics for camaraderie
• sticking to the simplest tools (because I love introducing new tech that will cause resistance or create room to break things)

Hope this helps and thanks for the opportunity for me to reflect on our work systems :)