What are the unsolved issues of Remote Working and Distributed Teams?

There are tons! That being said, as a new remote worker, I'd really love to collaborate on any of these:

On the company side:

• Building a company culture
• Documenting decisions and know how
• Keeping track of progresses
• Meetings and Face-to-Face time / Scheduling
• Hiring (Remote companies get 1000s of mostly unqualified applications)

As an employee or remote worker:

• Loneliness
• Relaxing / Overworking
• Avoiding distractions
• Law/Taxes

There are more.

Just shared your question on Remotive Slack Community to get more answers :)

To me, the core issue is trust.

If remote workers / distributed team trust each other, the rest flows. Then, all software and tools become enablers.
As you wrote, thousands of alternatives exist. Slack is sexier than HipChat, both address the same need. Of course, UI/UX is sexier and integrations are smarter - yet it's the same spirit.

Two examples on how trust makes or breaks remote teams:

(1) If trust levels are low, no software will make up for the anxiety of someone wondering if their boss is about to fire them or if "folks back at HQ are gossiping about me".

(2) Also, in low trust environments, folks tend to over-work (risk of burn out) and use software as crutches and testimonial of their work ("My Slack dot is green, of course I'm still on at 10pm!")

Why do several remote workers / distributed team find themselves in low trust environments, you may ask ?

Few possible reasons (non exhaustive):

(1) Value misalignment. A company may wish well and have friendly values, yet what matters is actions, not words. For example, several remote startups value "work life balance" and are fine with having employees hustle on Slack and join meetings at odd hours. This feels like a value misalignment, what was advertised by the company is not what employees lives - causing stress and low trust.

(2) First timers. Companies, managers or remote workers may mean well yet it takes time to "get it right" so that all 3 are aligned and happy with their set-up. Teams that are still finding their feet are tricky to work with because remote workers may not know "what they will change next!", affecting trust

(3) Mixed teams. It's a biggie. Partially remote team (with an HQ) often try to solve their challenges with software whereas culture may work best. For instance, Trello once had a "one person, one screen" policy for each meeting. That meant that there wouldn't be 10 people sitting in a conference room on one screen facing a bunch of lonely remote workers. Expectations were set by culture, helping to build trust.

--

In my opinion, trust isn't built by being right all the time but by how leaders act when things go wrong.

So, remote teams core issue is trust, all issues @dqmonn listed are valid and painful.

Tools helping to set expectations and shorten feedback loop tend to be sticky(knowyourcompany.com / officevibe.com). Also, Buffer pays for anonymous, chat-based mental health support for all team members.

Helping to build trusted environments feels key, whether it's through software or community. Teams will low trust may gravitate to "tracking tools" where teams with high trust will think about "enabling/support tools"

Hope it helps, keen to hear more thoughts on the topic!

Fix the timezone issue. That I have to wait on my coworkers (who are great BTW) and they have to wait on me too because we live on opposite ends of the globe.

There's a challenge....

I've worked remotely for almost a decade and recently I was wondering what has changed, so I joined a few Facebook groups for remote workers.

One post that someone shared was this one:

https://open.buffer.com/state-remote-work-2018/#benefits

It highlights several struggles around working remotely, and I started digging some more and saw this report (https://www.tsheets.com/resources/remote-work-survey) and others.

Here are some common challenges for remote workers:

• Loneliness
• Staying motivated
• Setting boundaries
• Collaboration (different timezones)
• Distractions

Once I was aware of those, then I started noticing them in different social media channels. I asked about loneliness in one of the Facebook groups, and it was interesting to see the discussion unfold as there were remote professionals that could relate and there were others that said they enjoyed working remotely so they could avoid people.

At some point in my career, I experienced the struggles above and others, and I handled them by creating habits and systems.

Here is what I shared in one conversation about loneliness as a remote worker:

I don't think this is about "us vs. them" where one is right, and the other is wrong. Instead, I think it depends on how you gain your energy.

For me, I tend to gravitate more towards being social, but I need time alone to recharge. So my schedule during the week is between a home office, a co-working center, and then one or two others spots to change up the routine like a friend's office or a coffee shop.

And while there are others that can relate, I bet there are other remote professionals that can say that they need the opposite or even something in between the spectrum. So again, an important part is knowing the type of environment that you work well in and from time to time, stepping away from work so you can recharge and relax and that could mean time alone or maybe time with family and friends.

This year I've prioritized my wellness as a remote professional and its one of the best decisions that I've ever made. Before health was on the sidelines and now it is top of mind, so things, like getting enough sleep, exercising regularly, making healthier food choices, and taking time to relax and recharge are essential.

I'm researching sleep and remote workers. Would anyone that works remotely be up for a quick chat?

I've worked remotely in my last two jobs so am really interested in the topic.

Two resources I'd refer to are:

1. Remote Only (https://www.remoteonly.org) - they detail a manifesto for remote work and explain some practical tips, benefits, disadvantages, and affects on the organization.

2. *Remote: Office not required *(https://basecamp.com/books/remote) - a book by DHH (founder of Ruby on Rails & Basecamp). It has lots of practical tips.

• isolation
• loneliness
• sense collaborating with documents and chatrooms, not people

Hey Guys! Sorry for jumping in late.

I think one problem that's yet to be fixed (and fixed right) is, getting the team to keep learning / upgrade their skillsets / stay updated on what's happening in the industry, etc.

Existing solutions, Feedly (essentially, your subscribed feeds), Video Courses, etc. have bad noise to signal ratio, ask for an immersive-long-tenure commitment, too much time is spent on picking the right thing to learn, etc.

I look at the ol' days LMS (Learning Management Systems) approach. It's looked down upon now but it did serve the purpose. I also liked that approach of mapping learning to KPIs.

I think what needs to change is the method of delivery of this "learning modules" from LMS days. I like Google Primer's approach a lot (Tinder-style cards + MCQs). A Google Primer-style app that's designed for your company's training/learning needs - 5-minute lessons, 5-10 MCQs and a score.

If I had to use this app at Springzo, I would love to have the following modules:

• Training for new recruits - what to find where and how; how we communicate (our voice and tonality); our culture; style guide, etc.
• For Content Writers - questions from https://english.stackexchange.com and see test how they answer them, revisit our style guide (email ID vs. email address, recognise or recognize, etc.)

The possibilities can be endless. Over a period of time, the app also acts as a repository or internet knowledge portal for the company.

What do you guys think?

Remote work is a massive challenge (and opportunity). I've spent the last couple of years building software to help distributed teams feel more connected (www.fridayfeedback.com).

Specifically, here are a few ideas:

• loneliness is a major problem with remote work. I've wanted to build something around helping remote people who live in the same city connect.

• Understanding what's going on (this is where I've focused). There's all kinds of task-management tools, but a little bit of abstraction away from the work itself can be helpful.

• Agile/scrum processes oftentimes break down with people in different timezones.

This is totally worth pursuing. I've been having a blast helping team leads/companies with this. It's a very real pain.

I manage a team spread between a few time zones. We're great with the tools that help with remote work, and have years of experience, but it is still astounding how much more we can accomplish when we get together in person.

1. it's a challenge to plan our in person gatherings. everyone wants to accomplish everything, talk high level strategy and get our hands dirty in the weeds.

2. while we are remote, it's hard for the team to know which conversations are best for async on github vs realtime on slack vs face-to-face over video. it's so important to get this right – for efficiency, morale, and effectiveness.

This is of interest to me. Just thoughts below

Peter Thiel in an interview by Maria Bartiromo said, telecommuting and remote working is underrated and something he would love to invest in. I can find the video if interested. Upon some research it seemed he was referring to investing in VR/AR tech for remote employees.

Slack, basecamp, GitHub, asana, internal wiki, jira, Trello, etc. or similar cloud-based productivity tools are useful regardless whether users are remote or not. (Although looking at the signal to meme ratio on private slack channels, it is hard to argue if they are still productivity tools).

Zoom video sharing, Skype, group FaceTime, file sharing, folder sharing, collaborative document editing, screen sharing, and screen-control sharing tools solve a general problem, and can be used for code review, pair programming, root cause analysis, discussions, sales, presentations, telemedicine, training, education, culture-building presentations, support etc.

A team I managed between Seattle, Bay Area, and Amsterdam played online games together and worked well together as a result. We tried to watch God father series together, but I wouldn't call that a huge success.

Managing remote teams is a huge challenge. By this I mean beyond time, task, project, & product management which are handed well by cloud-based productivity tools. Something to delve into further.

I definitely struggle with the overwhelming number of information feeds and the feeling that you need to stay on top of everything. I'm sitting in a dozen or more different Slack channels, but really only ever able to pay attention to a few, probably missing out on a lot of great stuff. There also seems to be this desire to segment everything so no single channel becomes too overwhelming, e.g. public channel, team channel, operations channel, stand up channel, lounge channel. Email is no better.

So I guess i'm saying a lot of remote people could probably use some help staying organized and identifying the really valuable content.

Figuring out a remote company culture is complicated. The lack of face-to-face interaction can be challenging when people never met in person. That's usually solved with company-wide trips where everyone meets for a few days a couple of times per year, but that can be complicated/expensive to coordinate, the bigger the company becomes.
Again, communication is challenging when people are in different timezones. It's easy to get blocked waiting for someone to get back to you but they will only be online again on the next day.
Even when you're in the same timezone, some things are really hard over video chat like whiteboarding for example. You have to keep everything on paper, need discipline and organization to make it work well.
It's also challenging for junior developers when they need a lot of guidance, working remotely if you're new and learning is hard.
Long story short, it's all about communication. You can definitely make it work, but there are real challenges. With that said, wanted to say I'm a big fan of remote work and I'd love to see more companies adopting it.

This comment was deleted 7 years ago

I am looking for a remote job - UI/UX Design/Development.

Design Skills : Adobe Creative Suite, User Interface (UI), Prototyping,Branding, Wireframing, Responsive Web Design (RWD), Web Design, InVision, Android UI Design, iOS UI Design

Development Skills : HTML/CSS, PHP, WordPress, Laravel, jQuery, Vue JS

Thank you.