Remote Work: The Ultimate Guide

If you are reading this article then you’re probably either already working remotely to some extent or you wish to start doing that. Regardless of which group you are in, you will find here our objective opinion on remote working including opinions, examples which worked (or not) for us as well as various of materials, software recommendations, dos and don’ts, plus the best practices to make remote working effective for you. 

It isn’t a secret that both – the size as well as the scope of remote working has increased significantly over the past decade. Companies like Mozilla, Buffer or Basecamp are living examples that fully remote companies can be effective. 

While this trend hasn’t reached “hockey-stick” growth, it may have to change very soon due to spreading COVID-19 coronavirus causing illness around the world.

The Evolution of Remote Working

Humans have come a long way from factories to cubicles to Wi-Fi. Employees are shifting from traditional hub offices to flexible workspaces. The number of remote employees is increasing every year and remote working is progressing at a very high rate. 

“30% of the enterprise workspace portfolio would be flexible by 2030.”

Mark Gilbreath, founder, and CEO of LiquidSpace

In this set of article we will cover following subjects: 

1. Remote work 
   1. Challenges
      What are the biggest concerns and challenges related to remote working ?
   2. Different remote models
      Traditional office with work from home option, a remote team in a single timezone, various zones or fully distributed team without an office? 
   3. Remote task management
      Which tools you should use to keep track of your projects regardless of timezone 
   4. Remote documents / files management
      How to ensure access to all required documents and ensure their security at the same time
   5. Remote knowledge base access
      How to ensure that all of the know-how, procedures, and documents are still available for everyone in distributed teams
   6. Remote communication
      How to ensure that the entire team remains in touch while working from different locations. Should communication remain synchronous (calls, chats), asynchronous (email, tickets) or mixed?
   7. Remote meetings
      How to make sure that meetings are as effective as they were in the office.
   8. Remote access
      How to access company internal systems, networks and documents which can’t be moved to the cloud
      
2. Work organisation (coming soon)
   1. All or nothing ?
      How moving just a part of the team can affect both of the teams – remote as well as onsite. 
   2. Working hours
      Do you want/need everyone to work from 9-5 or let everyone work in their own time as long as they deliver what has to be delivered? 
   3. Working policy
      What bureaucracy which has to be in place to work remotely?
      
      
      As for today (31th July 2020 16:00 – I managed to finish above articles. I am currently busy with the ones below which will be even more interesting. If you would like to get notification once they are released subscribe to the newsletter at the bottom of this page. No spam guaranteed, just notification about new articles.
      
      
   4. Know-how / guidelines for remote employees (coming very soon)
      Training, guidelines and preparation for everyone willing to work remotely. 
      
3. Wrap up  (coming very soon)
   1. Advantages
   2. Disadvantages
   3. Best practices 
   4. Misc
   5. Checklist
   6. Ready to use company setups for small/medium and huge companies (software, policies, procedures etc.)
      
4. Summary (coming very soon)