How to create a vibrant remote community at Company X by Sebastien Engelmann
Our Big Blocker
Of all the words that stand as blockers to X’s ability to have a thriving community the one that stands out most significantly is transparency. Due to the nature of how teams are set up, X has naturally created silos across the organization given the complex nature of the work performed by certain groups and the assumption that this knowledge is not easily transferrable to others. An additional impediment lies in the company hierarchy and structure which I cannot begin to try and diagnose but rather call out as reason for gates being created blocking information flow internally.
If I attempt to diagnose the problem part of it lies in the nature of business functions being spit across different product lines. X has teams in business development, product and marketing, design, ML, ROB, software, comp chem and more and although it feels like some of the developer teams are unified, many other departments have sub teams focused on their particular product not contributing to overall company learning and sharing. In my opinion these teams should all operate with a head or VP responsible across product offerings. Managing the different products like a Head of product would manage “swim lanes” for more on swim lanes read this.
The goal is to develop teams that are independent and autonomous yet well integrated within the larger company. These teams should focus on value not output and value is the measure of benefit other teams and the company as a whole can derive from the output being performed.
Although we are all in the same boat, I don’t know how my mates are rowing and even though we recite the company mission it doesn’t feel like we are rowing in the same direction.
What Can Be Done?
The structural issues are tough but there are changes that can be made to make remote work more engaging and collaborative regardless of structure that X should explore.
X loves email more than Teams and this needs to change. Email enters the void after being read where are teams channels live on through filtered searches and serve as a better mechanism to understand conversational history in one place rather than looking at who was cced and reading long repeating email chains.
Below is a long list of quick fixes that serve as suggestions to creating a more inclusive, engaging, and collaborative workplace. These are tied to experiences I have had and serve as suggestions on how to ameliorate them.
Quick Fixes
Remark: Teams overall feels like a ghost town. The main general channel is void of conversation, there are few fun channels for people to engage in socially and few people are sharing interesting company or industry insight. My gut feeling is that teams is not a tool that is conducive to the kinds of lively conversations and engagement we are looking to create at X and a lot of that stems from how channels and calls are setup and the focus on chats rather than channels that the platform prioritizes.
Suggestions:
- Move the Daily T and R&D newsletters to Teams
- Institute channel owners to ensure channel participation and activity in the early months
- Implement Friday “facts and figures” to help people learn statistics about who, what and how the products sold are being used. This could be a teams channel
- Start the discovery of new communication tools
- Channel based standups (currently using chats but these should be channel based to keep the conservation in one place and increase inclusivity) that are audio only and don’t lead to increased video fatigue
Remark: Demo days feel repetitive and unengaging. The parts are like are the presentations from colleagues and shoutouts & gratitude.
Suggestions:
- Have breakout rooms and small team discussions be a part of all Demo Days. (work focus)
- Start Demo Days by reporting on core OKRs and having VPs share progress rather than Bhags and values (don’t skip shoutouts and gratitude, that is needed)
Remark: I never felt like I had the opportunity to connect with other employees. Starting as a contract worker on a different product from what most of what the company was working on I felt like an outsider and although I did make an effort to reach out to people in the initial months it became harder to do as I became a regular employee who just happened to not know what was going on.
Suggestions:
- Integrate a Donuts like product into teams and strongly recommend it from top down
- Weekly team events where a team of (~16 ppl) are split into groups (~4 ppl) to just chat through a prompt like “Your favourite room in your house and why” “Show & Tell” etc. Allows you to develop stronger and more authentic relationships with one another. (monthly events, builds inherent trust)
- Skill sharing sessions. X does the occasional lunch and learn but what about hosting lunch and learns on non-work related topics to help employees learn about something new and connect with teammates. This can be done in a more AMA format as to not add much onto the plate of the presenter.
- Offer to fly a team member in to visit headquarters once a year so that they can put a face to a name. Many of us will soon be vaccinated and this can be a great way to create emotional connections at work.
Remark: Feeling connected with my community at work was also difficult and being so far away from Vancouver and having never met a single person, having coworking space or volunteering time could have been nice for my mental health.
Suggestions:
- Offer to pay in part or in full for remote workers to have a co-working space. Often it can be difficult to motivate oneself to work when not surrounded by others. Co-working spaces create the university library feel while providing opportunities for cross collaboration.
- Employee volunteering. I know CEO has done some work with the Vancouver food bank but this should be encouraged. Employees can log a few hours of volunteering in their timesheets to support their local communities and feel connected with other humans when their former human interactions are diminished.
Measuring Progress
Measuring the progress the community is making towards being increasingly engaging and collaborative is important yet difficult. Although I think tracking progress on X’s virtual community is important and likely necessary doing so might come at cost of these efforts being viewed as inauthentic given the corporate push to make them happen and reducing engagement, collaboration and inclusivity down to a number. That said I do believe that these efforts should be linked to OKRs managed by individuals such as A, B and C.
Final Considerations
Pay attention to groups who are disproportionately affected by being remote.
- Minorities
- Parents
- New hires,
- Different time zone team members
These individuals tend to struggle at integrating within communities and this is only rendered harder in a virtual world. One way around this is by creating internal communities like a parents community that helps parents connect with other parents and empathize and relate to others going through similar life events.
Onboarding and offboarding remotely is never easy and careful steps should be taken to learn from how these experiences can be improved. I personally had an incredibly rudimentary on and off boarding plan which led to a slow ramp up period and a sour taste upon departure.
