All teams that work remotely: How do you improve your company culture?
You barely see in person and sometimes, when you are international in different time zones, you are barely on video meetings + some people working at home can lack socialising.
How do you fix this?
I can see many companies offering some:
– yearly in-person meetings
– meetups at conferences
– co-working allowance
But all of those above mentioned can be difficult financing, especially when you are a startup.
Do you have an approach that can help with remote company culture?
Replies
We are a remote first company at atono.io - but we are build a dev tool to compete with Jira - so...what we're building has to facilitate all work styles (in person, hybrid, remote-first, etc). We have tried to do several things to minimize the impact of not being physically together:
1) We try to recruit from the same time zone if possible;
2) We get together in small groups (based on location) at once per month for an all hands, retros, etc., but mostly for lunch or dinner and to spend time together
3) We have rented space at Regus/wework to work together on projects
4) We agreed on "cameras on" for our stand up every morning and agreed on 9:15am so we can all be ready to go
5) Quarterly we all get together for a day (celebrate accomplishments, plan, break bread, etc.)
6) We actively communicate in slack and encourage "random" channels for non-work relationship building
minimalist phone: creating folders
@troy_mcalpin1 You are the first company starting 9:15 :D Many I know start at 10 :D TBH, the sooner, the better :)
@busmark_w_nika ha, early bird gets the worm
Teamble
We rally around key "game days". Even though the team is remote, one significant milestone esp an event makes us operate like a "professional sports team" who preps for "the game day"
This could be a product launch, a client demo, a major meeting. We rally the team a lot more effectively when we create these set events with a common objective, you can't do this all the time but I think a major event monthly would set a good pace.
minimalist phone: creating folders
@erbil_yaman So are you meeting in person once monthly (even people from another countries)?
Teamble
@busmark_w_nika no we are not meeting once monthly, some of us haven't even met in person yet.
minimalist phone: creating folders
@erbil_yaman aaa, sorry, I misunderstood it then. 😅
I used to work for Airbnb during Covid-19 when Airbnb came up with the liberal policy of being able to work from anywhere. That was a superb company that valued the love and development of each employee.
We had a monthly global all-hands. Besides we used to remotely celebrate anniversaries or birthdays in Zoom specifically for our colleagues and would organize interactive games online.
I remember once we had Zoom's cartoon character avatar effects on to do a head nodding dance or complete a drawing together in a shared document, and organizing the occasional online game of "Mafia" was a great way to bring people closer together.
minimalist phone: creating folders
@effie_yi7_hotmail_com Wow, that sounds well-organized. Did you have to switch back to office culture?
@busmark_w_nika Yes. Now I left airbnb and nearly stay at the office ten-to-nine :). While I prefer work at office instead of WFH.
We're remote/hybrid at Bolto.com!
Here's what we have that makes this work:
Quarterly meetings as a team in person
Clusters of employees in the same area who commute in office together
Really high standards (this is most important). We set high standards and hold each other accountable. In this environment, it doesn't matter if you are in person or remote, as long as your work is getting done!
minimalist phone: creating folders
@jakejohnson21 Where do you do your quarterly meetings? Is it any different place from where you have offices?
Triforce Todos
Remote culture is definitely tricky, but it thrives on intentionality! Regular async check ins, virtual coffee chats, and team-building games can go a long way.
minimalist phone: creating folders
@abod_rehman Do you work in remote international team as well? Does it work also for different time-zones?
We’ve seen that remote teams often struggle with workflow bottlenecks, especially when managing email-heavy tasks. One thing that’s worked for us: automating repetitive admin work so teams can focus on deep work.
Curious what’s the biggest workflow challenge your remote team faces?