10 Tips & Tools – Optimizing your Organization to work remotely

Disclaimer: Parts of the content of this article have been curated from different sources such as – discussions with colleagues at Netlight Consulting and MGA Blog.

1. Choose to see the situation as an opportunity to help your teams explore new ways of working and as a learning opportunity. For example, your teams can prototype and test remote/distributed ways of working. Be mindful though, that working remotely will drive productivity for some coworkers, while others will struggle. Be available to help your teams find solutions whenever they struggle.
2. Try out different tools that help you hold workshops, seminars, and meetings remotely. Some recommendations are: Mural as a whiteboard (https://mural.co/ ), (Collaborative/Interactive/Open tool) Menti.com, Google Docs (https://docs.google.com/), Dropbox Paper (https://paper.dropbox.com/), etc.
3. Video conferencing/calls have never been easier than now with tools like Slack Video Calls, BlueJeans, Zoom, Amazon Chime, Google Hangouts, Skype, Facebook Live, Youtube Live, UberConference, etc. However, it is not recommended to be on a screen 8+ hours a day in video calls. So, find diverse ways to work and communicate through longer-form communication, collaborative tools, and other mechanisms.
4. Employer or Lead: Ensure dedicated tech resources are provided to support the requirements of your teams for working remotely.
5. Teams: Decide on a documentation structure and tool e.g. Confluence, Google Docs, Dropbox Paper or other tools for this. Find a place for your meeting notes and action points (e.g. OneNote, Confluence). Decide on what to document and how to work together with the team.
6. It is important to recognize that working-remotely may be more challenging for functions/teams like Marketing, HR, Design, Finance, etc. However, this is not impossible. Help the teams embrace the cultures of agility, autonomy and working with these valuable tools.
7. For specific meeting formats such as retrospectives, use https://retrotool.io/ in combination with a video conferencing tool. There is always a tool that meets your expectations.
8. Honouring the diversity of voices is needed. Just like the dynamics of an introvert and extrovert play out in-person, the same is true of online – perhaps even more challenging as video/audio and size of calls can sometimes create barriers for participation.
9. You might even dive deeper into books and papers from the company that says that they “invented working remotely”: https://basecamp.com/books/remote
10. A relevant book to read is A Guide to Managing Remote Teams by Claire Lew. She’s giving it away for free!

There are several other considerations for organizations to optimize working remotely. Please share your own tips in the comment section and let’s help our friends and colleagues work effectively despite the disruption of the #coronavirus crisis.

For more thoughtful articles like this, check out my website – kehindefawumi.com/