It’s no wonder startup owners are increasingly turning to remote teams to build their businesses. Time after time, studies show that remote working leads to greater employee satisfaction, higher work output and significant improvements in productivity. This is often combined with improvements in collaboration and lower attrition rates, too.
Productivity benefits aside, remote working offers a crucial advantage for startups in the form of reduced overhead expenses, as it removes the need for full-time office space and its associated running costs.
In just one example, a study by Global Workplace Analytics (2016) found that a typical business can save as much as $11,000 per person per year by implementing a remote work agreement in which employees work from home at least half of the time.
What’s more, when a company is not bound by location, it has the opportunity to recruit talented remote workers based on their skill set, not geographical location. This enables the business to hire the best person for the job rather than one who lives within a 30-mile radius.
That said, not every individual has the aptitude for remote working. Alliance Virtual Offices explains how remote working is enormously beneficial for startups, and suggests ways to overcome some of the management challenges associated with flexible working arrangements.
Here we run down the top 6 ways startups can successfully manage a remote team.
1. Spend time onboarding.
Like any new hire, you need to invest time in the onboarding process. This is even more important when bringing on remote employees, as you won’t have the benefit of regular face-to-face contact. Set out specific policies related to your remote work arrangements and be clear about your expectations. Devote as much time as needed to bring remote employees up to speed with your company policies and culture, and schedule regular meetings (over the phone or video) to help the onboarding process.
2. Trust your team.
For remote working to really work, it needs total buy-in from both parties. Trust is essential, and the best way to ensure your team stays productive is to keep up regular communication. Don’t rely too much on email — it can quickly become a black hole of unread messages. Use a combination of tools that work for the tasks at hand, such as instant chat, phone, and scheduled video calls.
3. Document regular processes.
Documentation becomes a whole lot more necessary when there’s distance between you and your team. It provides at-a-glance support on how to do certain tasks or use different systems; remember, remote workers can’t simply turn up at your desk to ask a question. Not sure where to start? Check out this resource from Hubstaff for help drawing up process maps, flow charts and blueprints to help remote teams work more efficiently.
4. Pick your digital tools wisely.
When you’re working with a remote team, the right tools are absolutely vital. For regular communication, messaging apps such as Slack or Skype are a great way to ask a quick question or check in. Zoom is great for video calls, while GoToMeeting offers a solid conferencing service for larger teams. For project management, Asana lets you check up on certain tasks and helps keep things humming along smoothly. It also sends timely reminders about upcoming deadlines and new tasks, which means less person-to-person chasing.
5. Share and store documents online.
Cloud storage and shared folders enable work to be stored securely in one place. For online collaboration, Google Docs is the obvious choice; it lets multiple people work on the same document with user-friendly tracked changes and notifications. It’s essential for remote working and reduces the time-consuming burden of sending documents back-and-forth over email.
6. Schedule regular calls and face-to-face meetings.
Unsurprisingly, a large part of setting up a successful remote working culture involves staying in regular contact with your team, using the right tools and policies. It’s important to stay in touch and, if possible, it’s also a great idea to meet up in person from time to time. It minimizes the threat of isolation for home-based workers and also helps you build a positive company culture.
Why is remote working important for startups?
As discussed earlier in this article, the immediate advantage of hiring a remote team is low cost, which is particularly important for cash-strapped startups.
That’s not to say you won’t need a physical office at some point in your business development; sooner or later your business may benefit from a head office and possibly satellite offices too, depending on your requirements and scale. As a startup however, it pays to operate remotely and utilize low-cost flexible workspace such as coworking, virtual offices and on-demand meeting rooms as much as possible.
In addition to cost, there are a number of other reasons to work with remote employees or contractors. In a 2018 survey from FlexJobs, 73% of respondents ranked work-life balance as more important than salary (70%) when evaluating a job prospect, and a whopping 76% said they would be more loyal to their employers if they had flexible work options.
It’s not just freelancers and contractual staff who work remotely. Permanent staff are also seeking opportunities for flexible work, and they are prepared to put in the hours and the commitment to your brand in return for a higher degree of working flexibility, and your trust.
If you’re still not convinced, consider this two-year research study between Stanford University and Ctrip, a Chinese travel company with a 16,000 strong workforce. The CEO, James Liang, took part in the experiment to find out if giving staff the option to work from home would boost productivity.
The results at the end of the two-year experiment were astounding. The productivity boost among those who telecommuted was equivalent to a full day’s work, as it turned out that work-from-home employees worked a true full-shift (or more) as opposed to arriving late to the office or leaving early. There was also a 50% decrease in employee attrition along with fewer sick days, and on top of that the company saved almost $2,000 per employee on rent by reducing their office space.
Remote working: Why it’s really worth it
Social media management brand, Buffer, has long operated as a distributed company with a fully remote team.
“It’s a decision I made at the end of 2012, when Buffer was in its infancy,” writes founder and CEO, Joel Gascoigne. “When I say that we’re a remote, distributed team, I mean that we’re literally spread across the whole world. Buffer is a team of 79 right now, and we have teammates on almost every continent and across timezones worldwide.”
If anyone has first-hand experience of running a dispersed team — and making it work — it’s Gascoigne. This style of working runs in his company’s DNA. It’s a choice, and it works for Buffer — but for it to remain successful, new hires must have the same mindset. When recruiting they look for people who are “self-motivated and productive working at home, coffee shops, or a co-working space”, and often they look for people with backgrounds as freelancers or startup entrepreneurs, as that kind of working mentality comes with the territory.
Remote working isn’t just a fad. Gascoigne recognizes that it “feels like the future” and having the ability to work from anywhere “provides a great story, rather than all of us being in the same office each day.”
But if that was the only perk, Buffer wouldn’t be the success story it is today.
Like most dispersed companies and remote teams, much of their employees’ drive and enthusiasm comes from a feeling of empowerment. They are trusted to do their work at the time and place that works best for them, and in return they have the benefit of greater freedom and work/life balance.
“Have a family event coming up and need to travel on Friday? No problem. Want to take off to Bali or Gran Canaria for a few weeks and work from there? Awesome — please share photos. These things have all happened and are regular occurrences within our distributed team,” says Gascoigne.
“It’s the little things too, like being able to avoid a commute and spend more time with family. We don’t have working hours, and we don’t measure hours at all. We’re all excited about our vision, and we focus on results, balance, and sustained productivity.”
Of course working processes like these can’t be implemented overnight. In the same way that creating a positive working culture and team cohesion takes time and effort, so too does establishing a successful remote working strategy. But as Buffer proves, it’s certainly worth it in the long term.
These processes offer a starting point for you to establish a happy and productive remote team, which will ultimately provide the building blocks you need to grow your startup. Do you have experiences of growing a startup business with a remote team? Let us know what works for you — we’d love to hear about it!
