Work without an office: how to build and maintain cohesion in a distributed team
After the article “How we organized work without an office in Alconost,” I am often asked how to make remote employees work as one coherent mechanism. Let me remind you that the Alconost team has about 20 “non-productive” employees (project managers, marketing specialists, programmers) and more than 300 executive employees (translators, editors, announcers, video designers). All work remotely, on a free schedule, without monitoring the hours worked.
Of course, we still have to grow and grow, but in general, I see that such a model of the company's work is quite viable: complex projects are being carried out successfully, internal tasks are being solved quickly, the company is developing, customers and employees are satisfied.
Today I, SOO Alconost Cyril Klyushkin, will talk about our principles for building a cohesive and efficiently working distributed team.
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Without quality self-motivated and self-organized people, all efforts to build a distributed team lose their meaning.
Each employee must have the skill of understanding “what, how and why I am doing, and how it affects the company and me personally.” For example, a quality employee understands: if you take advantage of the lack of control and work less than 40 hours a week, then, firstly, it will sooner or later become noticeable to colleagues and the manager; secondly, the company develops from it more slowly than it could (more time to complete projects, fewer satisfied customers, lower efficiency). Accordingly, in a year or two, the place of work of the employee will not be as cool as it could be.
The team must have a certain number of people-motors - these are sources of energy and impulses of action that “turn on” the rest of the employees. I believe that even though this is an innate quality, it can and should be developed, and an employee’s leader plays a significant role in this.
And also quality people usually solve questions on their own. And if they ask questions, the answers to them do not take much time from colleagues and managers.
As for the self-motivated employees, we have it is perfectly checked by work on a free schedule without control and accounting for hours worked. A free schedule helps a quality employee to fully feel the responsibility and work not for the sake of accountability, but for the sake of result. Poor people at this stage are either corrected or eliminated.
For some time now, we have given the right to hire executive staff to managers, but we have been trying to select, test and interview our managers. This is due to the fact that when testing the contractor, we check the professional qualities, and when testing the manager - personal.
It sounds pathetic, but to understand and constantly remember the mission of the company is very important. This helps employees raise their gaze on current affairs, see the global goal and feel responsible for achieving it.
The company's mission should always be in the mind of the employee: “I am writing a video script now, not because I pay money for it. And not even because I like it. But because in this way I will help the client to sell his product better, thus I will do a good job and this will make the world a better place. ”
If the vision of the mission for all employees is the same and everyone looks at their work from one angle, this removes many questions from the category of "how to act, what to answer." This means that the client will always get the same communication experience, no matter which employee he turns to.
To do something in the company, you need to deserve it. Employees must win responsibilities, take initiative and take them away from management or colleagues - this is how personal responsibility and a special attitude to business appear. Of course, such an initiative should be supported by the leadership.
No wonder they say, prevention is the best way to treat. The team is like a living organism: it is important to monitor its condition in order not to miss the emerging problems. The increased response time to customer letters, increased project completion times (or project stages), rejection, inappropriate behavior, customer or colleague complaints - calls that “something is wrong”.
In each case, it is worth spending time and figuring out what caused the problem. If the root of evil in tools or processes is to debug processes, change tools. If a hitch in people - to think what to do with people.
And it is also necessary to ensure that employees do not break away from the team, do not remain alone with their tasks and problems. It is necessary to be present side by side: solve common problems, share company news, ask opinions and advice, and also offer help in solving problems. The worst thing you can do in a distributed team is to leave the remote employee to stew in his problem alone. At a minimum, the process, the motivation, and the result will suffer. At most - the abandoned employee decides to leave the team.
Remember the feeling of a regular office when there are a lot of people around and everyone communicates with everyone? This is how the remote employees should have the same feeling: colleagues and management are always there, constantly reminding about themselves, no one is alone - in general, the feeling of elbow online.
The importance of personal meetings is difficult to overestimate. No matter how far the employees are, it is worthwhile to at least sometimes collect them all in one physical place.
A part of our employees is “at hand”, in Minsk. We regularly meet with them, communicate, drink :)
A good reason for personal meetings with remote employees is the events held in the region of the employee. For example, we go to Apps World in London and invite our British translators to spend a couple of days with us at our booth.
In the course of such meetings, employees communicate on topics of life, get to know each other better, build relationships, which will then help in their work.
Damn nice to do it sitting with a bottle of whiskey in the bar until the morning, but unfortunately, it is often impossible to gather all the staff in one place. Therefore, it is worth adding personal informal communication to the daily workflow: it is always appropriate to ask how things are going, how the weather is, what's new, what good has happened in the life of an employee, share your news. It brings together.
Our managers know, for example, how yesterday’s concert went to our Portuguese translator (also a drummer in a local metal band), or how our American broadcaster was in jury, or how our video designer from Kiev began to get involved in glider flights, or as our American copywriter, I bought myself a red Alpha Romeo 78 convertible. We have employees whom I have never seen live, but I know so much about them, as if we have been friends for several years now.
Of course, not all of our employees know each other. This is normal, if not all employees are familiar - the main thing is that those who will regularly contact for work know each other.
Employees may be located in different countries of the world and on different continents. Therefore, the universal rules of communication here will not work.
For example, the Japanese are not in a hurry to share personal achievements, especially by phone-skype-mail. And an American does not ask how things are - it means to show impolite. Please do not write, if you ask an English-speaking employee to do something - to be rude is akin to “hey, march to do it immediately.” Instead of “don’t do this anymore”, it’s better to say “it doesn’t be this again” (or, as our editor tells me, “it’s By the way, we recently translated a useful article “ 12 rules of good form in business communication in English ”. It’s a pity I didn’t read it before, when we lost an excellent American translator only because my letter didn’t have a positive attitude, but only “do this and that”, which looked rude and arrogant.
A cohesive team becomes only when it does something together. For example, Ice Bucket Challenge . Just kidding In fact, the work of each other is in sight, the separation of tasks and joint discussions really bring together.
For this we have, for example, regular group chat in Skype: marketing, videotapes, development of mobile projects ... Everyone is always aware of what is happening “in the meadow”, which means they are looking in the same direction, speak a common language, understand each other , strive for a single goal.
In general, Skype is good for quick discussions, “short tasks”. For “long” we have Trello . It stands on the mobile phones of all employees, all are subscribed to their boards. As soon as someone moved a task, wrote a comment or changed the status of a card-task, everyone receives notifications by mail and push messages to the phone. No matter where you are - in the car, at a party, - you see that the work is underway, you can react, take part. From myself I’ll say that it’s a damn cool feeling when you sleep in the middle of the night, you hear a series of “ding-ding” through your sleep and you realize that people are working somewhere, tasks are being done, the company is developing.
When everyone is busy with everything and everyone has a look at each other, a person with a healthy conscience has almost no chance to shirk. We do not build walls where we can build bridges: we have a common project accounting system and everyone sees each other’s work. We have uniform public mailboxes for departments, for example, info@alconost.com for marketing and general issues, alpha@alconost.com for work with orders for translation / localization. These boxes check at once a dozen people who see the general correspondence, take their cue from colleagues, correct each other. A sort of collective drive, growing with each new letter.
And not so long ago, an online chat appeared on our site, where we communicate with site visitors in real time. This is another place where our employees from different departments intersect: for example, localization guys answer video questions to clients in this chat. This helps to delve deeper into the work of other departments, to feel even more useful, to hear the needs of customers, rather than just guessing about them. And most importantly, serving the client together is the greatest degree of cohesion that can be.
about the author
Alconost is engaged in the localization of applications, games and websites in 60 languages. Language translators, linguistic testing, cloud platform with API, continuous localization, 24/7 project managers, any formats of string resources.
We also make advertising and training videos - for websites selling, image, advertising, training, teasers, expliners, trailers for Google Play and the App Store.
Read more: https://alconost.com
Of course, we still have to grow and grow, but in general, I see that such a model of the company's work is quite viable: complex projects are being carried out successfully, internal tasks are being solved quickly, the company is developing, customers and employees are satisfied.
Today I, SOO Alconost Cyril Klyushkin, will talk about our principles for building a cohesive and efficiently working distributed team.
')
1. Quality people
Without quality self-motivated and self-organized people, all efforts to build a distributed team lose their meaning.
Each employee must have the skill of understanding “what, how and why I am doing, and how it affects the company and me personally.” For example, a quality employee understands: if you take advantage of the lack of control and work less than 40 hours a week, then, firstly, it will sooner or later become noticeable to colleagues and the manager; secondly, the company develops from it more slowly than it could (more time to complete projects, fewer satisfied customers, lower efficiency). Accordingly, in a year or two, the place of work of the employee will not be as cool as it could be.
The team must have a certain number of people-motors - these are sources of energy and impulses of action that “turn on” the rest of the employees. I believe that even though this is an innate quality, it can and should be developed, and an employee’s leader plays a significant role in this.
And also quality people usually solve questions on their own. And if they ask questions, the answers to them do not take much time from colleagues and managers.
As for the self-motivated employees, we have it is perfectly checked by work on a free schedule without control and accounting for hours worked. A free schedule helps a quality employee to fully feel the responsibility and work not for the sake of accountability, but for the sake of result. Poor people at this stage are either corrected or eliminated.
For some time now, we have given the right to hire executive staff to managers, but we have been trying to select, test and interview our managers. This is due to the fact that when testing the contractor, we check the professional qualities, and when testing the manager - personal.
2. General mission and goals
It sounds pathetic, but to understand and constantly remember the mission of the company is very important. This helps employees raise their gaze on current affairs, see the global goal and feel responsible for achieving it.
The company's mission should always be in the mind of the employee: “I am writing a video script now, not because I pay money for it. And not even because I like it. But because in this way I will help the client to sell his product better, thus I will do a good job and this will make the world a better place. ”
If the vision of the mission for all employees is the same and everyone looks at their work from one angle, this removes many questions from the category of "how to act, what to answer." This means that the client will always get the same communication experience, no matter which employee he turns to.
3. Responsibilities are selected, not assigned.
To do something in the company, you need to deserve it. Employees must win responsibilities, take initiative and take them away from management or colleagues - this is how personal responsibility and a special attitude to business appear. Of course, such an initiative should be supported by the leadership.
4. Monitoring and presence “near”
No wonder they say, prevention is the best way to treat. The team is like a living organism: it is important to monitor its condition in order not to miss the emerging problems. The increased response time to customer letters, increased project completion times (or project stages), rejection, inappropriate behavior, customer or colleague complaints - calls that “something is wrong”.
In each case, it is worth spending time and figuring out what caused the problem. If the root of evil in tools or processes is to debug processes, change tools. If a hitch in people - to think what to do with people.
And it is also necessary to ensure that employees do not break away from the team, do not remain alone with their tasks and problems. It is necessary to be present side by side: solve common problems, share company news, ask opinions and advice, and also offer help in solving problems. The worst thing you can do in a distributed team is to leave the remote employee to stew in his problem alone. At a minimum, the process, the motivation, and the result will suffer. At most - the abandoned employee decides to leave the team.
Remember the feeling of a regular office when there are a lot of people around and everyone communicates with everyone? This is how the remote employees should have the same feeling: colleagues and management are always there, constantly reminding about themselves, no one is alone - in general, the feeling of elbow online.
5. Razvirtualization
The importance of personal meetings is difficult to overestimate. No matter how far the employees are, it is worthwhile to at least sometimes collect them all in one physical place.
A part of our employees is “at hand”, in Minsk. We regularly meet with them, communicate, drink :)
A good reason for personal meetings with remote employees is the events held in the region of the employee. For example, we go to Apps World in London and invite our British translators to spend a couple of days with us at our booth.
In the course of such meetings, employees communicate on topics of life, get to know each other better, build relationships, which will then help in their work.
Damn nice to do it sitting with a bottle of whiskey in the bar until the morning, but unfortunately, it is often impossible to gather all the staff in one place. Therefore, it is worth adding personal informal communication to the daily workflow: it is always appropriate to ask how things are going, how the weather is, what's new, what good has happened in the life of an employee, share your news. It brings together.
Our managers know, for example, how yesterday’s concert went to our Portuguese translator (also a drummer in a local metal band), or how our American broadcaster was in jury, or how our video designer from Kiev began to get involved in glider flights, or as our American copywriter, I bought myself a red Alpha Romeo 78 convertible. We have employees whom I have never seen live, but I know so much about them, as if we have been friends for several years now.
Of course, not all of our employees know each other. This is normal, if not all employees are familiar - the main thing is that those who will regularly contact for work know each other.
6. Cultural differences
Employees may be located in different countries of the world and on different continents. Therefore, the universal rules of communication here will not work.
For example, the Japanese are not in a hurry to share personal achievements, especially by phone-skype-mail. And an American does not ask how things are - it means to show impolite. Please do not write, if you ask an English-speaking employee to do something - to be rude is akin to “hey, march to do it immediately.” Instead of “don’t do this anymore”, it’s better to say “it doesn’t be this again” (or, as our editor tells me, “it’s By the way, we recently translated a useful article “ 12 rules of good form in business communication in English ”. It’s a pity I didn’t read it before, when we lost an excellent American translator only because my letter didn’t have a positive attitude, but only “do this and that”, which looked rude and arrogant.
7. Cohesion = do something together
A cohesive team becomes only when it does something together. For example, Ice Bucket Challenge . Just kidding In fact, the work of each other is in sight, the separation of tasks and joint discussions really bring together.
For this we have, for example, regular group chat in Skype: marketing, videotapes, development of mobile projects ... Everyone is always aware of what is happening “in the meadow”, which means they are looking in the same direction, speak a common language, understand each other , strive for a single goal.
In general, Skype is good for quick discussions, “short tasks”. For “long” we have Trello . It stands on the mobile phones of all employees, all are subscribed to their boards. As soon as someone moved a task, wrote a comment or changed the status of a card-task, everyone receives notifications by mail and push messages to the phone. No matter where you are - in the car, at a party, - you see that the work is underway, you can react, take part. From myself I’ll say that it’s a damn cool feeling when you sleep in the middle of the night, you hear a series of “ding-ding” through your sleep and you realize that people are working somewhere, tasks are being done, the company is developing.
When everyone is busy with everything and everyone has a look at each other, a person with a healthy conscience has almost no chance to shirk. We do not build walls where we can build bridges: we have a common project accounting system and everyone sees each other’s work. We have uniform public mailboxes for departments, for example, info@alconost.com for marketing and general issues, alpha@alconost.com for work with orders for translation / localization. These boxes check at once a dozen people who see the general correspondence, take their cue from colleagues, correct each other. A sort of collective drive, growing with each new letter.
And not so long ago, an online chat appeared on our site, where we communicate with site visitors in real time. This is another place where our employees from different departments intersect: for example, localization guys answer video questions to clients in this chat. This helps to delve deeper into the work of other departments, to feel even more useful, to hear the needs of customers, rather than just guessing about them. And most importantly, serving the client together is the greatest degree of cohesion that can be.
about the author
Alconost is engaged in the localization of applications, games and websites in 60 languages. Language translators, linguistic testing, cloud platform with API, continuous localization, 24/7 project managers, any formats of string resources.
We also make advertising and training videos - for websites selling, image, advertising, training, teasers, expliners, trailers for Google Play and the App Store.
Read more: https://alconost.com
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/239809/
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