Hello, SaaS | Remote to all

Often, in communication with colleagues in the IT shop, the question of how effectively to create teams working remotely is discussed. There is never any unanimous opinion in the discussions - someone does not accept building a business in the Remote format (remote work), and someone on the contrary “for” such a format. Today, I’ll tell you how we’ll organize the work of the Dental Cloud team and review two remote workbooks that uniquely prove the benefits of Remote — Cali Ressler and Jodi Thompson, Funky Office and Remote: Office Not Required. The authors of the latter were Jason Fried, the founder of 37signals, and David Hansson, author of the popular Ruby on Rails framework.

In Dental Cloud it was not possible to work remotely from the very beginning. The founder of the company from Sevastopol, CTO lives in Paris, marketing in Moscow, part of the development of St. Petersburg, technical support in Thailand. Practically for each member of the team, this is the second project (place of work), but this does not mean that colleagues do not give him enough time - the team has an agreement to spend on the project at least 15 to 20 hours a week. (marketing) and from 35 to 40 hours, developers spend, support divide 2 people with a difference of 5 hours in their belts. Everyone plans to work with a prospect of a week or two and informs about the success of colleagues with the same frequency. This is the format of key employees. All minor tasks are outsourced - legal support, partly design, digital, accounting.
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The most difficult task in our version of Remote synchronization is an understanding of the smoothness of actions, for example, the release of the next release and support for its promotion. The problem is solved through the use of accessible and exclusively "cloud" communication tools, task management, CRM, development. The team uses - Jira , Visual studio online - development, Bitrix24 - common tasks and CRM, Odoo - alternative CRM, Facebook - chat rooms with the designer, e-mail - opinions, suggestions and external communications, Onedrive - to discuss documents. The practice of work shows that any operational question closes within a few hours, and the discussion of important tasks takes place during the day. If we talk about meetings, they occur only with potential customers.

It is important that all key employees understand their front end role and are happy to tell the market about a startup through personal blogs, media, events. Those. the team has not closed in itself, as often happens with a conservative structure in development companies.

Zombies happen

By definition, employees of a conservative company are zombies — they have no motivation and they are disciplined. Zombies can only happen in offices due to constant urban stress and lack of proper motivation. In Dental Cloud, all key employees cannot become zombies - first, everyone has shares in the company and is well-motivated and understand that the results of the company's work are completely dependent on them. Secondly, in the startup there is no concept of organizational discipline, as such - the discipline in our case is replaced by responsibility to the goals of the company and the team. Those. In a startup, much is determined by the participants ’understanding of goals and prospects, motivation and responsibility, and this is the cure for the possible zombie routine and possible failures.

Size doesn't matter

We do not really want to grow in terms of bloating states. There are a lot of companies on the market that have achieved good results without 2000 people working on mail, as in Google. Here are a few examples - 37signals 39 people on staff, WhatsApp - 30 engineers and no marketer. If you give examples in Russia, then vendors leading in the automation segments, for example, docflow, 100 people, in 1C, only 2 people create industry configurations - one programs, and the second is engaged in promotion. Those. If you build a successful company, it does not mean at all that you will be a “commander” of thousands and thousands of employees. By the way, in the Russian office of Abbyy, the programmer works 40 hours a week according to a schedule convenient for him, which is already non-standard.

Zappos all?

A little away from the topic of fasting and remembering a very recent event - on April 30, Zappos completely switched to a system with holacracy - a management concept, in which vertical management and rigid corporate structure are replaced by self-governing teams. The event is significant and says that the leaders are trying to “jump off” from the traditional hierarchical structure of companies and are looking for something new and if you are building your young project, you should think hard whether you should start laying the foundation of a classical structure in a company or immediately step over this stage, taking into account the experience of others.

37signals Remote

37signals is a company that is invariably remembered when it comes to success and income. At the same time they do not have a single employee in the Valley. The book contains enough examples of “office hell” and life in the stone jungle, but the most valuable thing in it is how to organize the Remote correctly and painlessly.

Recommendations for remote work from 37signals.

Security: use encryption on hard drives, put passwords on all devices;
Four-hour lag: make sure that all your employees have 4 hours difference with someone from the team;
Shared screens: this is possible thanks to tools like WebEx, GoToMeeting, Join.me;
Transparency: every employee should have access to all work, discussions and decisions;
Virtual "smoking room": I have already talked about this above. Thanks to Campfire, remote employees can hang out with each other;
Start slowly: start by sending staff home several days a week. Spend about 3 months on the test. It is better to do this not with individuals, but with the whole team;
Get your staff good furniture - a table and chair;
Buy them a gym membership;
When working with foreign employees: open a local office or hire supervisors;
Pay everyone equally: do not pay less to those who live in a less prestigious area.

Results Only Work Environment - as a startup model

The second book that served as a good sedative for fear of distant work was the book of the founders of the Culture Rx company, “Funky Office. Remote Work Manifesto ”and their work organization system ROWE The abbreviation is defined as: Results Only Work Environment, that is,“ An exceptionally productive work environment ”(“ Results-oriented work environment ”, Results-Oriented Work Environment). The ROWE system proposes to make a feeling “Saturday” every day, while working with enthusiasm and making a career, fully interact with the family, get enough sleep, go to the cinema and travel.

Here are the key ideas from the book that help you realize "how to"

Commercial success is accompanied by creative growth, and new technologies and products appear.
The existing system is based on the installation “People work in the field in the office”, “Those who work longer, have more time”, “Normalized working day is a way to protect against overtime work”, etc.
Of the three meetings, at most one is useful and not all are really needed at meetings.
Flexible scheduling is a trap. What is needed is a real opportunity to decide when to work, and a focus on results.
People by inertia believe that work is hard labor, calculation and injustice.
In the existing system of working relationships, a balance between work and personal life is impossible. The only way out is to completely change the rules of the game.
In the information age, the standard 40-hour office work week has ceased to be a social conquest. It has become a convenient way of doing nothing.
Remote work makes the company more attractive. The leader can start with an experiment. Employees also have the right to initiate an experiment on remote work.
ROWE is based on two simple principles: 1. You are an adult. 2. You have undertaken to work as best as possible, but you are not obliged to give the company all your time.
Working on the system ROWE, you need to cope with their tasks, the rest of the time - yours. Employees are paid for work done, not for time. You work when it is convenient for you.
The cult of time is dangerous - it distorts the behavior. ROWE eliminates the fear of being punished for being late, lying, traffic stresses, presentationism and office slander. The reason for presentism is an outdated or erroneous approach to evaluating results.
Forget about time. Focusing on time, and not on the result causes people to have a premonition of condemnation and remarks, fear and the search for excuses. In an exceptionally productive working environment, time does not matter, it is no longer a measure of productivity, there are no latecomers, there is no rush, there is no “Sunday night horror”, life does not belong to work.
People tend to judge. The so-called "dregs" (SludgeSM), that is, slander, becomes the misfortune of most offices. The caustic remarks connected with time (tardiness, time off, etc.) express the powerlessness of people in front of the vicious system.
A high level of regulation allows you to lead an active life, independently determine your needs and decide what to do. With a low level of regulation, people live erratically and do not know how to find a way out. ROWE allows each person to increase their level of regulation.
If you ask employees to mark on the calendar those days when everyone prefers to be present at the office, work outside the office and rest, you will find that there will not be a single general holiday. In a 24/7 economy, this is a gift for the company.
Rejecting the "dregs" (slander in the company), you will notice that the surrounding will change. An unpleasant word, but it is necessary to name the things you need to get rid of.
Absolutely all employees have the right to work remotely, technical advances have made this possible. The head of this system provides an opportunity to lay down the duties of the warden and punitive. Adults do not need supervision.
ROWE makes people more responsible, because in return they get independence. Every employee becomes a creative and creative person. The quality of life is improving, and people work better not to lose the ability to manage their time.
The value of the teams is overrated. But the pleasant side effect will be that employees start to respect each other more and appreciate meetings in the office (for example, when someone comes to negotiate with a client).

I really hope that the post will help those who are in doubt in the midst of a crisis try the Remote format and in following the material I plan to continue the topic and talk about the practices of colleagues in the shop - Russian SaaS developers - on organizing the remote work of employees.

Lesha Kalachnikov Bootstrap24

“Hello, SaaS” series materials

Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/257641/

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Hello, SaaS | Remote to all

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