Remote work 2.0. Nadezhda Yurinova, Bookmate Marketing Director

Many dream of a good job from home, whether it is freelancing, a remote place of work or something else, sometimes even a hybrid one. However, not everyone is aware of all the difficulties that arise in this mode, as well as tend to idealize potential advantages.

Life, as is often the case, places real landmarks somewhere between, and in order not to conduct hypothetical reasoning, I began to look for a person with similar experience to learn about all the features of remote work from first-hand.

And such a person was found - this is Nadezhda Yurinova, marketing director at Bookmate . Hope, like many of us, had a long time working in Moscow, but at some point in her own life decided to move to Berlin without changing her job.
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We talked about working at a new place, remote from the old one, about 1,800 kilometers.

Spoiler : at the end of the publication of all who read, a small surprise awaits.

The first question is quite simple: why did you start working remotely?

It happened because I wanted to live in another city, and they became Berlin. I did not expect that my role can be fully performed outside the office. Because the marketing director is not only a strategist, but also a team lead, who selects the best guys, combines them with each other, starts the processes so that they work together systematically and from time to time gives them something and somewhere controls. Of course, it is easier to do when you are with them.

But at some point we started to see regional communications managers who simply have nothing to do in the Moscow office, because business is developing in different regions of the world - in other CIS countries, Europe, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. The business strategy itself began to dictate the distribution of the marketing team around the world.

The authorities pushed you to this?

In my case, moving to Europe was a personal project that coincided with Bookmate’s aspirations to Europe. I said, “Guys, I'm going to leave in a few months. Let's get ready for this somehow. ” But it turned out that I had to prepare myself for the fact that now I manage everything from afar. It was a pure experiment for everyone, but after a couple of months of the remote manual, we realized that everything was working out.

What implications does this have for subordinates and people with whom you cooperate? What has changed in the work? Maybe you use some other methodology?

We had to revise and rethink all the processes, control points, introduce new procedures and management systems. For example, right before my departure, we started working with Grid . A significant part of our work is content marketing in the regions - in fact, it is distributed in a bunch of media channels in different languages ​​that you can read about good on the current local agenda or through targeting by interests.

I knew that the Grid could be suitable for organizing these communications. And its creators were interested in trying this product not for a media project (that is, not for its intended purpose), but for marketing. The experiment has been going on for half a year already, and the Grid helps us to distribute and plan communications.

What else has changed? I almost immediately felt that I had left the “charm” zone of my dear colleagues. I began to see the company not only as my dear like-minded people. All processes, bottlenecks, gray areas from a distance have become particularly noticeable.

Face to face does not see ...

Yes. What I could quickly resolve earlier, having thrown a few words, suddenly became problems. Moreover, it became clear that these are systemic problems, not simultaneous, and they must be solved by an approach to the process, and not by some small gags and crutches. It is very interesting. It seems to me that this turned out to be useful for the whole company: a person who understands very well how everything is arranged inside, suddenly began to look at everything a bit from the outside.

It's cool that due to new streamlined processes, I began to spend less time on unnecessary approval and approval, it became possible to think more about the strategy as a whole, new markets, tools, and so on.

At some point, it became obvious that it was time to do a small refresh at a strategic level. We haven't been distracted from work for quite a while and have not talked about strategy. I wrote about this to top managers: “In your opinion, maybe we should all now meet in neutral territory, take a little distraction from the turnover?”. And we did the first in the history of the BookMate exit strategic session for a few days in order to “shake up” all our experience and think about the future. It's simple: getting out of a routine always gives a more objective picture.

We usually meet with top managers not in Moscow, but on some European business trips. But I fly to Moscow once every two or three months for about a week to talk with everyone, to embrace everyone, to show that I am not working in Slack - I, like any person, have some behavioral patterns, so you could write a bot that would imitate my behavior when I'm too lazy to work (laughs).

This is what has changed in a positive way.

The disadvantages are, for example, that more energy is spent on explaining things in chat rooms, mail, and taskers. It has become much harder to hold meetings in which more than 3 people (but I'm not a fan of meetings).

Slack do you use?

Very active. And also Trello, JIRA and Confluence.

We have established a cycle of “synks”, when I call up with my colleagues separately, when we discuss everything together. Everyone understands what a meeting is for what, and it seems that there are not too many of them yet.

Was it difficult to hire people for remote work in the regions, to delegate to them quite responsible work? I don’t know there are these people at headquarters (in Moscow), but how does the process of hiring such people look like?

This is a very complicated story. We spent a year and a half on her awareness, made some mistakes, hired and said goodbye. But in the end they understood who we really needed and how to look for them. We now have a streamlined process, well-written vacancies, clearly defined requirements for the first filter. We have questionnaires for which we interview them. Of course, before you send an offer to a person, a personal meeting takes place. Either I, or someone else from the tops, who travels a lot, is met personally.

But all these people are so different, you can’t register a tough system here. We thought that they must be brought to work in the Moscow office for at least a week. But it turned out that it was useful to someone, and someone just sat in a corner at the computer and continued to chat with colleagues in the same way as if he was far away. And at the same time to work super quality. We have one person in the company who is responsible for ensuring that all these local managers are synchronized and inspired: for ideas to fly between them, for general experience to be discussed. For them, there is a channel in Slack in English - especially for regional managers. When we have the so-called “All-Bookmate Meetings” every six months, we certainly try to invite everyone. We have a copywriter in England, with whom we have never seen before my move - and here in Berlin it turned out to be much easier for us to meet than in Moscow, he just came to me a couple of days to work together offline

The main requirement for regional employees is independence, responsibility? Requirement # 1 is what?

This is the local expertise we need. As regards independence and responsibility, yes, too, but we have the necessary control points to focus this responsibility. Reports, phoned, accurate hours, when everyone is online in different time zones ... These people are very much tied, but not quantitatively, but qualitatively - creative, copywriting, choosing the right community partners.

And marketing managers are responsible for marketing numbers in Moscow. But these channels are filled with content created by local staff. Therefore, we need them to be curious, socially active and share our view of reading and culture in general.

And how are people hired from afar to the Moscow office?

We agree on who, in what order, with whom he speaks, upgrade test questions each time, collect feedback on applicants, and then make a decision. Here, by the way, my move also helped to make the process more clear and consistent. And for immersing new employees, we wrote them a very detailed plan for immersion in work and in the company’s culture, by the first weeks, by months - so that the new employees themselves would be responsible for getting acquainted with all the units of work in the company.

You said that your remote experience affected the alignment of the company's processes. What do you think about the future of Bookmate itself? It is clear that the Moscow office will remain - it must fulfill its representative function. But will Bookmate become more and more remote employees?

Where the team will grow depends on the regions in which we focus. Now our focus is Northern Europe.

Do guys from Moscow, looking at you, want to work remotely?

From someone specific, I have not heard this. But on the other hand, I don’t know if I would be happy about that ... When I started working remotely, I had to control that everyone was at the office on time. This is a completely schizophrenic problem. They write to you from Moscow: “Where are they all? Where are your guys? ”.

Well, how can I deal with it from afar? Somehow coped. We talked, agreed with everyone. Before leaving, I thought that HR issues at a distance could not be solved at all: this applies to recruiting, and team roles, and all stories related to teamwork. But in fact, I continue to play this role in the team - such a family member who lives a little next door. I am waiting here soon for a couple of colleagues on vacation in Berlin, they will stop me from working.

Many people say that when you go to distant work, you start working more on timekeeping. The way to work disappears and so on. What happened to your life schedule?

Honestly, he has not changed much. I have always tried very hard to balance work and my personal life. I am a hyper-responsible and enthusiastic person, I can immerse myself in work, and then burn out, hate everything, and so on.

But the work of the head of the eight hours, of course, is not limited. Good or bad, but my brain practically does not disconnect from work. Sometimes I see some cool stuff and immediately begin to think about how to do it here, I start writing to everyone ... However, at such moments I try to “beat my hands” and not disturb the guys during after-hours.

The first two or three weeks I had a tour of the Berlin co-working. I do not want to work at home every day. Because at eight o'clock in the evening you discover that the sun has already gone down, and you grabbed your computer in the morning and did not even have time to brush your teeth for the whole day. Therefore, I am going and going to the coworking Factory nearby. I was looking for this place.


Photo of coworking.

In the first month, I sat in different coworkings, went over four or five, from very local to giants like WeWork. It was very interesting how different their approaches and goals are, how sensitive they are to the community, which they can develop, and how easy they make money in square meters. In the Factory there are SoundCloud, Pinterest offices in Berlin. there are a lot of startups from all over Europe, employees of large companies are coming.

They can always be consulted on any issue. If I think over something and do not know how to do it, discuss it with them over a cup of coffee. There is a useful exchange of knowledge, experience and contacts between people from different spheres. But first of all, to be honest, I am interested in fast Internet, a barrel of coffee and a soundproof booth for calls.

How many employees do you have now in the team?

Eleven people in Moscow and five more in London, Barcelona, ​​Singapore, Baku, Jakarta. We will grow a little at the expense of local managers in new markets.

Which country will you go soon?

To the Netherlands. In the spring we had a successful pilot there, and almost without books. For half a year, the local catalog has been strongly pumped, and now we will try to perform there - if not with a show that will put the whole country on its knees, then at least we can apply our worldwide experience to launch organic growth.

After our dialogue, Nadezhda expressed a desire to bestow on all Habrahabr users a free one-month subscription to Bookmate for the habrabookmate promo code, which can be activated on a special page: https://bookmate.com/code .