As many transition to temporary or full time remote work, employees and managers alike are finding themselves trying to navigate the nuances of a virtual working relationship. And, as with any learning, there can be some challenges associated.
When I started my role as Remote Inclusion and Program Manager, I met individually with many remote employees to discuss their experience. One of the most salient pieces of feedback, to my surprise, was the anxiety experienced over simple communication with one’s manager and larger team.
In thinking about how to alleviate this pain, and solve for the scaling population, we created a list of common questions and concerns that are present in a remote relationship. From these questions, we created a conversation template for managers and remote employees to review together when an in-office employee elects to go remote or when a new remote employee is hired.
The document guides the employee and their manager through a collaborative conversation that allows them to outline expectations for various facets of the remote relationship. Here’s what it looks like:
Communication:
When you lose the ability to turn to the team member next to you, communication can easily start to fall through the cracks. Communication is central to success and it’s important to be intentional and set expectations at the start. A few questions to ask on this topic are:
Work Hours:
In the office, we’ll often step away from our desks to go for a run, grab a coffee, or run an errand. It’s no surprise that remote employees want and need to do the same, yet, it can often feel like there is additional pressure to be “ready at your desk” as a remote employee. For this reason, we encourage employees and their managers to talk through these points to ensure everyone is on the same page.
Work Productivity and Performance:
As a remote employee, it can be tempting to spend 8+ hours sitting in front of your laptop while focused on work. Use these guidelines to make sure you’re balancing productivity in a healthy way.
Camaraderie and Team Connection:
Remote inclusion is only effective when it’s everyone’s job. Bring these questions up with your team to ensure that everyone is actively invested in making the team environment remote inclusive.
Corporate Connection and Career Growth
In order to ensure remote employees don’t become siloed within their teams and departments, we encourage asking the below questions to strategize how our remote employees can collaborate cross-functionally.
We know that the answers to each of these questions will look different for every manager and every employee depending on work styles, communication styles, role, metrics, and even the makeup of the team. With this in mind, we don’t prescribe or try to steer the respondents towards any particular answers. Truthfully, it’s less about the answers, and more about the conversation - what matters most is that they’ve considered the possible situations and agreed upon the expectation up front before it occurs - and before it becomes a stressor.
Meet some of HubSpot's remote community and learn about remote work at HubSpot in this video.