Remote Culture & Async Communication

When building and fostering a company culture in a remote-first environment, it’s important to establish strong practices early. A few items include understanding and communicating priorities and deadlines, what it means to work effectively as a remote team, seamless async communication, and taking small steps to enjoy the people you work with (both during work hours and when meeting IRL). Frameworks from traditional 9-5 workplaces don’t quite cut it so we’re here to help lay out effective strategies that will help invest back into your team and, by doing so, back into your product.

Establish a core working time frame where all team members and stakeholders can collaborate live. Having dedicated hours of overlap provides an aligned time when everyone is online to communicate, ask questions, and exchange feedback. This also helps to establish understood focused work blocks. Pro tip: when setting your collaborating time frames, also establish the best method of communication.

Make your schedule visible. Visibility is a powerful tool for creating expectations around availability. By providing visibility into when you are logged in and available to work and when you’re not, team members and other collaborators (such as Clients or Independents) have a clear understanding of when you’re reachable. Pro tip(s): remember to set a status on your messenger app (whether that’s Slack, Teams, etc.)and ping others with whom you work closely if you plan to be offline for large chunks of time. We’ve encouraged our internal team at Contra to utilize our#team-calendar Slack channel as a quick way to give others a heads up if we plan to be AFK and if that could cause blockers for teammates or cross-functionally.

Utilize tools and software that promotes collaboration. Cloud-based tools, such as Notion or Google Workspace, can elevate how a team works. Live edits, commenting, and the ability to have a shared workspace among cross-functional departments really foster a sense of community and belonging even though two people may be working from opposite sides of the world.

Trust your team & get to know them better. One of the starkest differences between traditional in-office workplaces and remote companies is the clear display of trust and faith in team members. By establishing a healthy working environment that is remote-first, you’re already instilling a foundation of trust that can be built upon (i.e., it’s understood that nobody will be under a microscope). So, take actions that help you get to know them better. Read up on their contra profile, set up regular one-on-one meetings, and use icebreakers when kicking off calls. Ultimately, a remote-first environment should also be trust-first.

Log out when you need to log out. At the core of flexible working is the option to be exactly that: flexible. Balance in all areas of life reduces burnout and allows for focused and creative thinking. If you need to take time to log off, tell your team and actually take the time to do it. Those who work the closest with you will thank you for giving them the space to unplug.

Embrace the freedom & flexibility that remote work can bring. Have an appointment that falls during business hours? Did you get a call from an old friend who is only in town for today and wants to meet for lunch? Decided you want to work from a cabin in the mountains this weekend? No problem. Our view is that these moments, no matter how monumental or minuscule, should be cherished without workplace trickle-down guilt. We’ve encouraged all team members to embrace these moments while simultaneously setting expectations for teammates for any downtime. It’s a win-win.

Establish practices for effective meetings. No stakeholders want to have their time wasted with an ill-prepared meeting that drags on. A few minutes of prep beforehand can really impact a meeting, especially a virtual one. Circulating an agenda with talking points in advance alongside a reminder will allow all attendees to review materials ahead of time. Also, having a standardized checklist of questions that need to be answered via discussion as opposed to async is always a good idea—this can also be a template that is duplicated ahead of each meeting.

Understand the difference between speaking and writing. It seems silly, but we encourage you to really think about this difference. Messages and emails aren’t accompanied by body language and other in-person context clues that help us to understand each other better. So, be sure to write messages with this point in mind. Need help on a writing project? Great. Be specific about which project and which aspect needs direct attention when you speak to a collaborator. In the end, remember: you can never overshare when your intention is to collaborate.

Feedback is always welcome. The best path to improvement is through feedback, and most of the feedback you’ll get in a remote environment especially is going to be async (either through Slack, Teams, comments on Notion docs, etc.). Those comments come with a lot of thought, so understanding that they can elevate your own performance and ability is a gift.

Provide resources for communication best practices.For our internal team here at Contra, one of the big asks from onboarding new team members was a way to better understand and utilize Slack, which is our main form of instant communication. So we built out a resource guide that helps explain all things Slack; for example, the differences between public and private channels, emojis to represent concise and strategic reactions when sending out communications, and a reference guide for all the channels utilized internally. This type of resource, as well as any other reference guide (for which, we have many!), always helps answer those day-to-day questions that team members or collaborators may ask.

Communication Post Meetings + Takeaways.After a meeting, it is important to async communicate the top 2-3 takeaways and actionable items to ensure alignment on next steps. Independents thrive on feedback and are often blocked by a lack of it. Bullet points with clear and concise steps are an effective tool when listing out action → actionable step. It never hurts to establish deadlines with those feedback points either!

Know when to ask for help.When working remotely, it can be easier for some to feel more isolated or fall into habits that create solo-driven working environments. But remote work, when created alongside a thoughtful working culture, can be far from isolating. An executive here at Contra implements the “15-minute rule”:If you can’t figure out a task after 15 minutes of clear and uninterrupted focus, then ask a manager or colleague for help. This prompts communication and collaboration amongst team members but also reinforces that mistakes, when paired with learning, are okay.

Document Your Progress.For those doing non-milestone based projects, keeping a record of progress always benefits both the Client and Independent side of a project. Communicating with clients on how their project is going (aka, how their investment is returning) allows for upfront visibility on progress and will avoid and ever-occurring sentiment from Clients that they often have to chase for updates. And if a dispute ever arises, documentation will be there to help smooth over both sides. Remember: progress > perfect.