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Do You Work Remotely? How Do You Work With Your Team? (1 Viewer)

Joe Bryant

Joe Bryant

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This is an offshoot to @culdeus' s excellent question about internal chat options for companies.

I'd like to expand a bit more on it.

If you work remotely (even if a blend of remote and in office work), how do you stay connected to your team?

We use Basecamp and it's pretty good. Slack for us got too scattered and noisy. And I fully admit maybe weren't using it properly.

We then also use Monday.com for project management. That's a change from Clickup that we were using. I'm liking Monday.com but still learning it. 

What have you found to be good and bad?

What best practices have you found?

 
100% remote. MS Teams and WebEx. MS Teams is annoying as it will change your status to "Away" if you aren't active in the program after like 5 minutes. But it works ok for collaboration on documents, etc. WebEx is decent enough meeting software but I think I like Zoom better, it's more intuitive.

MS Teams does help with version control. I think it uses Sharepoint on the back end so you can go back and look at all of the versions in case you need to go backwards. The key is keep it on Teams, don't create a local copy.

 
Permanently working from home (while I have this job, at least) and we use Zoom and Slack, and of course email. 

 
The software company I work for was 50% remote pre-covid, and has been 100% since.  Slack is our biggest communication tool, the key there is specific channels so you can have alerts set only for those you need to see in real time, and look at others when needed (I have a lot of channels muted so I can see them but I don't get alerts).  Slack is also our primary person-to-person communication tool, internal emails are rare and pretty much reserved for messages for a large audience or those that need to track history (approvals, legal back-and-forth).

We do use Zoom for all internal meetings, cameras on is the norm (although not everyone does).  Bi-weekly all hands meetings keep us updated on company metrics, upcoming events, product stuff, etc.  Our HR team also does regular "fun stuff", games or speakers, that kind of thing.  

Product team uses Basecamp.

Google docs for collaboration.

That's about it.  I've been remote for almost 15 years now so am pretty used to it, although I used to go into an office at least once a month and I do miss that sometimes.

 
Webex for meetings, slack for chats, email for less pressing textual communications, github/zenhub for cm + delivery management and coordination, google docs for office document collaboration. I still haven't found a team project/task management/calendaring solution I like. I tried to do things through zenhub but it doesn't have enough functionality to cover it all - it really needs notification/alerting when milestones are coming due, etc. I'm going to experiment with tasks in Outlook for now since everyone in my organization has to use exchange.

 
MS Teams all around - big company that uses all Microsoft products.

I have no complaints about Teams - I was already interacting almost exclusively with coworkers from other facilities/countries pre-Covid, so this wasn't much of a change - I just do it from home now.

 
We also use monday.com for keeping organized. I really like it and I'm not even sure i understand most of it

We have zoom meetings everyday just for a laugh and a check in...

 
Been mostly remote for about 10 years.  Weekly Meets call with my direct team every week. Slack for daily. E-mail for external where we don't have Slack integrated. Basecamp with some of our external devs.  Salesforce, Netsuite, Google Docs. As others have said, Slack is fantastic but channels need to be specific. I've tried all the project management tools over the years like Project, Asana, etc. and I just struggle with them.  I think it's the way I work. I tend to jump around on things all day long and updating is a chore that doesn't provide any return. And my teams are small enough that communication isn't really an issue.

 
Ron Swanson said:
Been mostly remote for about 10 years.  Weekly Meets call with my direct team every week. Slack for daily. E-mail for external where we don't have Slack integrated. Basecamp with some of our external devs.  Salesforce, Netsuite, Google Docs. As others have said, Slack is fantastic but channels need to be specific. I've tried all the project management tools over the years like Project, Asana, etc. and I just struggle with them.  I think it's the way I work. I tend to jump around on things all day long and updating is a chore that doesn't provide any return. And my teams are small enough that communication isn't really an issue.
Click to expand...
This is one of my main issues with project/task management tools. You end up spending an inordinate amount of time babysitting the tool and its process rather than doing actual productive stuff. It's also hard to find the optimal level of granularity in terms of what you track and how you track it. I try to keep things as lightweight as possible, but sometimes you need more detail, most of the time you need less. It's tough to find a consistent approach that has the right balance in my experience.

 
Have been using Google Hangouts for text and video chat since I started my business in 2015.  Google is slowly dismantling it and trying to get us to shift to their more current tools, but I ain't budging.  

 
Gr00vus said:
This is one of my main issues with project/task management tools. You end up spending an inordinate amount of time babysitting the tool and its process rather than doing actual productive stuff. It's also hard to find the optimal level of granularity in terms of what you track and how you track it. I try to keep things as lightweight as possible, but sometimes you need more detail, most of the time you need less. It's tough to find a consistent approach that has the right balance in my experience.
Click to expand...
I think they're probably a better fit for large projects done by multiple teams or large teams. I'm lucky if my project teams are more than myself and one or two other people.

 
So throwing this out there to any IT people. I work out of my house for myself doing graphic design type work, often with big file sizes and multiple files (so a google docs type environment is out) 

I'm bringing someone on who will also work out of their house, but I need them to access and work on files stored here. Are there any servers that use real actual hard drives, not fully cloud based, that would allow someone to tap in remotely and work off of them w/o terrible lag or delay? 

We've done test runs with Adobe Cloud and it was not successful. Its mainly for a magazine, so there are multiple ad files and other pieces of artwork that are all associated with the main document. 

 
We use Microsoft Teams for meetings, collaboration, chat, etc..

Some of the "new" things that we've changed that make a difference working remotely...

Turning on Video..
Makes a HUGE difference during meetings to have the video on, rather then staring at some stale, out of date picture.. or worse yet, just their initial's.  :X

We also have a once a month Social Hour "meeting"..
An hour to talk of anything other then work..

Much like the in person water cooler chats. We use it to talk  about upcoming vacation/weekend plans, show off our hobbies, etc. 

 
Grace Under Pressure said:
100% remote. MS Teams and WebEx. MS Teams is annoying as it will change your status to "Away" if you aren't active in the program after like 5 minutes. But it works ok for collaboration on documents, etc. WebEx is decent enough meeting software but I think I like Zoom better, it's more intuitive.

MS Teams does help with version control. I think it uses Sharepoint on the back end so you can go back and look at all of the versions in case you need to go backwards. The key is keep it on Teams, don't create a local copy.
Click to expand...
1st bold point .. There's an app for that ;)  

2nd bold point - yes, all Files you add to a Team in MS Teams are stored in SharePoint.
So all things you can do with items in SharePoint ( versioning, required metadata, permissions, etc.) are available.

 
  • Laughing
Reactions: Ned
snogger said:
We use Microsoft Teams for meetings, collaboration, chat, etc..

Some of the "new" things that we've changed that make a difference working remotely...

Turning on Video..
Makes a HUGE difference during meetings to have the video on, rather then staring at some stale, out of date picture.. or worse yet, just their initial's.  :X

We also have a once a month Social Hour "meeting"..
An hour to talk of anything other then work..

Much like the in person water cooler chats. We use it to talk  about upcoming vacation/weekend plans, show off our hobbies, etc. 
Click to expand...


You posted most of what I was going to say.  

Make video ON the norm for meetings.  It's OK to have it off sometimes, but it should be the exception rather than the rule.

On our weekly team meetings, we always start with a check-in question and it rotates around the team so everyone gets a chance to pick the topic.  It can be anything just to stimulate discussion and to get to know each other.  We've done things like favorite vacation destination, favorite movie, what are you most scared of, etc.

 
PlayaHata said:
Make video ON the norm for meetings.  It's OK to have it off sometimes, but it should be the exception rather than the rule.
Click to expand...
Agree with this. Especially when it is a meeting with only several people. If it is a mass presentation, with almost no input from attendees, video off is totally cool.

We have a weekly meeting with my team, which is just 6 people. One guy never puts his video on, and his excuse is "my mac doesn't work well with Teams" which we all know is a complete lie

 
They sent us home four years ago. We switched from Microsoft Office to Google Office during that time. Though there have been rumblings about getting us cameras, our Google chats and meetings are still audio-only. We exceed our goals month after month.

 
snogger said:
We use Microsoft Teams for meetings, collaboration, chat, etc..

Some of the "new" things that we've changed that make a difference working remotely...

Turning on Video..
Makes a HUGE difference during meetings to have the video on, rather then staring at some stale, out of date picture.. or worse yet, just their initial's.  :X

We also have a once a month Social Hour "meeting"..
An hour to talk of anything other then work..

Much like the in person water cooler chats. We use it to talk  about upcoming vacation/weekend plans, show off our hobbies, etc. 
Click to expand...
Video on to begin the meeting for ice breaking is great. But I find meetings flow much more naturally as audio only after that.  Video on seems to add stress and awkwardness.

 
snogger said:
rather then staring at some stale, out of date picture.. or worse yet, just their initial's.  :X
Click to expand...
My stale, out of date, picture is the best part of my WebEx meetings!  The corporate photographer did a great job making me look young and happy... I can not get anything close to that IRL anymore ;)   :construction:

 
I go into the office about 1x per week, which is great and just right for me.  I did 2 months working from Mexico, which was good, but I leaned heavily on my direct reports to execute things in the lab/office for me.  I didn't love that part, even if they didn't gripe.

We use Teams, Sharepoint, Zoom, and email.  We have a robust project management milestone process, but no software that supports daily project tracking.  Large in-person meetings are banned, although exceptions are made for safety trainings and the like.  Sometimes we end up meeting "off campus" so that we don't have to deal with temp checks etc.  We try to coordinate time when we go in, but it's ad-hoc.

From time to time we play around with adding Agile methodologies to the project management, but it never seems to stick.  As a result, we're likely slower than we need to be, but make fewer mistakes.

 
We use Slack which has its issues as Joe notes (most notably trying to search for anything in the past), Google Meet/Documents for collaborating, Jira/Asana for project management/ticketing, and email.  Frankly, I've reverted to just calling people (really Slack huddling) more and more as Slack itself (really any written comms) is pretty bad for conveying nuance.  

Snogger also had some good points.  For any meeting you have to be on video (informal 1-1's don't have to be) and we actively force scheduling of either short "coffee" 1-1s or larger (5-6 person) meet and greets.  

 
My wife and I both work at home now for the same company, different departments. We both use Teams. Her group requires video for all meetings and mine doesn't. Have to say I much prefer the no video option.

 
MS Teams.  Also been using smartsheet to track/update task, projects, etc.  Like excel but web based and multiple people can update/use at the same time.  Like the dashboard feature for easily updating people but the graphing is very basic and hard to use vs excel

 
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