Bye-bye Handshakes - Hello Working From Home - My 4 favourites strategies working remotely

News about COVID-19 is somewhat sad and I hope that we will soon be able to overcome it. These last few days infected people are accumulating, deaths figures also rising, the hysteria reached supermarkets with people over buying certain products, it is a strange situation, but this is not a social blog but one about Globalization/Localization, and if there is anything that the Globalization / Localization industry knows how to do well, and does it very well, is to work from home.

I have been in the Localization industry for quite a few years, so I thought that this week it would be a good idea to write my post about what to keep in mind when working remotely.

Below, I share with you the 4 techniques that have worked best for me during my professional career to be more efficient working remotely or with distributed teams.

 Let's begin!

1. Create a charter team.

All teams need a Team Charter. Your charter describes why the team was formed, what the team is responsible for and how it will work together.

The charter, in my opinion, is the most important element that a team has since in this document expectations and objectives are explained. If that is already important working everyone under the same roof, in the case of virtual teams, the charter team is a crucial element.

A Team Charter provides a common understanding of how the Team “runs its business.” The charter can be used as a discussion guide to overcoming obstacles and misunderstandings.

Team charter does not need to be a long document with many pages, but there are some key concepts that we must explain. Below is a summary of the key elements we need to include in a team charter

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• Team Purpose: A statement describing the overarching reason that the team was created.

• Code of conduct

• Team Goals / Objectives: High-level measurable goals the team is formed to meet.

• Meeting guidelines

• Decision-making guidelines

• Conflict resolution process

• Workload distribution

• Ground Rules / Team Norms: The guidelines describing the behavioral expectations of the team.

• Communications Process: The means and the frequency in which the team will communicate.

2. Get alignment about goals and roles.

WFH is a great opportunity for a team to review the basics in order to ensure there’s a full alignment about team objectives, the individual role and how all team members contribute to the outcome.

This alignment is essential to face one of the main challenges that we find ourselves working remotely. How to build trust and accountability.

Aligning expectations of the responsibility of each individual team and the goals of the team is of vital importance to establish that culture of accountability and trust.

3. Focus on the relationship

For some people WFH can produce a profound effect of loneliness, especially if you are not used to working from home you can feel really disconnected and alone. To avoid this, it is best to establish a series of meetings such as:

• Virtual 1: 1

• Virtual team meetings

• Use heavily instant messaging platforms. Slack, HipChat, Google Chat, Microsoft Teams all these tools are the best antidote to fight loneliness. Also, a small fun suggestion here; use GIFs and memes. Being able to leave a relevant GIF or meme after a Slack thread in the team channel might be fun and it might help to build the culture of a team even being remote. Many tools are connected with Gliphy, give it a try and let your creativity and sense of humor appear even if the team is everywhere!

• Initiate a video call, even if it's for something short. Sometimes we think that a video conference has to be for meetings of at least half an hour and that doesn't have to be the case. If we create a habit of making a video call with even to deal with a 3-minute topic that can make the feeling of loneliness less and the feeling of belonging to the team is greater

4. Have Reliable Tools

The remote work model can only work with the right technological set-up. To fully support remote employees and facilitate cross-team collaboration is crucial to have the right tools.

 In the graphic that I attach here below, we have a compilation of the best tools to work remotely in different categories.

Source: Trello.com

It is also important to note that in these difficult times when the world is fighting coronavirus these companies are providing free remote working tools during the coronavirus outbreak.

Threats like the coronavirus will create disruption. But disruption also creates opportunity.

Teams can use this time of WFH time we are living last days to explore new ways of working and revisit old assumptions.

 There might be a lot of benefits to working remotely but it's not without its challenges. Hopefully, the 4 techniques explained in this post can help everyone working remotely to be more efficient.

I finish this post wishing you all the best for your families, for your friends, for your work colleagues and hopefully, this hysteria in which we are immersed in recent days will soon pass.

Have a wonderful week and stay safe!

@yolocalizo

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