Six Ways to Build a Strong Remote Company Culture
It’s a common myth that remote companies have a harder time building culture than commute companies. But that’s all it is: a myth. True, great remote culture doesn’t magically happen; just like great in-office culture, you have to create and nurture it intentionally.
Infinite Red has been an exclusively remote company since our inception, and we wouldn’t have it any other way. Over the years, we’ve also managed to learn a thing or six about what it takes to build a great remote culture.
Now, we’re sharing what we’ve learned in hopes of helping others who decide to try the road less commuted.
1. Use digital tools for social connection, not just for work.
Digital tools like Slack don’t just make us more productive; they make us more social. We have several Slack channels dedicated to casual, water-cooler-type conversation. We share what we’re reading and listening to, what we’re eating, and even what errands we’re running . It’s a way to recreate the ambient social interactions of in-office work, except that we get to turn the noise off when we need to get work done.
In addition to Slack, we use Zoom to have ongoing video chat rooms that people can drop into anytime, just like a regular room. Our “Kitchen Table,” for example, is a dedicated Zoom conference where anyone can drop in and keep working, just for the sense of connection and camaraderie.
2. Establish, and stick to, good video call habits.
Video calls are a powerful way to do remote meetings or working sessions, but good habits are essential. We’ve gone so far as to establish company-wide video call best practices, such as:
- Everyone present for a call has to be on-camera.
- We help new team members set up a home office or work location that’s conducive to great video calls, i.e. proper lighting, noise-canceling headphones and a fast, stable Internet connection.
- On occasions when a few people are in the same location, we still have everyone dial in separately from their computer so that everyone is equally balanced on the call.
To improve the flow of conversation during video calls and make sure everyone gets a chance to contribute (and that quieter team members aren’t overpowered), we also use this system of hand signals:
- If nobody is talking, you’re free to talk.
- If someone is talking, raise one finger to indicate you want to go next.
- If someone else has their finger raised already, raise two fingers (and so on).
- If you need to “interject” something really quickly (no more than a couple seconds), then raise your hand in the shape of an “O”.
3. Be intentional about meetings.
Long, boring meetings are awful, whether you work remotely or in an office. But when you’re remote, it’s a lot harder to tell if participants are paying attention or secretly posting on Instagram. To keep meetings running smoothly and set the right expectations for participants, we organize our team meetings into two types: gigs and jams.
A gig is a well-structured, well-run, organized meeting with a clear purpose and agenda. We use gigs for planning, project kick-offs and big company initiatives. A jam, on the other hand, is a meeting with an informal structure and lots of room for creative exploration. It tends to work well for recurring weekly meetings.
You can dig more into these designations here, but suffice to say that this differentiation has saved us a lot of time and trouble.
4. In the event of a miscommunication, assume positive intent.
We make it a point to err on the side of over-communication and maximum transparency. We all use the same tools to communicate, and we make most information and discussion available to the whole team. That way, the default is inclusion; people can opt out if they want.
If there is a communication breakdown, we assume positive intent. We approach difficult conversations with the assumption that we are on the same team and all doing our best, setting ourselves up for quick resolution and avoiding blame and finger-pointing.
5. Set exceedingly clear expectations.
Our leaders have learned to be extremely specific about expectations. We find ourselves saying things like, “You need to be available to clients during these windows” rather than “You need to start work at 9am.” We’re also very explicit about performance expectations and how they will be measured.
Communicating primarily online requires extra effort to be clear. A lot of nuance gets lost with plain text (even using emojis and gifs), so it’s important to check and double-check to make sure you’ve been understood.
6. Make time for facetime.
Part of maintaining our culture is our All Team Retreats or “All Treats”, where we come together and work in person for a week. We like using this time to collaborate on things like open-source software and Ignite 2.0, and we also cook dinner, play ping pong, and battle it out on classic arcade games.
Working together in person adds color to our understanding of our coworkers. We also started Chain React, the first React Native Conference in the world, which brings together a large chunk of our team every year.
Because remote work is still relatively new, we don’t yet have many models to look to. We’ve found it helpful to think about remote work as a continual iterative process. We learn from what we liked and what worked for us; we examine what we could do better. Then we start again.
Whatever the future holds, remote work is not going away. Given the immense societal problems that remote work can help fix — from over-inflated housing markets to global warming to dual-income families stretched thin, we’re all in on the benefits, and we’re living proof that you don’t have to sacrifice company culture to work remotely.
Like any big societal shift, the transition will have its challenges. But if we all share what we learn and map out those speed bumps, it will be a faster and smoother journey for everyone.
Want to read more good stuff about remote work? Check out the Remote Work Handbook, our new guide to working, hiring, scaling and leading in a fully remote company.
About Infinite Red
Infinite Red is a fully remote software design and development agency. Our US-based designers and developers have helped hundreds of companies build beautiful, functional web and mobile apps. Our open source projects, React Native training, and annual Chain React conference have helped thousands of individual developers do the same. We believe in transparency, remote work, and empowering individuals through technology.
