How do we make remote-first work?

How do we make remote-first work?

Ever since the start of the pandemic, thousands of businesses have turned to remote work. There are 4.3 million people in the U.S. who are still working remotely at least once a week. There are endless arguments made on either side as to whether work from home or in-office work is better.

For Tangiblee, remote work has always been a part of our business model. We have employees all across the globe who work remotely together every day.

Tangiblee’s remote work

As a company, we meet once a week as a team to discuss the latest developments or news from the company. This allows us to collaborate effectively in a large group setting. Additionally, we do department-wide updates that are presented to the entire team to ensure transparency across the company.

We also provide our employees with flexibility throughout their work day. This allows them to work in the time zone best fit for them or adjust their hours if they need to meet with an employee from another company.

Employees are also able to make appointments, pick up their kids, and more. This provides a greater work-life balance for our employees. We also allow our employees to work from anywhere, not just from home.

“As a designer, being somewhere that is inspiring is really important. Working from home allows me to change my environment from day to day. I work from coffee shops and I’ve even worked from Cape Town,” stated Kim Kaddouch, Product Designer at Tangiblee.

Similarly, Account Executive Vladislava Korik remarked, “I am able to take mental health breaks throughout my work day. I have a yoga mat and acupressure mat on hand if I need to take a short break.”

How do we make it work?

As a company, we also use digital tools that help us to collaborate and be successful in a remote setting. Our main tool for both sales and marketing is HubSpot. HubSpot is a popular Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool that allows us to track prospects, leads, etc. and generate targeted marketing campaigns for these various categories. Through HubSpot, we are also able to pull reports and analyze data to help us make more informed decisions about sales and marketing processes.

To stay in touch with everyone throughout the workday we use Slack. Slack is a messaging platform that essentially allows you to instant message anyone in your organization. You can “Slack” someone quickly throughout the day just as you would walk over to their desk in a true office setting to get a quick question answered. We are also able to make group messaging boards on Slack where we can send relevant information to multiple people at once.

For task management, we use Asana and Trello. Asana is a work management platform that helps our team organize, prioritize, and manage daily tasks. Colleagues can add tasks to each other's Asana board which assists with cross-departmental communication and streamlines the completion of tasks. Trello is similar to Asana, but we use it for large and often cross-functional projects involving multi-stage review and approval, such as design or product development. Trello is a kanban-style list-making application that again promotes cross-departmental communication.

Our most used tool is Google Workspace. We maintain all documentation, files, presentations, etc. on Gdrive. The team is able to share access with each other and @eachother on various documents to ask questions, to ask for signatures, etc. Our team additionally has Gmail-based emails and uses google calendar and google meet for scheduling and meetings.

Challenges of remote work

While remote work is great, there certainly are challenges that come along with it. One of the hardest challenges is building culture through a screen. Culture is still one of the most important aspects of a business in person or virtually. In order to foster a supportive and respectful work culture, we maintain a weekly meeting that is essentially a check-in for the entire team. Sometimes we catch up on personal events and sometimes we address business items that impact the entire team.

Additionally, with employees working around the world it isn’t as simple as walking over to someone’s desk when you need to discuss something. “Working with others from several places around the world teaches you to be patient with others and be more independent,” stated Kim Kaddouch. We have to manage time a bit differently as a team to adjust to time zones and ensure that deadlines are still met.

For Tangiblee, the pros of remote work greatly outweigh the cons. We plan to continue improving our remote work processes for years to come. Tangiblee believes that happy employees are productive employees, so allowing employees to work from home hasn’t been an issue. We pride ourselves on open and transparent communication either via slack, email, or by hopping on a quick meeting. Does this culture seem like something that you want to be a part of? Check out Tangiblee’s open positions here.