At Fluxon, our remote work model is key to our success in building impactful products quickly, hiring the best talent, and collaborating with clients all over the world. Below are our most important learnings, discovered after years of building and managing a distributed workforce, for how to make sure your remote team is happy, productive, and effective.

Implement a rigorous hiring process

Talented, driven people who can work independently and communicate well are fundamental to the ability to build and scale a distributed team. So take the time to ensure every person who joins your team is the right fit. At Fluxon, candidates go through a minimum of three video interviews and a coding or design challenge to determine whether they are a good fit and have the necessary experience for the role.

It’s also important to look for people who have a variety of skills that empower them to creatively solve problems and collaborate with peers, managers, and clients. Hire people who have a broad base of general knowledge to support their specific expertise, can communicate clearly and love being part of a team.

Foster transparency

Without in-person interaction between managers, workers, and clients, transparency is essential — it improves customer confidence, worker accountability, and overall organizational efficiency. When everyone knows their role, they can focus on their core competency and deliver top-quality work.

Give your clients the option to look behind the curtain and see how you work. Customers love working with companies that have a transparent structure, which fosters an open, collaborative work arrangement that helps ensure a tailored solution to fit their needs.

Create a base of shared knowledge

You need to prevent the possible bottlenecks of one team member waiting for another in a different zone to send a crucial document. To empower everyone to work as efficiently as possible and find what they need, create a centralized hub of information on a single platform with standardized naming conventions and saving procedures.

Don’t forget to talk face-to-face

While email and DMs are great tools for communication, you might occasionally need to hop on a call. Video calls are a great way to develop rapport, get to know each other, and build a sense of community. Video conferencing tools also facilitate collaboration by letting members download recordings of the meeting, share their screens, and use real-time polls to gauge opinion. 

Make workflows asynchronous

Take advantage of time zone differences to keep projects moving forward. For example, two employees on opposite sides of the world can trade off working on a time-sensitive project and deliver it in half the time of a traditional company.

However, asynchronous work demands effective documentation and communication. By utilizing solutions such as Google Drive, Slack, and Notion, you can document and create a fluid channel of communication, allowing your team to have full visibility of any given issue. Here are some of our Slack best practices:

• Use public channels over DMs. Use a project channel and tag the person you want to reach. This keeps team members informed, makes it easy for others to chime in, and allows everyone to learn from whatever is discussed.

• Opt for private channels over group DMs. Group DMs are hard to maintain, track and respond to. You also can't add people to the conversation, which prevents collaboration and transparency. 

• Write thorough messages. Include full context and information needed for your request to keep from going into unnecessary back and forth. 

• Use threads. This helps keep the main channel clean when having a long conversation on a single topic.

• Reduce off-hours pings with “Do Not Disturb.”  To limit interruptions, use the DND feature for when off work or for needed uninterrupted time.

• Add location to profiles. It’s useful to know which time zones others are in.

• Acknowledge and respond to messages that need urgent attention. Even a simple 👀 would suffice. 

Communicate frequently

To keep your customers up to date, share daily updates and weekly team check-ins. At Fluxon, our team presents weekly demos of our work so everyone is aware of each other's progress. We also have client-facing Slack channels where our team can address customer concerns immediately and effectively if an issue comes up. By keeping your clients in the loop, you eliminate surprises and consistently deliver great work.

A well-managed remote work culture can be one of the most effective ways to maximize a team’s productivity. Letting people structure their day around their own natural peaks and valleys of energy not only ensures they feel happy and healthy — it also allows them to do their highest quality work.