Effective Remote Work

The office isn't as essential as it used to be. Flexible working hours and distributed teams are replacing decades of on-site, open-plan office culture. Wherever you work from nowadays, your colleagues are likely to be somewhere else. No more whiteboards. No more water coolers. And certainly no Ping-Pong. So how can you organize yourself, ship software, communicate, and be impactful as part of a globally distributed workforce? We'll show you how. It's time to adopt a brand new mindset. Remote working is here to stay. Come and join us. Remote working is on the rise. Whether or not we are remote workers, it is likely we are all part of a global workforce. We need to learn to interact remotely, because we are all remote from someone in some way. Rather than simply simulating the way we'd usually work together via digital means, we have to learn new communication skills and adopt a different mindset in order to work remotely effectively, efficiently, and, most importantly, healthily. We'll start by getting you set up with the right equipment and habits. Then, we'll learn the mindset of treating everyone as remote, and conquer both synchronous and asynchronous communication. You'll learn how to produce amazing artifacts, how to communicate clearly, and how to manage yourself and your teams. Then we'll look at the bigger picture: from measuring the remote readiness of your workplace, to creating a handbook for your team, to exploring remote-first culture and tackling burnout and mental well-being. Fundamentally we'll see that adopting a remote-working mindset can do wonders for our organization, our effectiveness, and our impact in our careers. It can even create a more diverse and inclusive industry for us all to work in. So what are you waiting for? The remote future is now. Be a part of it. What You Need: There are no prerequisites to reading this book, other than having had some experience of working in the software industry and a healthy curiosity.

An instant #1 Wall Street Journal bestseller and USA Today bestseller! The remote work revolution has been rapidly accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Organizations as big as Twitter have learned their employees didn't need an office to get great results, and employees are using the flexibility of remote work to live where they want, ditch their commutes and live a work-life integration that works for them. Remote work is here to stay, and the companies that do it well will have a clear competitive advantage in the future. As founder and CEO of Acceleration Partners, a 100 percent remote organization with 170 employees who work from home, Robert Glazer has discovered that with the right principles, tactics and tools for managing remote employees, many businesses can excel in a virtual world. In this highly actionable book, Glazer shares how he and his team built a remote organization that has been recognized with dozens of awards for its industry performance and company culture. "A timely, practical, and highly informative guide to effective techniques for remote work; of benefit to practitioners or students of business. Highly recommended."—Library Journal, STARRED review How to Thrive in the Virtual Workplace shares insights from the remote employee, manager and leader perspectives, offering a blueprint any person can use to make remote work successful, productive and fulfilling. Learn how to leverage the flexibility of remote work, be more productive while working at home, avoid burnout, lead a team of virtual employees and build an organization that sets the gold standard for virtual work. The remote work revolution is here—the leaders who will build the future are the ones who can lead top performing virtual teams. Learn how to build a world-class organization—office no longer required.

LONGLISTED FOR THE FINANCIAL TIMES & MCKINSEY BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR “I often talk about the importance of trust when it comes to work: the trust of your employees and building trust with your customers. This book provides a blueprint for how to build and maintain that trust and connection in a digital environment.” —Eric S. Yuan, founder and CEO of Zoom A Harvard Business School professor and leading expert in virtual and global work provides remote workers and leaders with the best practices necessary to perform at the highest levels in their organizations. The rapid and unprecedented changes brought on by Covid-19 have accelerated the transition to remote working, requiring the wholesale migration of nearly entire companies to virtual work in just weeks, leaving managers and employees scrambling to adjust. This massive transition has forced companies to rapidly advance their digital footprint, using cloud, storage, cybersecurity, and device tools to accommodate their new remote workforce. Experiencing the benefits of remote working—including nonexistent commute times, lower operational costs, and a larger pool of global job applicants—many companies, including Twitter and Google, plan to permanently incorporate remote days or give employees the option to work from home full-time. But virtual work has it challenges. Employees feel lost, isolated, out of sync, and out of sight. They want to know how to build trust, maintain connections without in-person interactions, and a proper work/life balance. Managers want to know how to lead virtually, how to keep their teams motivated, what digital tools they’ll need, and how to keep employees productive. Providing compelling, evidence-based answers to these and other pressing issues, Remote Work Revolution is essential for navigating the enduring challenges teams and managers face. Filled with specific actionable steps and interactive tools, this timely book will help team members deliver results previously out of reach. Following Neeley’s advice, employees will be able to break through routine norms to successfully use remote work to benefit themselves, their groups, and ultimately their organizations.

Software startups make global headlines every day. As technology companies succeed and grow, so do their engineering departments. In your career, you'll may suddenly get the opportunity to lead teams: to become a manager. But this is often uncharted territory. How can you decide whether this career move is right for you? And if you do, what do you need to learn to succeed? Where do you start? How do you know that you're doing it right? What does "it" even mean? And isn't management a dirty word? This book will share the secrets you need to know to manage engineers successfully. Going from engineer to manager doesn't have to be intimidating. Engineers can be managers, and fantastic ones at that. Cast aside the rhetoric and focus on practical, hands-on techniques and tools. You'll become an effective and supportive team leader that your staff will look up to. Start with your transition to being a manager and see how that compares to being an engineer. Learn how to better organize information, feel productive, and delegate, but not micromanage. Discover how to manage your own boss, hire and fire, do performance and salary reviews, and build a great team. You'll also learn the psychology: how to ship while keeping staff happy, coach and mentor, deal with deadline pressure, handle sensitive information, and navigate workplace politics. Consider your whole department. How can you work with other teams to ensure best practice? How do you help form guilds and committees and communicate effectively? How can you create career tracks for individual contributors and managers? How can you support flexible and remote working? How can you improve diversity in the industry through your own actions? This book will show you how. Great managers can make the world a better place. Join us.

Reinvent your organization for the hybrid age. Hybrid work is here to stay—but what will it look like at your company? If your organization is holding on to inflexible, pre-pandemic policies about where—and when—your people work, it may be risking a mass exodus of talent. Designing a hybrid workplace that furthers your business goals while staying true to your culture requires balancing experimentation with rigorous planning. Hybrid Workplace: The Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review will help you adopt the best technological, cultural, and new management practices to seize the benefits and avoid the pitfalls of the hybrid age. Business is changing. Will you adapt or be left behind? Get up to speed and deepen your understanding of the topics that are shaping your company's future with the Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review series. Featuring HBR's smartest thinking on fast-moving issues—blockchain, cybersecurity, AI, and more—each book provides the foundational introduction and practical case studies your organization needs to compete today and collects the best research, interviews, and analysis to get it ready for tomorrow. You can't afford to ignore how these issues will transform the landscape of business and society. The Insights You Need series will help you grasp these critical ideas—and prepare you and your company for the future.

Making Remote Work Work is a pragmatic, realistic approach to building effective remote teams, and finding your way into a remote role that works for you. Whether you're a leader in a company trying to build a remote team, or an individual looking for a remote job, Making Remote Work Work will lay out a blueprint for long-term success using author Gil Gildner's decades-long experience in remote work, after managing, hiring, starting companies, and working remotely from over 45 countries. In this book, you'll learn: - how to find & attract remote workers to your team - Best practices for communication and scheduling - The importance of independence and self-driven team members - warning signs and red flags during remote interviews - How to use tools for effective remote work - How to make your resume stand out when you're looking for a remote job You'll also learn some common problems that both remote teams and the employees that work within them run into, including: - Time zones and scheduling - Salary discrepancies - Cultural differences within teams - Career networking & advancement - Managing your time About The Author Working remotely for over ten years as an employee, freelancer, and eventually a small business owner, Gildner has traveled and worked from over 45 countries. He started in photojournalism for NGOs, which took him from the deserts of northern India to the ebola units of Liberia, worked as a creative director for a luxury airfare company, and then cofounded Discosloth, a digital marketing agency with remote employees in both America and Europe. He is now settled down and works from Northwest Arkansas, where he can fiddle with things in the garage instead of working in his home office. Gildner co-authored the Amazon best-selling Becoming A Digital Marketer with his wife, Anya Gildner. He has been featured in Inc Magazine, the New York Times, Arkansas Business, the Washington Post, and more. He blogs at www.discosloth.com.

Discover the secret to being productive and successful no matter where you are with this essential guide to remote work. During COVID-19, working from home became the new normal. Now, both employers and employees find that the remote work they were forced to adjust to may be, well, better—financially, sustainably, and even in terms of overall morale and productivity. But working from home is not without its challenges. It can be difficult to eliminate distractions, strike a solid work/life balance, and maintain social connections that are crucial in the workplace. Whether you’re trying to find and land a job from the comfort of your home, learning to manage a virtual team, or dream of living a digital nomad lifestyle, The Everything Guide to Remote Work has everything you need to be successful. You’ll learn to optimize your own workplace culture, whether it’s in your home office or a constantly changing backdrop. So whether your company continues to work remotely full time or you only have to go to the office a few days a week, you’ll be armed with all the tools you’ll need to make the most out of this new lifestyle.

Many organizations are shifting to a remote workforce in order to be competitive and many more are built as remote-first outfits. The sudden global experiment brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic has proven that remote teams are in fact possible and widely effective across industries when done right. Remotely Possible addresses the challenges and opportunities that remote teams face, starting with the current landscape and looking forward to the future of remote working. Author Shawn Belling insightfully addresses what leaders must do to effectively lead a remote team, whether it is in a remote-first organization or in an organization trying the concept for the first time. There are long-term strategies you can adapt to your own organization, and Remotely Possible explores these in addition to the benefits that come with broad acceptance of remote workforces. Globally distributed teams are more common than ever, and with the correct approach and digital plan, yours can take an organization to the next level. Belling acknowledges the challenges that come with changes to a team’s work culture, communication tools, and foundations of trust in an all-digital, remote workplace. Adaptation is key and Remotely Possible gives you all the practical, real-world lessons you need to tackle these major changes head-on. Remote work is here to stay. What You Will Learn Work with the various permutations of remote and distributed teams including globally distributed teams Discover the evolving preference of teams as an engine for getting work done regardless of the industry or organizational type See the challenges that remote teams face with communications, culture, rapport and trust, and coordination as well as techniques for overcoming these challenges Who This Book Is ForLeaders, managers, and team members of remote/distributed teams as well as those who are evaluating the extended/continued use of remote work and teams beyond the end of the Covid-19 pandemic.