Following our first full year of Partnear, we thought we would share some of our key takeaways on how to support a fully remote organisation.
Enable and utilise work life flexibility - We have learnt that the organisation needs to embrace and enable the freedom for flexible working hours and in conjunction, employees need to embrace the flexibility to make time in their day to spend with their family, mow the lawns, go for a run or use their day in a manner that suits them. Often work can happen anytime, and if people's needs are met outside of the workplace, they can be more relaxed and productive in the workplace. We don’t need to collaborate 100% of the day as much of our time is spent on individual tasks, therefore non-collaboration time can occur when it suits best. It's how and when the team utilise the collaboration time to allocate tasks and achieve the project deadline that is most important.
Provide great communication methods - As a result of the range of clients that we interact with, Partnear’s systems utilise a variety of video conferencing apps including Slack, Google Meet, Zoom and MS Teams. Each of these apps has it’s pros and cons with the most important being screen share and screen annotation. Much of everyone's day is spent using these tools to discuss projects, share ideas and explain key details and concepts to substitute the office environment and create a culture of flexibility and connectedness.
Inclusion and equality - Not to be confused with a gender or racial focus, Partnear places high importance on “Location Equality” to ensure that everyone is equal with regards to how communication is undertaken whether on projects or in general discussion. This is enabled through our systems that provide transparency and a chronology of events, if a meeting was undertaken in person, we record the key outcomes so that those that were not “in the room” are kept in the loop. This extends to accommodate the individuals flexibility and work / life balance, the times that the prefer to work or their timezone.
Quality tools and equipment - Our passion is for efficiency in our systems and processes, especially with regards to the design process and administration tasks. This requires quality hardware configured to suit the tasks at hand and software implementation that can be easily delivered and implemented to our remote employees. Current cloud based technologies and licensing has made this easier than in the past. We aim for all of our systems to be multi-platform and multi-operating system capable and as such our team can effectively work remote and on the go, off laptops, iPads/tablets or Phones.
Collaboration and constant improvement - We are constantly developing internal systems and software to improve the speed or accuracy of our delivery as this is what drives and challenges us individually to be better. These systems and software are our “virtual office”, the benefits of which are felt by all rather than a select group. Leveraging our mobile capable workplace, we can create an environment where people can travel and work, create a safety culture, conduct conversations as time allows and feel part of things rather than seeing them from the sidelines.
Whilst we are still learning and growing as an organisation, these aspects have already formed the foundations of how we interact now and into the future. These outcomes are already coming together to create something more powerful than the office based teams we’ve experienced in the past.
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