The solution is to have one system that can be your team’s single source of truth, that allows for conversations to happen in the context of the work itself. When the work is connected in the same place as the communication happens, there is no need to keep adding the context. Everything is there where your team needs it.

3. Set expectations for communication

When you think of remote work, you often imagine a more peaceful environment, freed from the distractions of the workplace. Unfortunately, in many cases, nothing could be further from the truth.

Remote workers can be susceptible to constant distractions because chat and email have created “immediate response” expectations in many teams. If there is an expectation of being always-on, stress will be high and quality work will suffer. Substantial long-lasting change requires a genuine cultural shift, with space for focus.

If you are a leader or manager, you should do your part to set expectations that immediate responses are only for a crisis, which would then elevate to a phone call. Most quick chat messages can wait.

4. Make the most of meetings

For remote work to succeed, a rhythm of meetings is essential. Follow these best practices to ensure your meetings have a purpose and help the team work together.

Create an agenda: A good practice for communicating with purpose is for whoever sets up the meeting to provide an agenda with bullets, expected time and goals for the meeting.

Daily standup meetings: A daily standup meeting is a quick check-in to cover what you did yesterday and what you’re working on today. These meetings are a helpful way to keep everyone in sync and prevent confusion.

Regular meetings: Beyond the daily standup, you’ll also need regular meetings with your respective team. The goal of these meetings is to track goals and progress. Most projects take a period of time and as a manager, you need to ensure proper progress is being made.

Use video: When you are face to face, you are fully engaged rather than simultaneously working on your computer during a call. Prioritize video chat when possible to add personalization and empathy to the meeting.

Your distributed collaboration can at times feel lonely, so make the most of your meetings and have some face-to-face interaction.

5. Prioritize in-depth work

It sounds obvious to focus on quality work, but in many cases, teams can fall into a trap of busyness for the sake of busyness. Prioritizing quality work means the focus is always on the work. It's easy to get caught in an unfortunate and all-too-common trap: working extremely hard, doing a lot of ‘things’, but achieving little depth in any activity.

Cal Newport introduced us to the idea of deep work, which he defines as, “professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limits.”

It’s possibly best to understand deep work by looking at its opposite. Shallow work is the distracted, on and off multi-tasking most workers of today are used to. This is the type of work that happens when you finish the day without achieving very much. You start a project, but you have 15 tabs open and are responding to instant messages, emails and phone notifications. This is shallow work, and it’s the norm for most workers.

Depth requires focus. To be all-in on a task for a block of time allows you to truly tap into creativity and quality. Deep work is where the magic happens.

Embracing remote work

Your team can thrive in a remote environment. You’ll remove wasteful commutes, provide flexibility in location and open up your team to a wider talent pool. Follow these principles and you can ensure your remote team is on the same page and getting their most important work done.