Remote Work Best Practices from the Acrew Community

To our portfolio and community of founders:

First and foremost, we hope you, your teams and families are safe & well.

We’re aware of the transition you’re all likely facing as leaders in managing remote workforces (for some of you, maybe for the first time). We know there are challenges that come with this transition from both from an operational and cultural perspective. In light of this, we wanted to share some best practices we’ve aggregated from some of our portfolio companies who have long standing histories of operating remotely.

Thank you to Choo Kim-Isgitt (TruSTAR), Francis Pedraza (Invisible), Michael Hyman (Petabyte), and Naveen Jain (Tari) for your input.

Operational Best Practices

• Set up clear expectations around availability, communication and projects, but maintain an environment of trust
• Organize daily team standups (10–15 minutes) to outline daily tasks/milestones, asks and prep for the day in round robin format
• Create documentation ahead of meetings to facilitate efficiency
• Maintain high integrity agreements around meeting times (if someone will be 5+ minutes late, suggest rescheduling the meeting)
• For client/customer calls, set up an internal Google/Zoom “dial-out” video conference and then dial client from there

Slack

• Share weekly priorities at the beginning of each week across the team
• Set up the Google Calendar integration with Slack so that team members can see when others are in a meeting or on a call (helps gives visibility into unresponsiveness)

Cultural Best Practices

• On calls, encourage the use of video to help team feel like everyone is there “in person”
• Do “red-yellow-green” check in’s at the beginning of important team meetings where each individual briefly rates (and describes if they so choose) how they are feeling professionally and personally (we do this every partner meeting at Acrew!)
• Encourage and promote health & wellness as a priority (suggest walks, at-home exercises, or meditation) — this will help boost productivity and ensure employees feel fresh

Slack

• Create a “#random” or “#water-cooler” channel to give employees an outlet to stay connected on other matters (personal stories, news, GIFs, etc)
• Create a “#strategysaloon” channel for random strategic ideas / longer term brainstorming that don’t have a place in scheduled meetings and encourage musings that don’t have immediate action items but could be a catalyst for creative thinking
• Taco app helps acknowledge folks on the team
• Donut app helps facilitate random virtual meetups across the org

Zoom/Google Hangouts

• Host regular “CEO Q&A/Office Hour” sessions for employees to encourage an open dialogue around questions/concerns and feel leadership support
• Host virtual “happy hours” or “have lunch” together as a team to encourage social connectivity among the organization

Benefits

• Remind people of existing benefits for physical (i.e. telemedicine) and mental health (i.e. remote therapy benefits)
• Don’t be afraid to get creative with extending or altering benefits that you already provide (i.e. lunch in the office once a week -> a $20 lunch credit each week; commuter benefit -> subscription to meditation app)

Most importantly, practice patience, not perfection: a smooth remote working operation will not happen overnight, but by encouraging communication, collaboration and thoughtfulness, the process will be easier.

Lastly, while keeping the team motivated and supported will help ensure continuity internally, external communication may also be appropriate. During these trying times, all businesses need to consider proactively messaging how they are accounting for their customers’ needs. To that end, here are some tips:

• For customer facing content, proactively provide product-specific recommendations related to consequences of COVID-19 pandemic if the product has capability to enhance customer readiness or help cope with this crisis
• Take stock of existing content (blogs, other content marketing, social, etc.) and see how it can be updated
• Consider revising or relaxing normal customer policies where appropriate; Consider also, though, stretching vendor terms to offset impact of providing more flexible customer policies

As always, your crew at Acrew is here as a resource if needed.

Take care of yourselves.

Your Crew (Lauren, Theresia, Mark, Vishal, Asad and Maitree)