I'm about to add our first remote hire to our team, where 4 will be based out of office and one will be remote. Would love to hear your thoughts on this and get some feedback as to how I should best plan for this on our side, if you're willing to share? My contact info is in my profile.
I've been the only remote worker on a team in the past, and it was a horrible experience. Ways you might be able to avoid that:
- Treat communications as a first-class management consideration for yourself and every team member. Make sure your team gets the message.
- Treat telecommunications issues, especially the quality of teleconference calls, as a top-level issue. Otherwise the remote worker will, again, be at an information disadvantage. He/she will have to choose between (a) repeatedly asking everyone in the meeting to repeat themselves, move closer to the mic, adjust the camera orientation, etc., or (b) miss some potentially important communication.
- Remember that every fun perk for physically present staff (going out to lunch together, having an after-hours beer, etc.) runs the risk of making the remote worker feel left out and not an integral member of the team. Treat this as a management problem.
If these problems are manifest, not only will you suffer the direct implications of missed communications, but you're likely to face a disengaged worker, which is fun for nobody.
You just need to embrace async communication even with one remote worker. In short: all relevant problems/design/communication solved on project channel and not offline or private coversations.
