At Time Doctor, a time tracking software firm, we recognise our uniqueness as a remote company. We have over 50 employees in over 15 different countries. Our co-founders reside in Sydney, Australia and Ottowa, Canada. I’m writing this article near Philadelphia, US and submitting it to my friend in the Philippines to edit.
Needless to say, communication is a challenge that we face on a daily basis. Here are the key strategies we use to communicate with each other.
Slack
Time Doctor is made up of multiple teams performing various tasks. There is a marketing team, a development team, a customer service team and a sales team.
Slack gives us an easy way to group all of the teams (and projects) into channels to allow asynchronous communication. Whenever I want to see the current projects of the marketing team, I simply go to the marketing channel and get updated.
It’s like a long running meeting that I can pop in and out of whenever I have the time.
Skype
Because we are all located on different continents spanning all corners of the globe, it is unlikely that I will ever meet all of the company employees face to face.
Having video calls hosted by Skype is the next best thing. One of our company policies is that whenever we do Skype calls, we must do a video call (assuming internet speeds support it).
We use Skype for meetings and to clarify issues and differences in opinion. There are times when an email thread can go back and forth, wasting everyone’s time, when a simple two-minute Skype call can clear everything up.
Google Docs
Managing and participating in remote teams would be a thousand times more complicated without Google Docs.
This application, while not technically a communication tool, allows us to create a document, share it with the entire team, and keep all comments and suggested edits in one place.
Jing
You’ve heard the saying: “A picture is worth a thousand words.” Sometimes, there is no substitute for being able to take a quick screenshot and writing a comment or two to completely articulate what you mean.
With Jing, you can capture desktop screenshots and put arrows, labels and notes or, create quick screen capture videos and share it with other team members via YouTube.
Basecamp
Being a fully remote company, it’s almost impossible to know what each member of the team is doing on a daily basis. That’s where Basecamp comes in.
We tend to manage all of our projects on Basecamp. We even have a check in process where each team member reports on tasks they plan to complete that day.
Managing a remote company is not without its challenges. Chief among them is communicating with each other. These five strategies have allowed us to grow Time Doctor without losing the team feeling and culture the co-founders created.
Carlo Borja, www.timedoctor.com
