Thread by @berman66

Most companies are taking advantage of the benefits of working remotely, but few are building great remote cultures.

Here are 10 things I've seen great companies do to build best in class remote cultures:

👍Great remote companies pair employees up with onboarding buddies. This buddy helps demystify the organization and process for new hires.

👎Bad remote companies give employees an onboarding document and force them to fend for themselves.

👍Great remote companies encourage new team members to make quick video intros to send to new hires

👎Bad remote companies don’t facilitate team member introductions and leave the new hire in the dark

Here’s an intro one of our team members made using @VowelHQ

👍Great remote companies introduce new hires at the all hands meetings and get different teams involved

👎Bad remote companies don’t introduce the new hires at the all hands and just focus 100% on business, 0% on fun

Here’s our flexible template for your next all hands meeting: vowel.com/meeting-agenda…

👍Great remote companies arrange team offsites and bring the team together in-person for team bonding and collaborative building (at least 2x per year!)

👎Bad remote companies don’t think offsites are worth the expense and never get the team together in person

👍 Great remote companies hold quarterly hackathons + inspire amazing work. Get creative and plan your next hackathon – perhaps at your next company offsite!

👎Bad remote companies stick to the engineering tickets + product docs and never get creative with how the work gets done

👍Great remote companies invest in team-building activities – budgets for team lunches, virtual team events, and continued learning opportunities

👎Bad remote companies keep everyone siloed in their own work and encourage a clock in/clock out culture

👍Great remote companies facilitate cross-functional connections. They use apps like Donut on Slack or create random 1-1s each month to build cross-functional relationships

👎Bad remote companies never encourage or inspire cross functional teams to work together.

👍Great remote companies create non-work related Slack channels. The best ones go well beyond #random and #parents and get very specific with channels like #wordnerds, #productreccos and #bookclub

👎Bad companies never encourage their team to bring personal interests to work

👍Great remote companies make it okay to skip non-crucial meetings. They encourage skipping + they record meetings to share after (using @VowelHQ!)

👎Bad remote companies hold too many meetings and invite too many people to each one

👍Great remote companies share the wins – whether it’s a Slack #shoutouts channel (HIGHLY recommended) or sending out “win” emails when things go very right

👎Bad remote companies ship and move on without building recognition into the culture

What'd I miss? Add it below in the replies!

Follow me for more tips on building a remote first company – I’m doing it now with a team of 30 @VowelHQ

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