This document is directly influenced by remote work guidelines published by Zalando which was published by Tim Kröger, Henning Jacobs on 2020-03-13. Purpose of creating this is to adopt the guidelines published by them to Sri Lankan companies and make it easy to do modifications as suitable for Sri Lankan workforce.
- Get VPN
- Establish daily standups via chat and video
- Have weekly 1:1s between manager and team members
- Perform weekly team retrospectives
- Establish personal and team rituals
- Prioritize documentation and clear communication
- Embrace asynchronous work and communication
- 💬 Establish daily standups via chat (asynchronous) and video call (synchronous).
- 👫 Establish regular weekly 1:1 meetings (video calls) to check in regularly with your directs.
- 😊 Create a safe environment and culture for team members to report when they are away from the keyboard (e.g. "I'm AFK" in team chat, or via Google Chat Snooze) to prevent the feeling of being pressured to always be online.
- 🎥 Prefer Video Calls over chat, turn on video to understand non-verbal communication.
- 📵 Be present and don’t fiddle with the phone.
- 🤩 Use agendas to communicate the purpose of a meeting.
- 📄 Share a document as pre-read and solicit comments before the meeting.
- 📝 Write meeting notes (assign a note-taker!) and share them.
- 👍 Define action items and owners.
- ⏲️ Start on time, end on time.
GitLab provides some good advice for All-Remote Meetings.
- Document more than normal e.g. outlines of your ideas, next steps, meeting notes.
- Collaborate virtually, e.g. virtual whiteboards & sticky notes (use Google Slides or Google Jamboard, a digital whiteboard), work on documents in * * real-time.
- Share how you feel by using emojis 🤗. What’s going well? What’s not going well? Explain how you are feeling and when you need help.
- Empathy is everything: always assume positive intent. Tone and nuance can get lost over chat, so assuming your colleague is coming from a positive * place helps with potential misunderstandings. If you think your colleague acts weird, or a chat is getting too long or confusing, have a video call.
- Say what is obvious too: communicating everything explicitly is key to avoid misunderstandings.
- Take care of the Google Drive structure so that people can find documents faster. Familiarize yourself with the search features, e.g. searching within a subfolder is possible via the triangle on the right of the search bar
- 📅 Time-block your day so you have a start and end time: configure your work time in Google Calendar. This makes it transparent for your colleagues and manager when you are available and when not.
- 🍲 Plan and block your lunch slot as a recurring public event. This helps you stay healthy and manages expectations for availability.
- ⏰ Plan regular breaks, e.g. by setting a break reminder and stay hydrated.
- 💻 Create a physical space for work at home that you can leave at the end of the day (i.e. don’t work from bed).
- 💼 Use props that signal your brain that you’re working (e.g. work shoes, work shirt).
- 📴 Switch off when you're away from work.
- 🎵 Use background music or sound to help with concentration. Background noise helps in creating an environment which you associate with working. You can share your favorite playlists within the team for that.
- ✉️ Catch up on email at least twice a day to stay informed.
- 📅 Check your calendar, respond to invites with a 'yes' or 'no' plus comment. Attend appointments.
- 💬 Scan relevant chats (esp. your team chat) every hour.
- 👋 Check-in to team-chat by stating that you’re starting to work and what you worked on the day before.
- ✌️ Check-out of team-chat ("heading out from work", "AFK" for "away from keyboard").
- 📥 Assign tickets (e.g. GitHub issues) to yourself when you start working on them. Leave a comment to inform the whole team about progress.
- 📤 Commit work frequently instead of only committing locally. Finish up by committing in the evening and provide a short summary in the ticket on the progress or blockers.
- 🔕 Update your chat status (e.g. mute) when you need to focus.
- 📟 Find a balance between synchronous team interaction and embracing the benefits of an asynchronous work style. You can stay online when working, and update your team via chat on what you’re working on, or manage expectations around check-ins. This way we compensate for the loss of ad-hoc availability from not sitting next to each other.
- Zoom
- Google Meets To host meetings needs to be a GSuite customer. GSuite customers get free access to all advanced features
- Microsoft Teams
All in one collboration packages