Advances in enterprise software from recent years triggered an explosion in remote work adoption rates. According to this report, the number of remote workers in the US has increased by 115% since 2005. And while small companies and startups are key factors in this increase, many large organizations from different industries also contribute significantly to this trend.

But why is that? By the end of this article, you’ll have five solid reasons why great teams work remotely. You’ll also find out why remote work is seen as a necessity by many young companies around the world – not just an employee perk. So without further ado, here are 5 reasons why great companies hire remotely:

1) Lower business costs

The most widely cited reason for going remote is the reduction in business costs. While remote work can bring other types of expenses, they are nowhere near what you would pay for a physical office and all associated expenses with it. Rent, utilities and office amenities can form substantial business costs, especially when you take into account the often long lease agreements. This leads to a lot of risk and potential headaches if the company enters a period of financial trouble. Not having an office can help mitigate such risks.  

2) Access to a bigger talent pool

Another important benefit of working remotely is the access to a huge talent pool. Doing business from a physical office requires you to look for employees in on or around your area which makes it harder to find suitable candidates. When you allow remote work, you can choose from a global talent pool of experts in practically any area. This is especially useful for companies based in competitive labor markets, such Silicon Valley for example. It makes a lot of sense to hire remotely instead of competing with the lucrative packages Google or Facebook can provide.  

3) Remote workers are equally or more productive than on-site employees

According to this report, there isn’t a negative effect on productivity when working remotely. In fact, some employees produce a higher output due to fewer time-wasting meetings. Other factors include a better sense of career satisfaction and the ability to work during the most productive times for the particular person. While some people are early risers, others are night owls who are more active and alert during the typical out-of-office times. Why waste all that potential?

4) Faster hiring process

Fully distributed companies take 33% less time to hire a new employee. As one of the prime concerns for any business, hiring frequently takes a lot of time and resources. However, new technology platforms and the access to a bigger talent pool can make things much more efficient. With on-demand freelancing services and the ability to quickly write job descriptions the hiring process is greatly improved.

5) Lower employee turnover

Companies that support remote work have 25% lower employee turnover than companies that don’t. Remote workers say that avoiding the daily commute and the flexibility to work when they’re most productive are key factors for deriving more job satisfaction. Therefore, it’s not surprising to find that on average people stay longer at distributed companies.

Conclusion

There are clear benefits to allowing remote work at your company. From reduced business costs to a greatly enhanced hiring potential, there is clear evidence that remote work is here to stay. And with more and more people preferring their home or a coworking space to the office, remote work can often turn into a business necessity rather than a choice.

If you’d like to learn about ways to collaborate online efficiently, download our free e-book “Online Collaboration: a practical guide for modern teams” and transform your organization today.

Quools.io

At Sendtask, we are a fully distributed team, meaning there’s no office and no two people in the same place. To keep everyone in sync, we use a variety of tools. These are the five tools we use the most often:

#1: Sendtask

We use our own tool for sprint planning, roadmap, prioritization, call agendas, bug reports, feature requests, etc. We believe that dogfooding is crucial to building a good user experience and thus use Sendtask whenever and wherever we see fit. In general, everything that can be organized in a list goes into Sendtask.

#2: Google App Suite

We use all Google tools – from Gmail to Drive – to organize and share information and communication. With our email integration, we create tasks in Sendtask projects directly from Gmail. One Google Document is particularly helpful: While the team is still small, we use a Google Doc titled «Sendtask Bootcamp» as our wiki. We store all information needed for new team members to join the team in that one document.

#3: Slack

We’re all on Slack at least twice a day. We use a set of integrations to get real time updates about our system. And, of course, for 1-to-1 and group chat. We used to discuss bugs and features in Sendtask but then realized that sometimes these messages were forgotten because no one had put them on Sendtask as tasks. That’s why we built our Slack integration. With a very simple command (e.g. /sendtask @joe please prepare the report until Monday #sendtask) we are now able to create tasks directly from Slack.

#4: Appear.in

We hold one video call every week when the whole team gets together to update each other and discuss next steps. We use appear.in for these calls as it provides a very simple setup (no accounts, just like Sendtask) and great quality so far. Of course, there are plenty of alternatives when you talk to users and want to avoid hefty international call fees.

#5: Intercom

We use Intercom to talk to our users. Via the blue button in the bottom right corner, they have a very quick and easy way to talk to us and vice-versa – either while they use the app or via email when they’re not online.

Conclusions

I did not cover the tools we use for analytics and will cover those in another post. The five apps mentioned are in use almost every day, if not every hour and have been crucial in how we are able to build a distributed company.

What tools does your company use that might be helpful for us?

Hubspot

I started my first business when I was 14 years old. It was – and still is – an agency business. We started mediasign by building websites, designing logos and printing business cards for our clients.

I think everyone’s first business should be a service business. It allows you to make mistakes without ruining the whole company. Sure, you might lose an important client or two but a mistake won’t kill your business like it could kill a product business.

Working in a service business definitely has its perks – you get to know various companies, industries, and partners. We worked with more than 20 clients on average per year.

It’s in the nature of a service business that you get paid for your time. That’s why you want to work as efficiently as possible. Every hour you spend on a project but don’t get paid for is your loss and in fact lost revenue. Working on mediasign inspired us to build Sendtask. Because while there are many tools out there to work efficiently with your team, we couldn’t find a tool that allowed us to work efficiently with the three largest groups an agency is in contact with: your team, your clients, and your service providers.

Your team

Sendtask allows you to see who in your team is working on what and finishing when.
While there are many tools out there for team collaboration – Asana, Trello, Podio, Teamwork, to name a few – there are very few that allow you to work not only with your team but also the other two groups of partners you interact with.

Your clients

Sendtask does not require accounts. Your team can collaborate efficiently with your clients without having them register. This would have been huge for us – our consultants and project leads spent a good amount of their time chasing clients and reminding them of deliverables. With Sendtask, you can not only track who’s falling behind on a deadline but they will also get automatic reminders every day after the due date.

Your service providers

Especially when working with service providers, it’s crucial to be mindful not only of your own time but also theirs – because you’re paying them by the minute or hour. Sendtask allows you to set them up with an efficient workflow without having to spend time onboarding them first.

I wish we would have had a tool like Sendtask when we started mediasign. It would have saved us many tedious hours of reaching out to clients, reminding people on our team or coordination with service providers. That’s why we’ve decided to build it.

The idea for Sendtask developed over time. Here’s how it shifted into its current form.

The four (unconnected) dimensions of productivity apps

About two years ago I started thinking about my frustration with how unconnected my productivity apps are. I think most productivity tools can be attributed to one of four core categories: Communication, Scheduling, Tasks and Data storage. In each category, I use at least one tool. My productivity suite on my desktop looks like this:

Communication: Apple Mail, Whatsapp Web, Slack, Facebook Messenger
Scheduling: Google Calendar, Fantastical, Apple Calendar
Tasks: Asana, Trello, Text notes
Data Storage: Evernote, Google Drive, Dropbox

What frustrated me was how many manual interactions were needed between these apps. For example, when I received a task via email, I had to manually switch to Asana and create that task manually. Once that task was completed, I also had to manually go back and let people know that this was done. When I got an event invitation or agreed on a meeting time on Slack or Whatsapp, I had to manually go to my calendar, ask the other participants for their calendar emails to invite them and then send the invite. During the meeting, I had to manually create a Google Drive Document or Evernote and keep track of meeting notes. Then, I had to send out those minutes after the meeting.

Blacksteak

What frustrated me was that a) it seemed so simple to detect events and tasks in any of those channels; and b) that there’s no interface to create links and link objects. For example, if I could link the calendar event of a meeting with the corresponding meeting notes and the corresponding task list, I could avoid a lot of duplication. This way, if I were to go back to that meeting, it would be easy to find all connected parts. When I’m working on a task that came out of this meeting, I’d like to have a quick link to jump to the meeting notes. This way I don’t need to copy all the necessary info into the task. Once that task is completed, I’d like to have a quick way to inform the rest of the participants.

Out of this frustration grew an idea with project name «blacksteak». I’ve started to work on it myself and soon hired a developer to progress quicker. To show these links between all the apps, you have to integrate with all of them or re-create the UI. We opted for the 2nd route. 

Prototype and UI

A screenshot of the Blacksteak UI

The prototype had a UI for an email client, its own calendar, online storage and a task list. The UI had a difference to all the clients that existed – it offered a ‘context sidebar’ on the right side. This sidebar served three purposes:

– It offered the user to create a new linked object. E.g. when you were looking at an email, it offered to create a related task. That task was automatically shared with all the people in the email with a link in both directions.
– It offered one-click creation of new items based on the content it recognized. If an email contained information about an event, the sidebar offered a way to create it with one click. Similarly, you could also invite the people who are in the email.
– It showed links to previously linked items. If you created the task and the event mentioned in the examples above, you had a one-click link to them.

The prototype was already useful to me but it lacked a lot of the functionality that a user expects. We could have added some of it but often it was not available via some the products’ API. Also, going the Interface route meant that we had to champion in at least four productivity interfaces where large corporations (think Apple, Google and Facebook) have impressive teams working on getting just one of them right.

Undoubtedly there was also a benefit of having all four dimensions in the same UI – the same shortcuts, the same button placement and other standardization meant that a user only had to learn one interface instead of four or more separate ones.

Testing with users

We started to show our prototype to test users and got very mixed feedback. Some of them saw the long term benefits and would have given the app a try once we added more functionality s.t. it could replace 80% of their existing app’s feature set. Others didn’t see big enough of a pain point with their current setup. Yes, they were doing all these manual steps, but they had always done it this way and got used to it. It didn’t seem like a big problem to them.

However, one thing was common for all their feedback: They all liked our task manager and the idea that they could share tasks instead of emails with anyone. We had built a very simplistic version because we realized that Trello, Asana, Podio, and the likes didn’t offer a way to share a task with anyone via email. Users always needed to create an account first before they were able to receive tasks. That didn’t work for us of course because we wanted people to be able to create and share tasks via a one-click action from the sidebar. If you first had to convince your collaborators to create an account with one of the aforementioned products and then to go through some training to know how to use these tools, we knew it wouldn’t work.

Sendtask was born

This is where the core idea for Sendtask came from. I have been an early user of Asana, Trello and others. Tool like these made our internal workflows at mediasign much more efficient. But I couldn’t use these tools with our clients or some 3rd party providers like lawyers, accountants, etc. – I would always revert to my ‘old habits’ (read: email) when working with people outside our own team.

We spent a good amount of time researching the market because we were sure that someone must have built a tool that does this. The solution seemed obvious to us: Build a tool with a more simple interface that doesn’t need any explanation. Also, allow users without an account to authenticate via a link that they receive in the email that notifies them about the task.

We couldn’t find a tool that did this in a clean and simple way and decided to go ahead and build it ourselves. Most of our test users liked the idea and we realized that this was a larger pain point for them. This is how we decided to focus on just one feature of project «blacksteak» and how Sendtask was born.

At Sendtask, we are a completely virtual company. There are no two people in the same place or office. We only talk to one another once a week – for less than 60 minutes. We are very strict about that limit and often keep the weekly call to 45 minutes or less.

Every Wednesday we all get on a synchronous video call on appear.in to discuss the topics that need to be discussed synchronously with the group as a whole.

Why do we limit the time we talk to each other to as little as possible?

We are building a company that allows everyone to work when they are most productive. And take time off when they’re not. Also, we build a tool that allows people to work together without friction in a mostly asynchronous way. We have that vision embedded in our company culture and naturally get as much done in an asynchronous fashion through Sendtask as possible.

Also, we are going to grow quite a bit in team size over the next few months and in anticipation of that, we want processes that scale well. Finding a 45’ minute spot once a week is considerably easier than finding several or much longer ones – especially as people work from many different time zones.

What happens on the weekly call?

Even more important than what happens on the call is what happens before the call. Until the evening before the call, everyone leaves their update on Slack. The update consists of three parts: What have I accomplished last week? What am I working on the coming week? What would I like to talk about?

Before the call, everyone has read everyone else’s update and there’s no need for us to update each other on what we’ve worked on and what we’re going to work on. The third question is important though and an integral part of what we do on the call.

1. The one-word open

We start the call with the ‘one word open’, a technique we borrowed from EO (Entrepreneur’s Organization). Instead of just asking everyone how they’re doing (their answer would usually be ‘good’ and not tell much), we each state the predominant feeling at that point. It could be ‘calm’, ‘tired’, ‘excited’ or any other feeling. We’ve found this to be very powerful as it allows to immediately connect with each other in very little time. If someone is not doing well, we clarify if it has anything to do with the team and/or if the team can help. Especially in a remote setup, it is important to be aware of everyone’s state of mind.

2. Talking points

We then go through the topics that people listed under ‘What would I like to talk about?’. These are typically things that need group consensus and are not easy to discuss via Slack – because they require demos or an extra level of creativity for example. The topics range from ‘I need feedback on the screen designs’ to ‘What do you guys think I should focus on between a, b and c?’.

3. User feedback

The third part of our call is someone presenting their learnings from onboarding a new user. Every week someone onboards a new user to Sendtask and interviews them about their three most positive and three most negative impressions in the process. It is paramount for us to provide a great user experience where our users immediately and intuitively understand what they can do with Sendtask and how. This is why a) we want everyone in the company to be confronted with that process on a regular basis and b) want everyone in the team to hear about what we do well and what we do poorly.

4. The weekly riddle

The fourth part is fun – it’s our weekly riddle. Similar to the feedback on the onboarding experience, we also have another person each week preparing a riddle for the group. We all love riddles and logical challenges and this part of the call is more of a reward and group fun activity. It’s something we all look forward to and preparing the riddle is as fun as solving it. We try to find tough riddles to really make the team think. This is not easy nowadays as we’ve gotten quite used to a lot of different types of riddles. Next week will be my turn and the solution to my riddle will be the destination of our next retreat – which we’ll fly out to the day after.

5. The one-word close

We end the call with the ‘one-word close’ which is very similar to the ‘one-word open’. We go around and everyone shares how they feel.

Conclusions

When we started Sendtask we did not think that 45-60 minutes per week would be enough time to update each other and discuss the topics that need to be discussed in a synchronous fashion. However, we quickly learned that we can boil down the topics that we discuss during the call to the most important ones and with good preparation, we can discuss all those, have some fun with our weekly riddle and still sometimes be done in no more than 45 minutes.

How often does your team meet and how long do your company-wide meetings typically take? Are there any important agenda items we forgot?

When we started Sendtask, we made a conscious decision not to have a traditional office. Our team is spread across 7 different countries. And we only speak to each other once a week – for no more than sixty minutes. These are the reasons why this setup resonated with us:

Focus on the important vs the urgent

Being in a distributed setup often allows us to work on the important things versus the urgent. In a traditional office setting, it’s easy for a colleague to come over, tap you on the shoulder and ask questions. In a distributed setup, it’s not as easy. Sometimes, this means that it will take you a bit longer to figure out something. But what we’ve seen is that over time, everyone becomes better at helping themselves, reading documentation and figuring stuff out on their own. And if a problem just seems too complicated, the colleague is never more than a phone call away.

Less distraction

It’s very easy to get distracted, especially in an open space office. You hear the sales people talk, there’s a meeting in the room next to you…the potential distractions are endless. This is the main reason why a lot of developers wear headphones in a traditional setup. They come to an office and virtually remove themselves from it by wearing headphones. This never made sense to me and our distributed setup has proven to be very low on noise. While we use Slack for all our communication, we don’t even require you to be online constantly. It’s ok to check Slack 2-3 times a day. If there’s something urgent, we’ll find a way to reach the team member (Whatsapp, Skype, Phone Call) but those emergencies are rare. Less noise has made us a lot more productive and allowed us to be in a flow state for extended periods.

Everyone can be productive on their own schedule

One thing that was challenging for me when I was a developer were office hours. One day I felt productive from 7 am early afternoon and the other day it was from 1 pm until late night. One thing was certain: It was very rarely 8am-5pm. Very often I was sitting in the office, trying to get work done but just couldn’t. And then I would go home and feel productive but was tired from already spending the day at the office.

In our distributed setup, we allow everyone to work on their own schedule. Not just the hours of the day, also the days of the week. If you don’t feel productive or have something more fun to do on a Tuesday – go do that. Feel productive and have a good idea for how to solve a certain problem on Saturday – why not solve it then and there?

We only have one synchronous meeting per week – every Wednesday at 2pm-3pm CET we update each other and check in on topics that should be discussed with the whole team.

When we do get together, it’s extra fun

All of that is not to say that working remotely doesn’t have its downsides. The biggest one being that you don’t get to spend a lot of face time with the people you work with. I’ve caught myself using the term ‘team crush’ lately and it adequately describes how I feel about this team. We assembled a pretty amazing team and I often wish I could just walk over and chat about life, alien movies and whiskey.

We deal with this by bringing everyone together four times a year for a week of fun and work. This is when we work on long time topics – our roadmap, vision, processes, and ideas. And we take a good part of the day off to have some fun together. On our last retreat, we went to Gran Canaria and went hiking, surfing and escape rooms. Next week we’re headed to our next retreat and we have another set of experiences planned. But that’s for another post.

Conclusion

We came up with the idea of setting up Sendtask as a remote company because we were frustrated with certain aspects of working together in a traditional office setup in past companies. Working in a distributed fashion helps us focus on the important vs. the urgent, reduce a lot of the noise that comes with a traditional setup and allows everyone on the team to work when they feel most productive. Still, we’re looking forward to seeing each other in real life and we bring everyone to the same location for a retreat four times a year where we make the most of the time together.

What’s your setup? Have you ever thought about going to a remote setup?