Jack Nelson sends memes to his colleagues.
The confession isn’t surprising until you know his title. Nelson is CEO of Skimmer, the savvy pool service company that’s bringing modern technology to an outdated industry.
While some leaders eschew memes as productivity-killing time wasters, Nelson sees the digital snippets as a tool he can use to create bonds between members of remote and hybrid teams. He recently participated in a “Meme-Off” designed to engage employees, boost morale and strengthen internal relationships.
Nelson’s counterparts around the world are finding other creative ways to manage remote teams. Built In has heard all about virtual high fives, online talent shows and collaboration software. Here, we sat down with Nelson and one other local leader to discover their own best practices.
Pool service and repair companies use Skimmer’s software to manage all aspects of their businesses, including invoicing and payments, customer communications and route planning.
In your experience, what are the differences between managing in person in an office, versus managing team members remotely? How have you tweaked your approach to the former to suit the latter?
It’s important to me to get to know people on a more personal level. One of the challenges with a remote or hybrid environment is that it’s hard to get to know stuff about people’s families — that element is missing. A remote environment requires concentrated effort since people don’t experience the casual run-ins that happen in an office environment. That means you have to dedicate time when you feel you have very little time to give. That’s how you get to know your colleagues on a personal level. You have to prioritize this as a part of managing people even if it sometimes doesn’t feel productive.
How do you make sure you stay connected to your direct reports without bombarding them with communication?
Keep it simple. One-on-one meetings with remote employees are simply a can’t-miss. I’ve always been fairly reachable by phone, text and email. That hasn’t changed.
Forcing in-person communications is a high-return activity, so do them with your team and mix it up. I’ve brought our teams together at our actual headquarters in Austin, at trade shows and at customer events around the country.
What advice do you have for leaders getting acclimated to managing a remote team?
Absolutely have your one-on-ones and ensure you meet in person at least a few times a year. Over-communicate when you can. Get used to the fact that Slack is your office. You still need to have boundaries and the ability to close the door, but it’s where people will talk and gather and share.
Adapt appropriately. If you’re getting acclimated to managing a remote team, hopefully, your company has someone dedicated to thinking about the employee experience to support you. Even if you don’t, you can do simple, inexpensive, fun things for your team that will recreate the bonds generally more easily forged in person.
You can do simple, inexpensive, fun things for your team that will recreate the bonds generally more easily forged in person.”
We have done far more remote team-building events than I thought possible. We’ve done everything from “Guess that Refrigerator” to “Worst Feature Request Competition” to “Guess that Browser History” and a “Meme-Off.”
Hypori develops SaaS software that its business and municipal clients use to protect their most valuable data.
In your experience, what are the differences between managing in person in an office, versus managing team members remotely? How have you tweaked your approach to the former to suit the latter?
One of the things about remote management is that you cannot see your team working. You cannot see if they are struggling with a problem and need some direction or help from other team members. You need to learn to set reasonable objectives with checkpoints for longer-term items and use those to make sure your team stays on track. Being remote means finding ways to track progress and make adjustments to that process without being in the same room.
Being remote means finding ways to track progress and make adjustments to that process without being in the same room.”
One of the other items people don’t think about when they are not in the same physical office is time zones. Is my team member available yet? Have they finished their work for the day? None of the team members I manage are in my same time zone. You need to be aware of the differences when contacting team members or setting up meetings.
How do you make sure you stay connected to your direct reports without bombarding them with communication?
There are a lot of great tools available today for remote communication with your team. The trick is learning to use the best available method for the situation. If you have something urgent that needs immediate attention, don’t send an email. Instead, use a tool that gives you instant feedback like a voice or video call. For less urgent conversations, maybe a direct text message to a team member or a post to a group chat for the team is all that is needed. Get to know what works best with your team and be consistent with those communication channels. Your team will learn to look in certain areas for different types of information, and consistency will keep them from searching the digital landscape to find what they need.
What advice do you have for leaders getting acclimated to managing a remote team?
There is an in-office management practice sometimes called “Management by Walking Around.” This involves walking the floor where your team works and observing or reacting to what is going on. This obviously won’t work in a remote environment. Instead of counting on water cooler conversations and impromptu, hallway mini-meetings, communicate goals and required information to your team via voice chats or asynchronous messaging tools. Make sure you can confirm work is progressing via remote tools and communicate clearly with your team. You can’t count on one person learning something important is happening tomorrow because they heard their coworkers talking about it while getting coffee.
