Remote work knowledge/experience sharing

[sharonlicari]

Hey Community, 

I hope everyone is safe at home during these difficult times. 

In many industries, people are starting to pay more attention to remote work because of the recent outbreak of COVID-19. HubSpot has always been a strong proponent of working remotely and we even have a dedicated program manager for remote employee experience. 

Currently, HubSpot global offices are closed and all of the HubSpot employees are working remotely.  Here are some tips to help make that transition easier for you and your company.

• Send/distribute an IT preparedness checklist in advance to your team to ensure that everyone checks the quality of their network connection in their house and that they have a suitable workspace setup in case of unexpected remote work.
• Structure your day - it can be very easy to have a lie-in each morning or stay in your comfy clothes all day when working from home. Try to structure your day similar to when you’re in the office. Get up and go for a walk in the mornings, begin work at your normal start time and take breaks throughout the day. Most importantly finish work at your normal time and take time to disconnect from work.
• Have non-work related social time- Working remotely can be lonely and people often feel they are disconnected from their social networks. In Support, we have a lunch break video meeting channel. Believe or not, this really helps you to feel connected with your teammates!
• Be responsible with your availability- Since we cannot see each other, it’s important to communicate with your colleagues about your availability. Throughout the day, we sometimes go offline to have lunch or to have a walk. It’s a great habit to mention when you’ll be offline and when you’ll be back. In HubSpot, we use Slack for internal communication. So I edit my profile to let people know that I’m offline like this: [Lunch break- will be back at 1pm]

Please share your experience, thoughts, tips about remote work with Community!

Here are some example questions.

1. How are you operating your business differently today by reacting to the current situation?
2. Does your organization encourage/require remote work?
3. If not, what plan of action is your organization taking to keep growing under this circumstance?
4. If yes, what do you feel is the benefit of remote work and what do you find difficult?
5. Is there anything you/your organization is doing for remote work situations?
6. Do you have any tips for people who are not familiar with remote work?

This is a hard time for everyone, and the situation is brutally impacting some businesses.

We hope sharing our own experience and providing a place where we can connect with each other will help us all grow together even in this situation. 

Stay at home and Stay stronger! We are here to support you in anything we can! 

Best

Sharon, Jenny and Natsumi! 

@jennysowyrda @natsumimori 

Ps: You can always learn more in this blog post: How HubSpot is Responding to Coronavirus (COVID-19)

[JonathanD]

I'm looking at how I can encourage better user behaviour in our business, from getting our sales people to Note more on deals, to getting people to complete the Academy Courses.   We have a great opportunity as we moved our workforce to Working From Home (WFH) as of today, so under the guise of keeping in touch and making sure we're all pulling our weight, we're in a better position to do the evil of micro-management.

I'm encouraging staff to use the time they would spend on commuting more productively, by exercising or doing some online training - and pushing them towards Hubspot where its appropriate.

I'm also getting our managers to rely on Hubspot more, as they cant do catch up chats in the office, so trying to get them to adopt an attitude of  "If it isn't on Hubspot, it doesnt exist".   I'm pushing this by sending them dashboard emails twice a week, which will quickly show where employees are not updating contacts and deals.

Anyone else doing similiar or have any other suggestions for how we can make the most of this opportunity?   I want to prove to some of the directors of the company that remote working can be an option (for more staff than they think), so I'm trying to make us even more productive than we were previously.

[Aaron-WC]

Hey @JonathanD ,

I can help give you some thoughts that may help throughout the day when coaching your team. Here's some key things I've learned over the last two years on Hubspot,

1. Stay away from inner company email as much as possible. Chat is good. Email bad. Hubspot tasks and notes are the best. Email chains cause confusion, distraction, and have no follow up. We got creative and built snippets that people use in tasks. The sales team uses them to get shipping quotes from shipping, request a sample to be made from ops, request terms on an order from accounting, and many more. It keeps a great history of what happened, and makes sure everything is followed up on.
2. Build your dashboards for each employee, and an overview for the Director/manager. The dashboards should answer two questions... "Where do I get money?" and "What do I need to do today?" Work with the Directors/Managers to make dashboards that allow them to coach and manage their team efficiently. We are big with one on ones, and our sales director spent a lot of hours with us building dashboards. Everyone loves them now. The sales team feels in control and unscrutized. Our customized product designers compete to see which one can influence the most revenue with their sales reps. The sales director can do a consistent one on one meetings with each employee, drill down into reports together, see the deal history, and coach the rep to help close more deals faster. The great thing is that no matter where you are, managers can do a zoom one-on-one, and sales people can see their dashboard.
3. Training is sometimes a non-linear path. Sometimes employees get super motivated because of a random article they read online, or because a friend mentioned something to them. Generally I encourage it, and try to help along where I can but not force it.

Hope that helps! Would love to hear what you learn along the way!

[amwilie]

The company I work for, LyntonWeb, has been a completely remote company from it's inception. We actually just put out a post with WFH tips in hopes of helping those who are moving to doing so during this outbreak. 

https://www.lyntonweb.com/inbound-marketing-blog/working-from-home-101-tips-from-remote-work-experts

As an introvert I find WFH to be the ideal work space 

It's much easier to put your head down and focus without the immenent threat of someone poppin' into your cubicle for whatever reason.

I think the hardest part though is making sure to have an end to your day. It's so easy to find yourself doing work or answering emails in the middle of the night when your office is your home. I've gotten in the habbit of turning off Slack and email notifications at a certain time to try and mitigate this.

In terms of what we do with our extra time that we gain from not commuting--instead of working it in between our client work, we actually have a dedicated day for training. One day a month we push aside all work and get in any Hubspot or other training we've been wanting to get done.

Socially we have Slack channels such as random, food, pets, etc that just lets us chit chat during our day to stay connected and break up the monotony of work. We also on occasion have optional virtual happy hours at the end of the day on Zoom to relax and hang out.

[natsumimori]

Thank you for sharing your experience! 

If anyone viewing this thread is in APAC region, HubSpot will be hosting a live panel about "Managing the future of your business amidst uncertain times" on the 2nd April (Thursday). Please join this event by submitting this form! We hope this panel will help you in this difficult time. (This is a free webinar:))

[Eugenia]

Hi Community!

The HubSpot blog team put together the Remote Work Topic Learning Path Page (a hub for all of our remote work content). It has sections for Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced levels and is packed with tips and expert advice on how to get started with, get better in and master remote work for yourself and your organization.

Hope this is helpful content for many of you. Keep sharing your knowledge and experiences on what works and what doesn't work for you when it comes to working remotely. We're all learning it together!

Best,

Eugenia 

[sharonlicari]

Thank you for sharing this @JonathanD.  I think this is really good and so positive for everyone in your team 🙂 

I am completely agreed on the exercise part, I am trying to do some sessions in the morning before I start my day for two reasons: 

1. keep the routine

2. keep my mental health in a way

Thanks to HubSpot I have the opportunity to WFH really often, and most of the time I feel so productive at home because I am able to focus and concentrate more than in the office. 

I am curious to know what other users have been implementing in their companies and what workflow they have on a daily basis especially under these circumstances. 

Hey @MatthewShepherd , @Josh @Phil_Vallender @ajchapman20 @Kevin-C @amwilie @Krystina @Crystal_Hopper @Mike_Eastwood any thoughts you would like to share with the Community?

Thank you and Stay Safe

Sharon 🙂

[Kevin-C]

Thanks @sharonlicari

So WFH is almost completely new to my company! And this baptism by fire has been an incredible rollercoaster in the last few weeks! The quote "Necessity is the mother of invention." has always fueled my work. And to date most of my career leaps have spurred from intense pressure and necessity. So I very much believe that this tough time the world is facing will change more than just working from home, and hopefully political responsibility... but also major communication advancements. I think we'll see more advancement in the way workers communicate as people and how they use technology rather than an advancement in technology! The word empathy isn't new in our industry(s), but in my opinion empathy will be better understood and leveraged to better communicate with intent.

For instance, as a marketing and marketing software company we have had to completely modify the way we communicate and deliver content to our customers in the last few weeks. I am extremely proud of our account and design teams incredible ability to adapt to and collaborate on the new format, which is definitely geared more for "technical" people rather than the stereotypical "creative" persons.

Everyone knows the next year+ is going to suck! Let's use it as fuel!

[DanielSanchez]

Hello @sharonlicari, thanks for the space to pass on our experience with the Home Office, I think this subject is worth discussing, because in addition to showing many companies that HO is not only possible, but also profitable in performance, it requires knowing how to take advantage the time, if it will not be harmful to the worker.

Main benefit: Time!

I am Home Office since January 2019, when I changed state, it was 14 months in this new experience that yes, it was very productive, because I managed to withdraw new certifications from HubSpot and also others and exercise more what I absorbed from content. Before, the commute to work and the return home consumed a lot of that time, when I arrived I was already more tired from the "trip" and did not want to turn on the computer for a certification.

Main villain: sedentary lifestyle

At first, I thought the focus would be my biggest villain, but I had no problems with it. However, while I produce, my body and mind have been getting sick in those lonely months.

Suggestion: group physical activities

After realizing that I was very lonely, I resumed an activity that I did a lot in the past, which was playing football with friends. I started playing 2x in the week and it did me a lot of good. I went back to having a social, taking care of the mind and was firm in the battle against sedentarism, taking care of the body.

Note: during this quarantine period, exchange physical activities in groups for activities and stretching at home, this is important to avoid physical problems. If possible, participate in video calls with the work people, to also socialize.

In my view, the Home Office will become more and more common, but not everyone is prepared to deal with it. You have to know how to make the most of your time.

I hope I have contributed useful information.

Best!

[innovateandgrow]

Hello,

Thank you for sharing some advice on what to take into consideration when working in a remote environment from home offices. 

We need to adapt our mindset and old convictions (we only can build and manage relationships when we meet customers F2F) to a potential new normal. As quicker we do it, as faster we can return to "normal" business.

Kind regards

Peter

[alicejuarez]

Hi, Hubspot community! 

At Yodelpop, our team has always worked remotely, and about two weeks ago, we collected "tips" that some of our team members wanted to share on how to get settled into a "work from home" mentality, and then put out an email to our clients and collaborators. Since then, we've so repurposed that same content into a series of social media posts that will go out on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook for the remaining Tu/Thu/Sat of April.