There is no question about the benefits of working remote. It’s been over two years since we ditched the office, and officially took our company remote, and that’s one decision I wouldn’t trade for the world. We’ve seen vast improvements in productivity, creativity, and of course, great lifestyle benefits.

Scaling and growing up any company is very difficult on its own. Scaling a fully remote company comes with a bunch of its own unique sets of challenges. As our company strives to push through to that next threshold in our business development, I’ve discovered a few important aspects that require some extra attention in a remote environment:

Be as transparent as possible

With remote employees, working in different parts of the world, in different time zones, each team member is very autonomous. It could be very easy for team members to get isolated in their own tasks or departments, and miss the big picture. It’s not uncommon at all to not even speak to certain team members for days at a time.

This is why it’s very important to be as transparent as possible and give your team members as much access to information and resources as you can. Having a transparent and open culture, and making sure every team member knows what everyone is working on, will help ensure your team is aligned with the company vision. If you’re planning for growth and scalability, transparency amongst your team is essential.

A couple of our favourite tools to help with transparency are Slack, Trello and Grow.

Increase engagement with team members

As a leader in the company, it’s important to make more of a conscious effort to increase the touch points with members of the team. Whether it’s a ping or voice chat on Slack, giving quick praises, or sending a funny gif, these little interactions make a big difference and helps make things more personal.

To start every week, I give weekly recaps of the previous week, and what our goals are for the current week. Recently, I started giving these recaps in audio format instead of text. Just a little subtle change that helps make things a bit more personal and connected.

It’s important to recognize team members when they accomplish something good. We’ve implemented Bonusly, which allows team members to give and receive meaningful praise and recognition with real rewards dollars. The team loves it, and it’s a great, simple way to increase motivation, productivity and retention.

Documentation, documentation, documentation

Training and onboarding new employees could be challenging, and requires a lot of effort, patience and time. Doing this remotely, is unquestionably even more challenging. This is where over-documenting is super important. Documenting things like each team member’s role and job functions, as well as internal company processes and workflows is a must.

It’s also important to ensure your documentation and internal wiki constantly stays maintained and up-to-date. It’s very easy to overlook this in a fast-paced, constantly evolving company. You’ll easily realize the vitalness of documentation, as you begin to scale, and bring on new team members.

A few apps we use for documentation and onboarding are Google Docs, Nuclino and Humi.

Scaling a remote company certainly comes with its challenges, but if done right, the rewards are incomparable!