With coronavirus (COVID-19) madness dominating the headlines, it is a good time to consider the remote work concept. Whatever you may call it, remote work, telecommuting, distributed work, or just working from home, there is a place for all of us – not just coaches and freelancers – to consider alternative workspaces.
I’ve collated a collection of remote tools and resources that may help your workflow in both the coronavirus fears and beyond. What would you add to the list?
- 15 Questions About Remote Work, Answered
The coronavirus pandemic is expected to fundamentally change the way many organizations operate for the foreseeable future. As governments and businesses around the world tell those with symptoms to self-quarantine and everyone else to practice social distancing, remote work is our new reality. How do corporate leaders, managers, and individual workers make this sudden shift? - A Crash Course in Remote Management
Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, is a primarily distributed company with more than 1,000 employees across 76 countries. I’m an engineering lead, currently working on the Developer Experience team. As Automattic has grown, we’ve learned a lot about working remotely and across time zones, and have shared insights on what we see as the future of work on the Distributed podcast, hosted by our CEO, Matt Mullenweg. - The Remote Work Stress Test
For many of us, that means working remotely, outside of a centralized office, in an attempt to avoid large groups of people — the type that often convene in an office. There’s nothing lucky about this situation, but in a way, we are lucky in one sense: the tools to enable such remote work have been built and honed over the past couple of decades. And what was once a sort of frustrating but perhaps more convenient experience in certain situations — the ability to work remotely — has slowly but surely been morphing into a normalized way in which many people operate. - Coronavirus May Be a Tipping Point (Finally) For Telecommuting
Today, a scant 3 percent of Americans telecommute most of the time, according to FlexJobs. That means just about as many Americans will suffer through daily “extreme commutes” — lasting more than 90 minutes, each way — as will take advantage of full-time telecommuting. - Coronavirus and the Remote Work Experiment No One Asked For
This is not how I envisioned the distributed work revolution taking hold. - What It Takes to Run a Great Virtual Meeting
As companies scramble to protect employees from the spreading coronavirus with travel restrictions and remote work arrangements, there’s a distinct possibility that in-person meetings with teams, customers, or suppliers may be canceled for days — or potentially weeks. - Zoom CEO: Coronavirus outbreak will “change the landscape” of work and communication
“Given this coronavirus, I think overnight, almost everybody really understood they needed a tool like this,” Yuan said of his company’s video conferencing software on an earnings call this week. “This will dramatically change the landscape. I truly believe in the future, everyone will [use] video for remote worker collaboration.” - 12 Strategies for Maximizing the Effectiveness of Working Remotely
For the last several years, almost every hour of professional work that I’ve put in has been remote work. Although I write in Iowa, the team that keeps The Simple Dollar running is located around the country. Other writing I’ve done, such as pieces for US News and World Report, has been remote as well. I know the ins and outs of working in an environment where there aren’t any coworkers or management within many miles of me. - Landing Remote Clients (And keeping them happy) [Webinar]
You can build a successful client-based business without ever actually sitting down with a client. Seriously. In fact, it’s a pretty smart idea.
Why limit yourself by geography, when the best clients are all over the place? - Health insurance for your remote team
SafetyWing just launched Remote Health, the first global health insurance built specifically for remote teams. - 10 Tips to Help Remote Workers Avoid Burnout
These days, many people are able to work from a variety of locations, thanks to the Internet. More and more companies are allowing their employees to become remote workers. These employees are not chained to a desk in the same old office every day, and they are able to work from pretty much anywhere in the world, as long as they have an Internet connection. - How to Get People to Actually Participate in Virtual Meetings
We’ve spent the last few years studying virtual training sessions to understand why most virtual gatherings bore groups into a coma. As we’ve done so, we’ve discovered and tested five rules that lead to predictably better meeting outcomes. In one study we did, comparing 200 attendees of a face-to-face experience with 200 of a virtual experience, we found that when these rules are applied, 86% of participants report as high or higher levels of engagement as in face-to-face meetings. - Stuck at Home
A friend told me that she was dreading a possible quarantine in response to the worldwide health emergency.
“But you work at home,” I said. She agreed with me, but made it clear that when it was her choice, it felt different. - Agencies Prep For Extended Remote Work Amid Coronavirus Spread
In moving to a remote workforce, even just for a test, agencies are aiming to make sure their employees can log onto their VPN to get on agencies’ networks, have downloaded the proper video software, are prepared to use chat services (some are on Slack, others are on Microsoft Teams and others say they use G-chat), are able to share files easily and are generally able to fully do their jobs outside of the office. Virtual meetings either with other employees at the agency or with clients are being planned using Zoom. The impact of being remote to day-to-day work is still unclear, which is why some agencies are running tests before jumping ahead with a full remote workforce. - Working From Home Goes Viral in the Time of Coronavirus
For many, the widespread embrace of remote work is a welcome change they’ve always wanted. They’re reacting on social media the way kids celebrate snow days: No commutes! Flexible schedule! Home-cooked lunch! - How Glitch Does Remote
For more than ten years, we’ve had a distributed workforce. We’ve captured our best practices here in our public, open source employee handbook. Remix the app and edit it as an instant starting point for your own guide. - Freelancing During a Recession
I wanted to write this article because when I started freelancing, it was right before the last recession hit in 2008. And, if you’re at all like I was, you were really worried about your business and your ability to financially survive. - How to Be Successful at Remote Sales, According to HubSpot’s Remote Salesforce
If you’re new to remote work, you might find yourself feeling stir crazy as you acclimate to your new surroundings.
However, the transition doesn’t have to be difficult.
Here, we’ve gathered the top tips from HubSpot’s remote salesforce. Plus, we review best practices for managing a group of remote sales employees. - Product Hunt: Unconventional Tips for Report Work
We’d love to learn the unique tips that help you stay sane and productive when you work from home. - A Guide to Managing Your (Newly) Remote Workers
While close to a quarter of the U.S. workforce already works from home at least part of the time, the new policies leave many employees — and their managers — working out of the office and separated from each other for the first time. - Here’s How to Host a Virtual Happy Hour and Why It Will Improve Your Mood
If you’re missing your friends and co-workers during these days of social distancing, consider hosting a virtual cocktail hour. It’s fun, it’s free (or very cheap), and it will lift your spirits more than you might imagine. - Remote Working: The Home Office Desks of Basecamp
People are always curious about work-from-home (WFH), remote working setups. So, I posted a Basecamp message asking our employees to share a photo of their home office, desk, table, whatever. Here’s what came in. - On Working Remotely: An Automattic Reader
How does a distributed company — a group of people with shared business goals but spread out around the world, representing different cultures, family settings, and local health considerations — stick together during a major health crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic? - 5 Things Social Media Managers Must Do Now in the Age of Coronavirus
In the US, many are entering the first week of working from home. Globally we are moving quickly to social distance and face lockdowns, forcing individuals into new habits and patterns. Uncertainty is the underlying theme. I’m not saying this to scare anyone but to begin to understand what it means for using social media effectively. - Managing Tasks as a Team when Working Remote
If you are accustomed to working with a team, working remote can present a unique set of challenges. Communication and collaboration look much different when your only human interaction is through a computer screen. There are a number of communication apps, such as Slack and GoToMeeting, that are indispensable for keeping in touch with your remote team members. - A Virtual New World: Seattle startups on what works and what they miss while working from home
Thousands of workers across tech and other industries who have the ability to do their jobs away from an office setting are experiencing a range of emotions during this extended period of self isolation and social distancing. - A Guide for Working (From Home) Parents
Amir and Ria are working professionals living in Seattle: he works at Amazon and she’s the CEO of an early-stage start-up. They have two kids, Amara and Aryan, who are 6 and 2 years old. They’re used to managing the usual challenges of dual working parents — coordinating childcare with schools and activities, managing meals and household chores, and spending quality time together on the weekends. - Everything We Know About Remote Work
Remote work has been the norm at Buffer for many years now; we ditched our office in 2015 and have been hiring remote teammates since 2011. We now have over 85 teammates spread across 10 different time zones. Over the years, our team has experimented and learned tons about productivity, tools, collaborating, communicating, and disconnecting as they each relate to remote work.
Remote Work Tools & Considerations
- For coaches, freelancers, and those looking to schedule their time (and be compensated), consider MeetFox
- If your favorite conference or meetup has been cancelled, consider hosting your own with HeySummit
- For note sharing and collaboration, we use Evernote or GSuite (Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, etc)
- Team communication, Slack is the go-to