Did you ever dream of working from warm, sunny Mexico? How about closing your laptop and going out for a surf in Joao Pessoa, Brasil? Or learning Castilian Spanish in a beautiful old Andalusian town?
Here at MeetingPulse, we’ve been an adventurous remote team since day one. We like to think we’re pretty good at working remotely, and we’re happy to share some strategies that work for us.
Remote-first, by design. That’s MeetingPulse. We’re a team of 17 people spread across the globe in 10 countries. We mostly do business in English, but our team speaks 15 languages, works across 9 time zones, and serves customers all around the world.
Many of our clients have adapted to remote work this year, and grappled with the challenges that came with this sudden, unplanned shift. It isn’t always easy, but done right, there’s a huge upside to remote work. Here, we’re going to share our learnings about successful remote work so you can overcome your challenges and embrace the benefits of this new normal.
Remote Teams are Diverse Teams
Being remote first lets you hire the best people, no matter where they live. We love building a diverse team of all-stars hailing from all corners of the globe. And they’re great at what they do. Having a diverse team has opened up so much opportunity for MeetingPulse. Everyone brings different perspectives, experiences, and networks to the table.
Our global employee group speaks different languages, experiences different cultures, and enables us to build a truly global business. They help us get to know our customers, shape our product development roadmap, and allow us to move forward with confidence.
Countless studies have shown that diverse teams perform better. That’s certainly true — and diverse, remote-first teams are most effective with the right frameworks in place.
Strategies to Effectively Work Remotely
It’s never been easier to build a remote team. There are countless technologies to support your team, but all the tech in the world won’t help unless you have solid strategies in place to use technology effectively. Some strategies that work for us include:
Communication Culture
It’s all too easy for employees to feel isolated when working remotely. At MeetingPulse, we embrace a culture of communication. We communicate frequently, and use tools like Slack, Asana, and Zoom with MeetingPulse to collaborate. We have regular one-to-ones, team meetings, and special events. We place trust in our team members, and use MeetingPulse features like live audience quizzes and polls to bring more energy and engagement to our meetings.
Building an interactive, engaging culture builds deeper connections, and ensures we always have that all-important spark and chemistry in our team.
Lead By Example
Company culture comes from the top. Managers and executives set the tone for their teams — no matter the organization. We encourage our employees to ask questions, engage with presentations, and share their opinions with our leadership team. And we use MeetingPulse to do all of those things. To get a better idea of what that looks like, watch our video overview.
Leading by example unifies your team around a common goal, and ensures that leadership stays in touch with the issues their teams face on a daily basis. Meeting Pulse enables leaders to host interactive town halls, with polls, Q&A, and reports. This real-time interaction and engagement makes it easy for leaders to stay in touch, no matter what size their company is.
Related: Top Interactive Online Meeting Ideas
Quality Over Quantity
Filling your calendar up with virtual meetings might make you feel productive, but trust us, online meeting burnout is real. Companies spend too much time in unproductive meetings, and if you’ve ever had three or four online meetings back to back, you’ll know how exhausting they can be.
We focus on quality over quantity. That means we focus on high-quality meetings, with balanced discussion and democratic decision-making. We find that really high quality meetings are only possible with the right technology.
From interactive presentations to taking the “pulse” of participants in real-time, MeetingPulse has everything you need to run more effective meetings in your organization.
